CleanLaw Podcast

Environmental Justice

CleanLaw — Joe Goffman with Francesca Dominici on the Intersection of Air Pollution, Coronavirus, and Black Communities


“The progress is uneven. We are not cleaning the air in an even way for everybody.”

In this episode our executive director Joe Goffman speaks with Francesca Dominici, Professor of Biostatistics, Population, and Data Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Co-Director of the Harvard Data Science Initiative.

They discuss her team’s state-of-the-art science that shows air pollution continues to be a public health threat and, links air pollution with increased coronavirus death rates. They also discuss her team’s recent study revealing that even as air quality improved overall between 2010 and 2016, it did not improve in Black communities.

These are the studies they discuss: Exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States: A nationwide cross-sectional study, Inequalities in air pollution exposure are increasing in the United States, and Evaluating the impact of long-term exposure to fine particulate matter on mortality among the elderly.