Air pollution could make the COVID-19 pandemic worse for some people

Photo by Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Juliana Pino usually fights to push polluters out of the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago, an industrial area with a big Latino community. Now, amid the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic, she and her colleagues are also checking in on their elderly neighbors, pooling money together for groceries to help those who can’t afford them, and translating health information on the novel coronavirus for Spanish-speaking residents. The work is different, but it’s still connected to her fight for clean air.
The older people who live in Little Village are already more vulnerable to COVID-19 because of their age. But the ones who grew up here also spent most of their lives breathing in air laden with the soot from nearby coal power plants,…

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