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Although the New York Times connects these two phenomena with a psychosomatic explanation of emotional distress, I view the relationship differently. Neighborhoods where African Americans lived – often restricted to due to segregation and redlining – were more exposed to both indoor and outdoor particles that triggered asthma symptoms. While struggling to breathe, black people simultaneously fought for the right to live as equals.
I am an environmental studies major. This is not news to me.
It would be more accurate to say that NIMBYism by privileged people, who are mostly white, is literally causing increased incidence of asthma in people of color. The de facto disenfranchisement of such people is literally interfering with their ability to breathe and is sending them to an early grave.
A fight for rights is a fight for life itself.
This part is clutch:
> Neighborhoods where African Americans lived – often restricted to due to segregation and redlining – were more exposed to both indoor and outdoor particles that triggered asthma symptoms.
My girlfriend used to be the director of special ed for two charter schools in The Bronx (Hunt's Point). The rates of asthma there are off the charts because it's where all the roads/freeways converge on their way into Manhattan. It's also the poorest congressional district in the US.
It's not just asthma. Black neighborhoods are more likely to be in areas where poorly regulated industry used to be so they are closer to sites where industrial waste has been casually dumped in the environment. Resulting in higher incidences of various diseases and also depressed growth in personal wealth since real estate near toxic waste, highways, etc. tends to be less desirable and grows in value much slower than in nicer areas. As for asthma, a lot of that has to do with freeways being built through black neighborhoods, resulting in higher exposure to diesel exhaust, pm2.5 particulates, ozone, etc. (which both makes development of asthma more likely and also aggravates asthmatic symptoms in people who have it, leading to more health issues and hospital visits).
Stress induced asthma. I wonder if there's been a spike in reported asthma cases in the St. Louis/Ferguson, Missouri area in recent years?
Since it appears that everyone is talking about this in the present tense even though the article is talking about the Civil Rights Movement and there are no referenced sources post-1965:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db94.htm
This one in particular(What is going on with Mexican rates of asthma?): https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/images/databriefs/51-100/db94_fig2....
Could higher levels of smoking (either by the patient, or by family members) be related somehow?