Article By Zoe Greenberg,Globe Staff
"Experts and activists say it’s no coincidence that communities contending with higher pollution in the first place tend to have many Black and brown residents.
'Because of the historical redlining and the designation of many of those communities as hazardous, people took the opportunity to concentrate the hazard in those communities,' said Reann Gibson, a senior research fellow at the Conservation Law Foundation, referring to the federal government’s practice of deeming minority communities hazardous on maps and refusing to insure mortgages there. In turn, Gibson said, highways and bus lots, major sources of dangerous particulate matter, were concentrated in those those communities."
Reann Gibson is a Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition (MFFC) leadership team member. She is also a senior research fellow at the Conversation Law Foundation working with Mattapan and other neighborhoods on the Healthy Neighborhood Studies.