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More than a year into the pandemic, The Bronx still has New York City's highest death rate from COVID-19.
Last year, Ese Olumhense, former Bronx reporter at The City, explored why residents there were dying from the virus at a rate double the city's average. Public health experts said Bronx residents – who are overwhelmingly Black and Latinx – were more likely to work outside of their homes, regularly exposing them to the virus. The borough also sees high rates of chronic illnesses like diabetes and asthma, which can make COVID-19 infection more dangerous.
And as Olumhense reported in September, local infrastructure may also be influencing Bronxites' health. The Cross Bronx Expressway, which cuts across the borough, regularly emits ultra-fine, lung-aggravating particles into the air Bronx residents breathe.
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Working with Living Downstream: The Environmental Justice Podcast from NPR One, Olumhense and reporter Anjali Tsui identified other New York City neighborhoods near highways that had seen elevated death rates from the coronavirus, like Manhattan’s Chinatown and Washington Heights, as well as parts of Queens and Brooklyn near the Long Island Expressway and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
Learn more about these findings — and more on the difficulties that polluted air presents for Bronx families — by checking out "Struggling to Breathe in The Bronx," the podcast episode produced by Olumhense and Anjali Tsui.
Living Downstream: The Environmental Justice Podcast can be found on NPR One. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Audible, Stitcher and wherever you get your podcasts.
(Image: Elisha Bouret and her sons Miguel Elliot and Jonathan Elliot, with her husband Jonathan Elliot, overlooking the Cross Bronx Expressway. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán/THE CITY/ MISSING THEM)
