Over the years, environmental racism has been the subject of hundreds of articles at Daily Kos. Here’s much-missed Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse taking about “eco white privilege” back in 2010, Walter Einenkel reporting on a refinery that pours hydrogen cyanide gas into Denver’s poor neighborhoods in 2018, and Meteor Blades—who has covered this topic extensively—writing last year about how the high levels of pollution in a Black Detroit neighborhood.

In almost every town or city, there is some expression of environmental racism. It might be the Houston suburbs where Black and Latino families suffered from flooding after a series of storms, or cities where kids suffered from water laced with lead, or neighborhoods still dealing toxic fumes, but there is a direct link between poverty, race, and pollution. In some cases, that line was even written in extra bold ink, as exclusionary housing practices guaranteed that Black families would have to live in areas next to factories, dumps, or other environmental disasters.

But few articles have ever put the ugly intersection of racism and environmental neglect together in the way as this article in ProPublica. Using the kind of sophisticated analysis you might think should be done at the EPA, but isn’t, ProPublica specifically looked at factories putting out toxins that are known to be carcinogens, and the health of those in the area where one, or ten, or over a hundred factory plumes overlap. If you’ve ever thought that all disease clusters were just the result of statistical coincidence, these maps should go a long way toward changing that belief.

The tools that ProPublica used were developed by the EPA and the data is public. But the combination of the two located hotspots across the nation in which neighborhoods are practically bathed in chemicals known to create an increased cancer risk. And, what may be most frightening about the analysis, some of these areas were not previously identified as hotspots for either pollution or disease.

The result of this analysis is what ProPublica calls the most detailed map of cancer-causing industrial air pollution in the United States. On top of the map itself is the article Poison in the Air, which looks specifically at some of the neighborhoods identified through their analysis, and directly at the lives of some of those living in these areas.

Some of the locations are well known for the toxic stew that hangs in the local air. For example “cancer alley” in Louisiana contains hundreds of factories and refineries, all contributing to one of the most environmentally hazardous environments on the planet—as well as an area that many Black families call home. Other areas, like Calvert City, Kentucky, have hosted a collection of dangerous industries going back to World War II (and made the list of Superfund sites). Other sites, like one on the east side of Memphis, Tennessee, or another located in rural Missouri, are centered around the pollution streaming from a single plant.

ProPublica’s “The Most Detailed Map of Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution in the U.S.”

Despite the detail and analysis that went into this map, it’s still far from complete when it comes to identifying environmental hazards—even ones carried by air. But it’s definitely worth zooming in on your own area to see the hazards nearby.

And when you spot a place where the pollution is especially tough, think seriously about who lives in that area.