by Jilisa Milton, Yale Climate Connections
July 15, 2026
As a kid, I remember the mornings when the air carried a metallic smell, before I had the language to understand what it meant. I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, in a family of generations of steel and domestic workers. As the city expanded through mines and plants that produced fuel for the rest of the country, my ancestors labored. They helped build the industrial backbone that made the city prosperous.
But like too many Black families who have roots in this region, we were segregated into specific neighborhoods, often closest to coke fuel plants, steel facilities, and contaminated sites. From slavery to steel production, growth in this country has too often required Black communities to bear disproportionate risk. The geography of pollution was not accidental – it was policy.
Read: The link between racist housing policies of the past and the climate risks of today
These neighborhoods, largely Black and working class, have endured decades of toxic exposure. Here, the increased risk of cancer and chronic respiratory illness is an accepted reality. Air quality is among the worst in the nation. The dirt below people’s feet is contaminated with heavy metals. Children grow up near Superfund sites. This is not distant history. This is happening now.
When the Environmental Protection Agency recently signaled that it would no longer weigh the number of lives saved when evaluating environmental regulations, like putting limits on pollutants from coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities, it sent a message to communities like mine that our health and lives are expendable.
For decades, the EPA has attempted to account for premature deaths prevented by clean air and water protections, though not nearly enough for the long-term health costs of disability. But when the current administration decided to remove even that consideration, we saw the scales bend toward short-term corporate savings and away from human life. The sacrifice of our health, and the wealth that goes alongside it to pay the cost, was written into countless corporate business plans, unpaid for in corporate bottom lines, and allowed by our government.
In communities across the South that already face deep healthcare coverage gaps, this shift means more illness and fewer pathways to care. For disabled people and those living with chronic conditions, including those disabled by the polluting industries that surround us, the consequences land even harder: Increased exposure to that same pollution can worsen symptoms, limit mobility, and compound the daily labor of managing our bodies. On top of all of this, the additional stress of eco-anxiety for individuals living in these areas can put additional stress on our nervous systems, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and depression.
It’s not just about more hospital visits but the grief of preventable loss, the fear carried by kids growing up in unsafe environments, and the constant reminder that access to clean air, to care, and to safety is still not guaranteed.
After the Trump administration last spring repealed something called the “endangerment finding,” which determined that climate-warming gases threaten public health and welfare, our health and lives came under even steeper attack. Established in 2009, this finding had been the legal backbone of federal climate regulation. Undercutting it strips away critical authority to address extreme heat, flooding, and worsening air quality that disproportionately harm Black and low-income communities across the South.
The same communities once targeted by racial planning and violence are still overburdened with pollution. The pattern is clear: The latest federal environmental rollbacks are not separate from this legacy of racism. Instead, they reinforce it.
Over the decades, we have already seen how racist, harmful deregulations play out locally. My organization, the Greater-Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution, challenged the Trump administration after it approved an exemption allowing coke oven facilities to bypass stricter pollution controls. Coke production releases benzene and other hazardous pollutants linked to cancer and respiratory disease. Granting exemptions in already overburdened neighborhoods where insurance or healthcare access is underfunded and under-resourced sent the message that the government has abandoned all pretenses of claiming to protect us from harmful airborne toxins and chemicals that can make us sick.
Now the cycle is repeating. Massive data centers, like a major project that has sparked concerns in my town, are being pitched as engines of modern economic growth. But these facilities demand enormous amounts of electricity, straining local power grids and prompting expanded fossil fuel generation. Many rely on gas-powered “emergency” generators to deal with this electricity consumption, releasing nitrogen oxides and particulate matter into nearby neighborhoods.
Read: Home electricity bills are skyrocketing. For data centers, not so much.
No one should have to pay the price of more toxic exposure for corporate profits. Our prosperity as communities should be measured not by how many facilities we build or how much power we consume, but by how many years of life we add. Growth that expands tree canopies instead of smokestacks. Growth that replaces contaminated soil with playgrounds and gardens. Growth that strengthens neighborhoods instead of surrounding them with sacrifice. And the people most affected should shape the future of their neighborhoods, which is why public health should be the starting point of every development decision, not the afterthought.
Imagine all children in the South growing up breathing clean air. Imagine them inheriting cumulative investment instead of cumulative exposure. Imagine a framework where prosperity is defined by collective well-being, not corporate margins.
That is the South that the children of steelworkers and domestic workers should inherit. Not one where we are asked to endure harm in the name of progress, but one where they grow in safety, in power, and in possibility.
Jilisa Milton serves as executive director of the Greater-Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution (GASP), leading community-driven efforts to improve air quality, protect public health, and advance environmental justice throughout Greater Birmingham.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/07/families-like-mine-industrialized-the-south-we-paid-the-price-in-air-pollution/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://yaleclimateconnections.org”>Yale Climate Connections</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/yaleclimateconnections.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ycc-favicon.png?resize=100%2C100&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
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