Environmental metals exposures and COVID-19 severity: A case study in New Mexico, USA

Keywords: COVID-19, environmental exposure, metals, racism, resource extraction, mining, fracking
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 31

Abstract

Like much of the American West, New Mexico is rich in mineral resources and home to an expansive extractive industry. Environmental heavy metals and other mineralogical byproducts of resource extraction are often co-located with human populations. In New Mexico, these populations are largely rural and nonwhite. The first reported COVID-19 case in New Mexico occurred on March 11, 2020. Today, there are more than 5,000 confirmed COVID-related deaths in the state. Using mortality as a proxy for case severity, we explore the relationship between environmental metals exposure and COVID-related deaths. The analysis considers multiple sociodemographic covariates relating to total population, age, income, poverty, unemployment, disability, education, household composition, and language. However, the scope of the present study is to move beyond a social healthcare perspective and engage with the complexity of multiple environmental exposures. As such, after correcting for sociodemographic covariates our models suggest that proximity to legacy hard rock mines and fracking wells, presence of metals in soil, sediment, and water, and geophysical exposure to fugitive dusts can reliably predict 85% to 94% of COVID-related deaths in the state. Moreover, we see that rural and Native populations have suffered a disproportionate burden of the pandemic. We will address the statistical modeling efforts required to adjust for geographic locations with no mortality or confirmed cases, and will explore the long history of resource extraction, environmental injustice, and environmental racism in New Mexico, paying specific attention to the type of structural racism that defines the landscape of the American West.