Air pollution is a significant threat to human health and well being. Particulate Matter of 2.5 micrometers and smaller, known as PM 2.5, is only one of common air pollutants and it causes 85-200 thousand deaths a year in the United States.
It has been well documented that the sources of air pollution have been concentrated in black and brown communities. NYT reporting found that Black Americans are exposed to higher levels of air pollutants from all sources, including construction emissions, power plant emissions, industrial emissions, and emissions from cars and trucks. All people of color are similar exposed to higher than average rates of pollution from all of those same sources, with the exception of power plants
I hope we can all agree that concentrating pollution sources in Black and Brown communities is wrong, but Maryland lacks sufficient legal frameworks to right that wrong. That’s why a coalition of environmental justice advocates in Maryland are pushing to pass the Cumulative Harms to Environmental Restoration for Improving our Shared Health or CHERISH Act, introduced by Delegates Behler and Johnson and Senator Brooks
To talk about why the CHERISH Act is needed and what it does, I am joined by Jennifer Kunze who is the Maryland Organizing Director at Clean Water Action and Carlos Sanchez-Gonzalez with the South Baltimore Community Land Trust
