How extreme heat disproportionately affects Latino neighborhoods

Hot hot days tend to strike certain districts harder than others, a problem that becomes more dangerous during record heat like expanses of the United States during last week. A new online dashboard shows how Latin districts are disproportionately affected in California.

Developed by the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), the tool helps to fill the gaps while the Trump administration takes a hammer to federal resources on climate data, race and ethnicity.

“We want to provide facts, reliable data sources. We do not want it to be something erased from the political sphere, “explains Arturo Vargas Bustamante, research director of the faculty at the Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI).

The Climate & Health Latino dashboard includes data on heat and extreme air pollution, as well as on asthma levels and other health problems – problems linked to each other. High temperatures can accelerate chemical reactions that create SMOG. Chronic exposure to pollution by fine particles, or soot, can increase the risk that a child develops asthma. Having asthma or another respiratory disease can then make someone more vulnerable to poor air quality and thermal stress. The combustion of fossil fuels – whether in neighboring factories, power plants or internal combustion vehicles – worsens all these problems.

The Latin districts are due to face 23 days of extreme heat per year compared to non -Latino white districts in California, shows the dashboard. LPPI has defined extreme heat as days when temperatures increased to 90 degrees fahrenheit or more.

If you have already heard of a phenomenon called the urban effect of the heat island, large temperature differences from the neighborhood to the neighborhood would probably not be a surprise. The areas with less greenery and darker and cobbled surfaces and the waste heat of industrial installations or vehicles generally tend to trap heat. About 1 out of 10 American lives in a place where the built environment makes him feel at least 8 degrees fahrenheit warmer than he would do without this urban sprawl according to a study of 65 cities of last year. And after years of redness that have strengthened segregation and disinvestment in certain districts of the United States, the districts with more colored residents are often warmer than others.

The dashboard includes county information sheets to show which factors could increase temperatures in certain areas. In the County of Los Angeles, for example, only four percent of the land in the majority-Latino districts are shaded by a tree canopy against nine percent in non-Latin white districts. Conversely, waterproof surfaces such as asphalt and concrete which contain heat 68% of land in Latin districts, compared to 47% in the non -Latinian majority areas of the county of the.

For this dashboard, the LPPI defines a Latin district as a census where more than 70% of residents identify as Latino. It used the same 70% threshold to define non -Latin white districts.

The Latin districts in California are also exposed to twice as much air pollution and have twice as many visits linked to asthma as the non -Latin white districts, according to the dashboard. It brings together data from the census office, American disease control and prevention centers, the state environmental health screening tool called Calenviroscreen and other sources available publicly.

The Trump administration killed the federal counterpart to Calenviroscreen, called EJSCREEN, as part of its purge of diversity and research on actions. Researchers are working to follow and archive data sets that may have been targeted since President Donald Trump has turned to power.

Efforts to maintain this type of study are just as vital, so that people do not have to count on obsolete information that no longer reflects current conditions on the ground. And other researchers have launched new initiatives to document the environmental withdrawals from the Trump administration. The environmental defense fund and other defense defense groups, for example, launched a mapping tool in April which shows 500 facilities across the United States that the Environmental Protection Agency recently invited to request exemptions from air pollution.

The UCLA dashboard is added to the patchwork of more directed research campaigns, although it cannot replace the extent of the data that federal agencies have historically collected. “Of course, we do not have the resources of our federal government,” explains Bustamante. “But with what we can do, I think one of the main objectives is to keep this problem [at the top of] The agenda and provide reliable information that will be useful for community change. »»

Data like this is a powerful tool to put an end to the types of disparities that the dashboard exposes. It can shed light on the efforts to plant trees where they need it most. Or he can show public health officials and community defenders where they have to check with people to make sure they can find a safe place to cool off during the next heat wave.