"The Fallout of Locating Minority Public Schools in Polluted Areas"

"Walking into Riverview High School to hear a presentation by University of Michigan professor Paul Mohai and two of his colleagues last week, News Hits caught a whiff of the nauseating petrochemical stench spewing from the nearby Marathon oil refinery along I-75."



"It's a truly sickening smell.

Inside the school, a steady stream of charts projected on a screen only added to the stomach churning.

The info being relayed by Mohai wasn't exactly new. Last year, the peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs published a piece written by Mohai and three others. The headline did a pretty good job of summing up what the researchers had found: 'Air Pollution Around Schools Is Linked to Poorer Student Health and Academic Performance.'

What the headline didn't capture is this: African-American and Hispanic students, as well as kids from low-income families, are the ones most likely to be enrolled in schools that are in close proximity to sources of pollution."

Curt Guyette reports for Detroit Metro Times August 22, 2012.
 

Source: Detroit Metro Times, 08/22/2012