Environmental deaths in the UK are primarily attributed to air pollution, which the Royal College of Physicians estimates contributed to around 30,000 deaths in 2025, costing the economy billions each year. Other environmental risks include climate-related events such as extreme heat, which could cause tens of thousands of deaths annually, and pollutants from diesel emissions or home wood-burning stoves.

But environmental harm does not fall evenly. It is shaped by race and social class. The unequal distribution of risk and damage, known as environmental racism, is systemic, not accidental. It is the product of decades of inequity and political neglect.

In many countries, marginalised communities are more likely to live with polluted air, unsafe water and toxic land. In England, for example, data shows people from ethnic minority backgrounds are around three times more likely than white people to live in neighbourhoods with high air pollution.

A joint Greenpeace UK and Runnymede Trust report found that communities of colour are disproportionately affected by waste incinerators, poor housing quality and limited access to green space.

Environmental racism shows up in decisions about where factories are built, whose neighbourhoods get green spaces, whose water systems are upgraded, and who lives next to landfills, toxic waste facilities or heavy-polluting industries. Put bluntly, some communities are forced to carry the weight of environmental damage so others do not have to.

The term gained prominence in the US in the late 20th century when low-income communities of colour mobilised around anti-waste and anti-dumping campaigns. The 1987 toxic wastes and race report by the United Church of Christ showed that hazardous waste facilities were overwhelmingly located in minority and low-income areas.

It helped launch the modern environmental justice movement, which crystallised in 1991 at the first National People of Colour Environmental Leadership Summit, where delegates drafted the seventeen principles of environmental justice.

Since then, evidence of environmental racism has been documented worldwide — from the siting of polluting industries and the dumping of waste in the global south to unequal access to renewable energy and the health impacts of climate change itself.

Where we live is one of the strongest predictors of our health. When environments are unsafe, polluted or neglected, the consequences are devastating. The World Health Organization estimates that environmental factors contribute to nearly one-quarter of all deaths worldwide and almost 20% of cancers. Living with constant exposure to hazards also takes a toll on mental health, fuelling stress, anxiety and despair.

In the UK, air pollution remains the single biggest environmental threat to health. It is linked to asthma, heart disease and respiratory illness.

Yet exposure is not equally distributed. Local emissions from transport, heating and industry are higher on average in more deprived areas. A 2024 study also showed that, even after accounting for deprivation, minoritised ethnic groups in England remain exposed to higher levels of harmful emissions.

These environmental burdens do not just damage lungs; they affect livelihoods. Poor health means missed work or school, deepening financial and educational struggles. Families who want to move to safer areas often cannot afford to, trapping communities in a cycle of disadvantage.

There are, however, signs of progress. Recent data show that ethnic minorities’ exposure to air pollution in England fell from 13% above the national average in 2003 to 6% in 2023.

This narrowing reflects two decades of cleaner-air policies: low-emission zones, stricter vehicle standards and tighter industrial regulation. Yet it also reflects residential shifts, as some families move away from heavily polluted urban centres, rather than the full dismantling of structural inequalities.

So while the trend is encouraging, it does not mean environmental racism has been solved. As the Race Equality Foundation warns, the UK still lacks a coordinated strategy that explicitly addresses race and class disparities in environmental exposure, community consultation and land-use decision-making.

Polluted air, toxic stress and systemic neglect become embodied as disease — quite literally getting “under the skin”, as public health scholar Nancy Krieger puts it. The damage accumulates across lifetimes and generations.

• ** Read more: Who controls the air we breathe at home? Awaab’s law and the limits of individual actions ** *

Environmental racism is not just an environmental issue. It is a health issue, a justice issue and a life-or-death issue. That reality places a moral obligation on governments, institutions and industries to act.

But history shows that change rarely comes easily. Too often, action only follows public outrage, and solutions are framed as technical fixes — treating the symptoms rather than the causes. Those causes are about power: who holds it, who benefits from it, and who is left to suffer its consequences.

Dismantling environmental racism requires more than installing air filters or building treatment plants. It demands a reckoning with history and a redistribution of power – giving the communities most affected a real seat at the table when decisions are made. Only then can we begin to talk about health for all.