A new follow-up from Washington University’s Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic lands with a familiar punch: vacancy, illegal dumping, childhood lead exposure and poor air quality are still tightly packed into St. Louis’ majority-Black neighborhoods. The 2026 analysis stacks neighborhood-level data on top of interviews and policy recommendations to trace how those environmental burdens turn into health problems and economic loss. For residents in places like Wells-Goodfellow and Dutchtown, the report feels less like a revelation and more like validation of what community organizers have been saying for years.
WashU publishes a data-forward update
The Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic has released Environmental Racism in St. Louis 2026, a data-driven update to its 2019 analysis that pairs detailed maps with community testimony and policy ideas, according to WashU Law. The clinic presents the work as both empirical and community-led, featuring neighborhood pages, refreshed figures and concrete recommendations aimed at local and state officials.
Vacancy remains a root problem
Vacant land and abandoned buildings still sit at the center of many of the region’s troubles. The STL Vacancy Collaborative estimates the city has more than 24,000 vacant and abandoned parcels, a stock of lots and structures that fuels illegal dumping, visible blight and public health burdens, according to the STL Vacancy Collaborative.
Dumping and lead track to the same ZIP codes
WashU’s neighborhood-level analysis finds that illegal-dumping complaints remain concentrated in majority-Black neighborhoods and have only modestly declined in recent years. Complaints to the City’s Citizens’ Service Bureau dropped from roughly 11,336 in 2017 to about 10,072 in 2023, and majority-Black ZIP codes saw higher childhood lead-exposure rates. The report notes that the median majority-Black ZIP code had roughly a 13% share of tested children with elevated blood lead levels in 2023, according to Environmental Racism in St. Louis. Those overlapping hazards line up with why asthma and other pollution-sensitive illnesses are so unevenly spread across the city.
Air monitoring and asthma show the daily cost
Air pollution from highways, industrial sites and demolition dust is flagged as another driver of racial health disparities in the city, and WashU links those exposures to worse asthma outcomes among Black residents. Community groups and faith partners have stepped in where official monitors are sparse: Metropolitan Congregations United’s AirWatchSTL project and other local sensor networks have expanded neighborhood-level PM2.5 data, according to reporting by NRDC. Local organizers, including MCU leaders who survived the May 2025 tornadoes, have warned that tree loss and climate shifts could mean more “very unhealthy and hazardous” air days ahead, as Missouri Independent reported.
Practical fixes, from soil tests to filters
The clinic lays out a mix of short-term and structural fixes: cleaning up and activating vacant lots to discourage dumping, partnering with institutions to provide free soil testing near places where children gather, subsidizing point-of-use water filters for low-income families with young children and expanding asthma training for school health staff. The report also highlights neighborhood-led cleanup and nuisance-reduction models as examples local officials could scale up, as detailed by St. Louis Public Radio.
What comes next
Authors and community organizers present the report as a tool, with maps and numbers residents and advocates can use to press officials for targeted fixes. Local groups such as Metropolitan Congregations United are already leveraging monitor data and neighborhood organizing to push many of the clinic’s recommendations, and the report adds fresh evidence for them to bring to city hall, according to Metropolitan Congregations United.
