cephyrious

I see zero problems with their argument, except it should be about class and not race. Typically in European cities, the west side of the cities have more upper class people and the east side has more working class people. This is because rivers typically divided cities between east and west, and factories used to be by the river. Because wind typically blows more east than west in Europe, the east side got most of the smoke and pollution, so property values were lower there and higher in the west. Cities typically do not have factories spewing pollution by the rivers anymore, but because of the history, west tends to be nicer than east still. So we have hundreds of years of precedent for pollution affecting property values. Poorer people still tend to live in more polluted areas. As such, the added negative effects from the wildfire smoke pushes the total air quality to a more health adverse level for them than others.

So, wildfire impacts poor people more adversely when it comes to health. True. Black people make up a higher proportion of poor people. True. Therefore, proportionally, black people are affected more adversely when it comes to health than whites. True.

But it is because of socioeconomics chiefly. Poor white people are just as affected.