THE BAD AIR ABOVE MEETS THE VIRUS BELOW

Have decades of industrial buildup around a patch of Southwest Detroit left residents especially vulnerable to Covid-19?

- Cynthia Koons and Bob Ivry

It looked like an ordinary drive-by parade. The kind that people in locked-down states have been holding this year to celebrate births and graduations. Cars rolled slowly down the street, their drivers honking and waving, stopping for brief chats. There were balloons and a banner: Welcome Home.

The July celebration was festive, but it was also a reminder of all the ways Covid-19 had devastated this Southwest Detroit neighborhood. Theresa Landrum was there to salute her niece, Donyelle Hull, who’d won a touch-and-go battle against the virus—doctors at one point told her son to start planning her funeral. Hull, who’s 51, spent 61 days in Beaumont Hospital and an additional 45 days in rehab learning to walk again.

This wasn’t the only welcome-home parade Landrum had been invited to. She counts at least 10 friends and neighbors who’ve recovered from the virus. And she has another list, of those who didn’t make it: a pastor, a state legislator, a neighbor couple who passed away within weeks of each another. “You can’t even grieve,” Landrum says. “You just harden yourself so you don’t get that feeling of hurt.”

She doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that so many people she knows have had severe cases of Covid. She attributes it to something quite obvious: the air they breathe. Her ZIP code, 48217, is one of the most polluted in Michigan. And researchers have begun to confirm that pollution can worsen the effects of the illness. A study out of Harvard, for example, has shown that Covid death rates are higher in populations with more exposure to pollutants, and international research has demonstrated that some of the hardest-hit parts of Europe are in especially polluted areas.