By Sarah Bond

During President Obama’s administration, a senior White House official referred to climate change as Obama’s “stepchild,” because environmental policy was generally overlooked in favor of revisions to health policy.^[1] Given the current COVID-19 pandemic, it may seem that environmental policy must once again take the backseat to health policy under President Biden’s administration. However, environmental and health policy do not need to be viewed as competitors vying for the attention of the President. Rather, President Biden should recognize the connection between health and the environment, and use the key elements of problem definition to frame COVID-19 as an environmental justice issue.

Problem definition is an important tool that can be used as a means to organize information in a meaningful manner and as a tool for framing a problem in a way that fits a given person’s or group’s political agenda. Key elements of problem definition include its cause, the nature of the problem, and the nature of the solution.^[2] These elements can be used by policymakers to define COVID-19 as an environmental justice problem, thereby enhancing the public’s awareness of environmental justice and increasing the impetus for reform.

Beginning with problem causation, it is important for policymakers, like President Biden, to highlight that environmental inequities are partially responsible for COVID-19 inequities.^[3] In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency has found that the presence of fine particles in the air increases the risk of adverse health events, including worsened COVID-19 symptoms and prognosis.^[4] A literature review published in November 2020 examined 25 articles and all included studies found that air pollution was linked to adverse COVID-19 outcomes.^[5] Some studies, such as Zhang et al., found that higher levels of pollution were correlated with more confirmed COVID-19 cases.^[6] Other studies found that higher levels of pollution were associated with higher fatality. For instance, Wu et al. found that counties with slightly higher particulate matter in the air had higher COVID-19 mortality rates.^[7] The prevalence of these polluting particles varies across geographies, and tends to be higher in areas with larger populations of racial and ethnic minorities and people of low socioeconomic status, leading to worsened health outcomes among these communities.^[8]

After stating the problem causation, it is important for policymakers to describe the nature of the problem. In this case, environmental and health inequities are unfortunately nothing new. Environmental inequities can largely be traced back to the federal government’s redlining in the 1930s. During this process, the government ranked neighborhoods based on their level of riskiness and race played a large role, in that Black and immigrant neighborhoods were typically labeled “hazardous” and colored in red. A recent study found that these neighborhoods now have consistently fewer trees and parks, and more paved surfaces, causing them to be, on average, 5 degrees hotter in summer, than neighboring areas. ^[9] Along with these higher temperatures comes higher pollution in these areas. While environmental and health inequities are not new, the COVID-19 pandemic has made such inequities a clear and present problem. In fact, in the United States, Black, non-Hispanic people are 1.1 times more likely to get COVID-19, 2.9 times more likely to be hospitalized, and 1.9 times more likely to die from the disease.^[10] This shows the severity and crisis of the situation, thereby increasing the importance of addressing such issues on the policy agenda.

Finally, it is important for policymakers to emphasize that while there are multiple contributors to COVID-19 racial health inequities, creating a solution which targets pollution would be useful because it would simultaneously address two of the world’s biggest crises: COVID-19 and climate change. President Biden has recognized this connection and has included $100 million in his most recent stimulus package to address environmental health risks in minority and low-income communities.^[11] While this funding is certainly a step in the right direction, it remains important that policymakers continue to recognize the significance of environmental justice, and ensure that all people have the right to protection, prevention of harm, shifted burden of proof, obviated proof of intent, and redressed inequities.^[12] By defining COVID-19 as an environmental justice issue, the issue of environmental justice has been brought to the forefront of political discussions. Efforts must be made to ensure continued focus on this issue, putting in place mechanisms of accountability to make the goals behind this new funding into a reality.

1. Ryan Lizza, “As the World Burns,” The New Yorker, October 3, 2010, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/11/as-the-world-burns. ↑
2. David A. Rochefort and Roger W. Cobb, “Problem Definition, Agenda Access, and Policy Choice,” Policy Studies Journal 21, no. 1 (1993): 56–71, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0072.1993.tb01453.x. ↑
3. Nurshad Ali and Farjana Islam, “The Effects of Air Pollution on COVID-19 Infection and Mortality—A Review on Recent Evidence,” Frontiers in Public Health 8 (November 26, 2020), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.580057. ↑
4. X. Wu et al., “Air Pollution and COVID-19 Mortality in the United States: Strengths and Limitations of an Ecological Regression Analysis,” Science Advances 6, no. 45 (November 1, 2020): eabd4049, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd4049. ↑
5. Nurshad Ali and Farjana Islam, “The Effects of Air Pollution on COVID-19 Infection and Mortality—A Review on Recent Evidence,” Frontiers in Public Health 8 (November 26, 2020), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.580057. ↑
6. Zhenbo Zhang, Ting Xue, and Xiaoyu Jin, “Effects of Meteorological Conditions and Air Pollution on COVID-19 Transmission: Evidence from 219 Chinese Cities,” The Science of the Total Environment 741 (November 1, 2020): 140244, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140244. ↑
7. Xiao Wu et al., “Exposure to Air Pollution and COVID-19 Mortality in the United States: A Nationwide Cross-Sectional Study,” MedRxiv, April 27, 2020, 2020.04.05.20054502, https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.05.20054502. ↑
8. Robert Bullard, “Overcoming Racism in Environmental Decisionmaking: Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development: Vol 36, No 4,” July 8, 2010, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00139157.1994.9929997. ↑
9. Brad Plumer, Nadja Popovich, and Brian Palmer, “How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering,” The New York Times, August 31, 2020, sec. Climate, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/24/climate/racism-redlining-cities-global-warming.html. ↑
10. Center for Disease Control & Prevention, “Cases, Data, and Surveillance,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, February 11, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html. ↑
11. Marianne Lavelle, “Environmental Justice Plays a Key Role in Biden’s Covid-19 Stimulus Package,” Inside Climate News (blog), March 14, 2021, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14032021/environmental-justice-plays-a-key-role-in-bidens-covid-19-stimulus-package/. ↑
12. Bullard, “Overcoming Racism in Environmental Decisionmaking: Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development: Vol 36, No 4.” ↑