This story was produced with support from the Markham-Nathan Fund for Social Justice.
Seneca Smith, a high-school junior at Greenfield’s Four Rivers Charter Public School, grew up spending big parts of her life outdoors. So it was a shock when, amid Canada’s worst-ever wildfire season in 2023, her sports season was restricted as smoke filled the western Massachusetts skies and air quality plummeted.
“Black carbon and greenhouse gases in larger towns are really affecting people,” said Smith, who is an activist with the local organization Youth Climate Action Now. She said it’s important to recognize how detrimental bad air quality is to urban communities in particular. “And especially in BIPOC communities, it’s really spiraling down and affecting everyone in those communities.”
Although wildfire smoke is an obvious and visible air pollutant that is likely to increase as climate change warms the region, it isn’t the only pollutant impacting young people across western Massachusetts.
In late January, the Political Economy Research Institute, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst released an updated database outlining the amount of “air toxic” exposures for schools across the country, including in the western part of the state. PERI’s Air Toxics at School database matched over 100,000 schools to pollution from local corporations like factories and metal mining facilities with data compiled from the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education in 2022 — the most recent year for which data is available.
Of the 13 schools in the first percentile for highest toxic hazards in Massachusetts, eight of them are in Hampden County, according to the database. According to a press statement, this score also does not account for other forms of pollution, like agriculture, fracking, and mobile sources, “all of which can contribute substantially to air pollution near schools.”
A high score is “no reason to panic” and a low score does not mean a “clean bill of health,” said Michael Ash, a professor of economics and public policy at UMass Amherst and the co-director of PERI’s Corporate Toxics Information Project said. He said that the goal of the database was to inform communities of the toxics they’re exposed to.
“One of the things we hope is that we can connect citizens who can organize to insist on laws and enforcement of existing laws that protect our children equally,” he said. “We have this fantastic tool of democracy to use and we can mobilize communities through both electoral and social movement pressures to improve the environment.”
Multiple schools in Agawam, West Springfield, and Springfield are at the top of the list in Massachusetts, falling within the fourth percentile of schools with the most toxic air exposure in the state. East Longmeadow High School, Sheffield Elementary School in Turners Falls, and Litwin Elementary School in Chicopee also appeared high on the list.
Agawam High School is first on the list, making it the highest among all schools in Massachusetts, with a toxic hazard score of 25,446.65. This score is five times higher than the average for schools nationwide and 26 times higher than the average score for schools in the state.
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According to the Air Toxics at School’s technical notes, the toxic score hazard is calculated using the EPA’s “risk screening environmental indicators,” which provides an analysis of what health risks are attributed to various toxic releases. It incorporates both how “dangerous” a chemical is on a per-pound basis, or its toxicity weight, and the local spread of the chemical release. The toxicity weight and the pounds of the chemicals released are multiplied to get the toxic hazard score.
For Agawam High, among many other schools in western Massachusetts, cobalt, chromium, chromium compounds, nickel compounds, and formaldehyde are the top five air pollutants affecting the area. According to a hazardous substance fact sheet created by the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services, cobalt is a reproductive and cancer hazard. Its long term effects include skin and “asthma-like” allergies, lung scarring, and impacts to the liver, heart, thyroid, and kidneys.
Ash said schools in Massachusetts, and particularly Agawam High, may have high scores but are still lower relative to other states in the country. He added that the database should be used as a screening tool because the toxic hazard consequences do not take other forms of pollution into account and immediate conclusions should not be drawn solely from the score.
Reporting done by ProPublica found that Agawam, West Springfield, Springfield, and Longmeadow make up some of the 14 cities with the highest outdoor formaldehyde cancer risks in Massachusetts.
“Companies have learned that they can displace the bads of production, the things that they would like to get rid of, at low political and economic cost, on more vulnerable, less organized, and communities with lower capacity for resistance through the political process or the legal process,” Ash said. “That’s a repeated pattern.”
PERI’s database attributed two local companies, OMG Inc. and Solutia Inc., as allegedly being major local polluters. Solutia Inc. did not respond to The Shoestring’s multiple requests for comment.
Matt Fuller, the director of environmental safety and health at OMG Inc., which makes fasteners and other construction products, wrote in an email that the company “does not have Chromium, Chromium Compounds, Cobalt, or Formaldehyde emissions” and that they could not confirm that the Air Toxics at School data has “any tie to OMG” because of the “unclear” sources of data, units of measurement, and the compounds referred to.
When provided with the database’s methodology, Fuller did not respond to The Shoestring.
Nearly all of the Connecticut River Valley schools at the top of the air-toxics list are located in Hampden County, which according to census data has the second-highest percentage of ethnic and racial minority populations in the state.
In 2022, OMG Inc. released 78 pounds of cobalt as fugitive or non-point air emissions, according to the EPA. This emission was lowered in 2023, when OMG released 43 pounds, EPA data show. The EPA’s websites says fugitive or non-point air emissions “include leaks, evaporative losses from surface impoundments and spills, and releases from building ventilation systems.” In total, PERI’s database attributes OMG Inc. as among the top five polluters for many schools in the first percentile in western Massachusetts.
“We take our responsibilities tied to emissions seriously and remain committed to operating in a manner that minimizes any negative impact of our operating procedures,” Fuller said.
The Shoestring reached out to the school districts of Agawam, Chicopee, East Longmeadow, Springfield, and West Springfield.
Frank Paige, principal of East Longmeadow, was the only one to respond. Paige told The Shoestring in an email that last year the school conducted an “in-depth air quality test” inside of the building and that it had come back clean. Asked for a copy of the test, the superintendent did not reply.
According to the database, many of the affected local schools have a significant minority student population, from at least 10% to over 50%.
Ash said that thinking of children of color is “absolutely central” to environmental justice because he considers children to be “a politically and economically vulnerable” population. He added that there is a nationwide pattern of low-income and communities of color being disproportionately exposed to industrial toxics.
In response, school children have organized against the pollution of their local air.
Smith, the high-school junior from Greenfield, along with many other youth in Youth Climate Action Now, took part in lobbying for a bill that would improve the air quality for communities that are disproportionately impacted by pollution.
Makaila Tete-Donkor is a sophomore who goes to The Springfield Renaissance School and has been active in climate advocacy for two years. Tete-Donkor said that pollution “ruins people’s ability to have air quality” and that the bill provides an opportunity to improve it. She said that air quality was important to her because the asthma rates in Springfield are “extremely high.”
Springfield spent two years as “the most challenging” place to live for people who have asthma, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. The foundation’s “Asthma Capitals” 2024 report now ranks Springfield fourth in the entire country. The report notes that the city has implemented stricter regulation and monitoring of air quality conditions, and said that community organizing was essential to Springfield’s successes.
“Students are the ones who are most affected by bad air quality,” Tete-Donkor said. “I believe that having better air quality can better support students and youth in general.”
Binika Sunuwar is also a sophomore who also attends Renaissance High in Springfield. Sunuwar has been engaged in climate activism and Youth Climate Action Now for the past two years. She said she was concerned for her young family member who was diagnosed with asthma because of the city’s poor air quality.
“[Pollution] really affects the health of people. And in Springfield, not everyone is able to afford health insurance,” Sunuwar said. “And that has a big impact on people who are living in poverty in Springfield, because the poverty rate is pretty high.”
According to the U.S Census, about a quarter of Springfield’s population lives in poverty compared to the state average of about 10%. The majority of Springfield’s residents receive insurance through Medicaid or their employer, and about 4% of the city’s residents are uninsured.
For caregivers or those concerned with the health of children, Ash said that people can reach out to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and polluting companies to get a better understanding of the toxins local areas are exposed to.
“I get really pissed off about corporate greed and capitalism, and how much it’s really affecting the climate,” Smith said. “I feel like youth do totally have a voice, and I also feel like the government has so much more power. That’s also really difficult, especially with our current political situation — a lot of the budget cuts happening. I can’t necessarily change that as an individual. And we really need to take collective action with it.”
One of the Trump administration’s first actions was the rescinding a Joe Biden executive order that, among other initiatives, implemented actions to improve air quality through investing in green spaces in urban areas and collaboration with local governments and experts to monitor air quality. It also rescinded the Justice40 Initiative, which aimed to support disadvantaged communities overburdened by climate change and pollution. Trump cut programs at the EPA that addressed environmental justice as he attempts to leave the addressing of air pollution to the states.
“There needs to be something done about it, because we’re the ones getting affected,” Sunuwar said. “If change is not made, then the levels of people who are more prone to respiratory illnesses are just gonna continue going [up].”
The state-level air quality bill that Youth Climate Action Now has supported has been sponsored by the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Health and has the backing of several local representatives and senators. The bill has been referred to the state Senate’s Committee on Ways and Means.
It’s unclear when that bill will pass, or whether it will be enough. But for young people like Smith, the time for action is now.
“When all of the fish die, and all of the trees are cut down, we can’t eat money, and that’s really stuck with me for a lot of my climate action work,” she said.
divina cordeiro is a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They are a summer 2025 intern at The Shoestring with support from the Nonprofit Newsroom Internship Program created by The Scripps Howard Fund and the Institute for Nonprofit News.
divina is an independent reporter covering labor and social movements, pursuing a degree in journalism and social thought & political economy at UMass Amherst. They have worked for three years in legislation, policy, and research on education, child welfare, and race equity. Reach them at divina.cordeiro@proton.me or on Instagram and Twitter @divi_cordeiro
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