“Black children are more likely to be exposed to lead and are also more likely to live in racially segregated, predominantly Black neighborhoods,” Bravo said. “When these two exposures co-occur, children had worse than expected scores.”
Understanding how structural racism and environmental contamination, such as lead exposure, can combine to affect children’s health and development can help researchers, community stakeholders and public health departments identify and target the most vulnerable individuals and communities, Bravo explained.
Lead is a toxin that has been linked to cognitive and neurodevelopmental disorders in children. Although high levels of lead are unhealthy for children in general, structural racism may amplify the negative cognitive impacts of the lead exposure considerably, said Marie Lynn Miranda, PhD, senior author on the paper and director of the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative at the University of Notre Dame. Miranda is also an adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at Duke and was a longtime Duke faculty member.
“In the midst of our country’s racial reckoning, we must think more about and ultimately act on the deep effects that environmental justice and structural racism have on our country and our communities,” said Miranda. “This paper tackles both issues head on by showing that a clear issue of environmental justice (childhood lead exposure) is further compounded by the structural racism that Black families in particular face in the United States, as demonstrated through racial residential segregation.”
Identifying the mix of social, environmental and economic factors that create health disparities could lead to earlier intervention in vulnerable communities, thus narrowing the “achievement gap” that becomes apparent in early childhood and persists or widens with time. This gap results in lower high school and college graduation rates among children who belong to racial and ethnic minority groups, the authors explain in the paper.