People who live in redlined areas breathe dirtier air

Denver residents who live along Interstate 70 have been convinced for years they breathe more pollution than people living in other parts of the city.

Now first-of-its-kind research from a University of Colorado Boulder doctoral student proves some neighborhoods are more polluted than others, and it illustrates how redlining and other racist housing practices pushed people of color into those neighborhoods.

Alexander Bradley, a doctoral student studying atmospheric chemistry, used satellite imagery showing air pollution by census tract and old maps of redlined Denver neighborhoods to connect polluted air to the disproportionately impacted neighborhoods of Globeville, Elyria-swansea and Commerce City.

“Pollution is not equally distributed for people of different racial and ethnic groups in Denver,” Bradley said. “Where people live is dictated historically by racist practices such as redlining and race-restricted neighborhood covenants.”

Bradley’s research was published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The ability to use satellite imagery to pinpoint air pollution by neighborhoods and compare pollution levels within the same city is relatively new.

The study looked at levels of nitrogen dioxides and particulate matter because those were the pollutants measured by the satellites Bradley used in his research. Maps showed intense levels of those pollutants hanging over Commerce City and north Denver and then dissipating as the researchers shifted their focus further away from those areas.

They used maps from the 1930s and 1940s that showed which neighborhoods were redlined, a practice of excluding certain communities from being eligible for bank loans because of the races and ethnicities of the people who lived there.

“That’s important because I think that every city has a story of why people live where they do, and that affects who is affected most by pollution,” Bradley said.

Joost du Gouw, a CU Boulder professor who is Bradley’s doctoral adviser and one of the report’s authors, said the scientists were not sure whether air pollution was different across Denver. That’s because the city’s air quality is impacted by wildfires, oil and gas drilling and agriculture — all things that are outside the city’s boundaries and could blow anywhere.

But the data confirmed that Commerce City and north Denver bear the brunt of the pollution, he said.

HELEN H. RICHARDSON — DENVER POST FILE The overlook onto I-70 near the cover park in 1922 in Denver. New research shows neighborhoods in Commerce City and north Denver have high levels of pollution.