With the release of the Fumes Across the Fence Lines study that showed how economics and racism are inextricably linked with the dirty practices of big industry, the gas and oil industry has decided to go back to a tried and true method of argument—black people are genetically more likely to get sick than other groups of people. Forget about the fact that the study showed that African American communities were 75 percent more likely to live next to toxic facilities. As Think Progress explains, the American Petroleum Institute’s “scientific adviser” Uni Blake has all kinds of questions about this report.
But Uni Blake, a scientific adviser in regulatory and scientific affairs at API, defended the oil and gas industry in a blog post. “I’ve read an NAACP paper released this week that accuses the natural gas and oil industry of emissions that disproportionately burden African American communities,” Blake wrote for Energy Tomorrow, an online publication of the behemoth oil and gas trade association. “As a scientist, my overall observation is that the paper fails to demonstrate a causal relationship between natural gas activity and the health disparities, reported or predicted, within the African American community.”
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“Rather, scholarly research attributes those health disparities to other factors that have nothing to do with natural gas and oil operations—such as genetics, indoor allergens and unequal access to preventative care,” she wrote.
The racism is very clear and what makes it particularly odious is the incredible cynicism it must take to completely lie to support your racist theory. Think Progress also points out that the scientific study Ms. Blake uses—by cherry picking part of a section—actually refutes her very racist opinion.
Asthma has a strong genetic component, although for this to be manifest interaction with environmental factors must occur. At least some of the differences in asthma between black, white, and Hispanic populations, and between Hispanic subpopulations, could be due to variations in genetic susceptibility. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that the greater burden of asthma among U.S. populations with a significant African ancestry [...] is somehow related to African genes—or to a combination of African and European genes. However, most of the evidence to date seems to indicate that the explanation lies elsewhere, in socioeconomic and environmental disparities, in behavioral or cultural differences, and in access to routine health care.
The report that Blake uses also specifically promotes the idea of more research into the very subject to learn more, something that bothers API and others in the industry.
In order to build on what is already known about the many environmental and socioeconomic factors that contribute to the burden of racial and ethnic disparities in asthma, as well as to further expand programs and policies that show promise in reducing this burden, a thorough assessment of government sponsored programs is needed with the overall aim of prioritizing existing resources and sharing best practices. Along with the knowledge base of existing asthma education programs and new, combined approaches in the delivery of quality care, such an assessment at the highest levels of health care research and preventative decision-making would likely lead to a more concerted national effort to reduce the disproportionate burden of asthma on minority populations.