People who can afford to, often move away. And gradually, as the pollution builds, these become less and less desirable places to live, so they create these traps where the value of real estate the people have been living on depreciate, which makes it all the harder for people who own homes to get out.

Journalist Sharon Lerner reports on the Exxon Mobil refinery polluting the majority-black Charlton-Pollard neighborhood of Beaumont, Texas, and the poisonous, 14 year silence from the EPA after the citizens' civil rights complaint, and connects the mechanisms of environmental racism to a history (and present) of regulatory rollbacks and industry noncompliance in powerless communities across the country.

Sharon wrote the articles A Legacy of Environmental Racism and EPA Welcomed Industry Feedback Before Reversing Pesticide Ban, Ignoring Health Concerns for The Intercept.