For years, residents of the Curtis Bay community in South Baltimore—as well as similar neighborhoods across the nation located near heavily industrial centers—have complained that open-air coal terminals have blanketed their homes, schools, and playgrounds in unhealthy black dust.
But without scientific evidence, residents have been unable to confirm that the grim coating contained coal dust.
In November 2022, a $5.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences equipped Johns Hopkins University researchers to help the community conduct a scientific examination of the potential environmental hazard.
The funding helped to launch the Center for Community Health: Addressing Regional Maryland Environmental Determinants of Disease (CHARMED). Led by principal investigator Marsha Wills-Karp, chair of the university's Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, CHARMED is one of 20 Environmental Health Sciences Core Centers across the nation. The centers seek to advance understanding about "how pollutants and other environmental factors affect human biology and may lead to disease," according to the grant.
"This project supported our investigation of the community-identified questions and concerns related to coal dust presence and exposure in Curtis Bay," said Chris Heaney, a project leader and associate professor of Environmental Health and Engineering (EHE), shared by JHU's schools of Public Health and Engineering. "The grant provides indirect cost support for the EHE Department without which this work would not have been possible."
In November, Johns Hopkins researchers published a paper validating what the Curtis Bay community had been saying for decades: Coal dust is present in measurable amounts on houses, schools, and playgrounds nearly a mile away from the open-air coal terminal that borders the neighborhood.
The study, recently published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, also stated that the testing methods used by Johns Hopkins researchers could be reliably and affordably replicated by communities across the nation that border industrial areas similar to the one in Curtis Bay.
Curtis Bay is a waterfront community near the Patapsco River that borders an industrial area with multiple plants, terminals, and port facilities. The area hosts key facilities for the Port of Baltimore, which was the second largest coal exporter in the United States in 2023 with 30 million metric tons.
Absent federal funding and the research findings the grant made possible, such working-class enclaves almost certainly would not have the scientific evidence to inform policy changes that could mitigate the presence of coal dust in communities bordering major coal storage and export terminals. That includes "indirect costs," which the NIH has proposed slashing dramatically.
"Our EHE core labs, administrative infrastructure, and complementary faculty support were critical to address the environmental health concerns of community members in South Baltimore," Heaney said. "Further, these core labs and administrative services provided support of summer youth scholars from the South Baltimore community who participated in and enhanced aspects of the project."
Through such awards to Johns Hopkins, the NIH supports critical and cutting-edge medical and public health research, which millions of Americans benefit from and depend on. The university's research focuses on understanding, mitigating, treating, and curing a broad array of human ailments and life-threatening diseases and conditions, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, malaria, Lyme disease, influenza, Alzheimer's, and many more.
