By Ysabelle Kempe for Smart Cities Dive.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Reflective pavement coating helped cool down one of Los Angeles' hottest neighborhoods over a year-long period, according to a recently published study in Environmental Research Communications, but some researchers argue in favor of increasing shade as a better way to protect people from dangerously high temperatures.

The research on the installation in LA's Pacoima neighborhood is "probably the most comprehensive study on controlled cool pavement" due to the large amount of data and variables considered, said Haider Taha, an atmospheric modeler, president of the research company Altostratus and the study's author.

Over 700,000 square feet of dark asphalt surfaces in Pacoima were covered with solar-reflective pavement coating in the summer of 2022 through a partnership between local nonprofit Climate Resolve and roofing and waterproofing manufacturer GAF, which provided the coating.

Pavement that reflects, rather than absorbs sunlight, has emerged as a tool cities are considering to mitigate theincreasing danger of extreme heat.

GAF funded the recently released peer-reviewed study, although the company had no role in the study's design, data collection, modeling or analysis of the results. The research found that during an extreme heat event, the cool pavement-covered area saw ambient air temperatures that were as much as 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than those in the adjacent neighborhood. On sunny days, ambient air temperatures were reduced by up to 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit. During summer nights, they were reduced by up to 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit. The coating also lowered surface temperatures by up to around 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

What does that mean for the people who live in Pacoima? Melanie Torres, a resident and the Pacoima Beautiful's Cool Community Project organizing manager, said she's felt a difference. Pacoima Beautiful is a local environmental justice organization and helped GAF and Climate Resolve with community engagement for the reflective pavement project.

Torres often eats lunch in one of the parks where the coating is deployed. "I can just sit on the grass near the basketball court and feel just the breeze - and not necessarily a hot breeze," she said. A food vendor who frequents the neighborhood told Torres that "she feels the difference in the breeze more than anything.

Torres said she hasn't heard any complaints about the reflective pavement coating during her community engagement efforts. However, reflective pavement is not immune to criticism.

Some researchers have found that the solar energy reflected off cool pavement can actually increase how hot pedestrians feel. Taha, however, said that his study indicated an "improvement in thermal sensation," noting that every location within Pacoima has "its own dynamics" that could lead to slightly different results. Mean radiant temperature - a measurement of thermal comfort - "goes up and down. It's not always cooler," he said. "The overwhelming effect is the cooling."

But no matter how effective reflective coatings are, they can't beat shade, V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the University of California, Los Angeles' Luskin Center for Innovation and an associate professor of urban planning and geography, said in an email. Shade can cool people by up to 30 degrees Celsius, or 54 degrees Fahrenheit, in hot, dry environments, she said.

"No change in surface will protect the body from heat as effectively as preventing sunlight from hitting the body in the first place," she said. "Shade - blocking the sun with trees, canopies, and tall features like walls and buildings - is by far the most effective way to cool people outdoors."

She noted that reflective pavement doesn't have a large effect on air temperature unless it is deployed widely and, even when that happens, the cooling benefit is moderate. She believes that reflective pavement is an appropriate choice in locations where it would be difficult to replace surfaces that absorb a lot of heat with "something else like vegetation and where the goal of mitigating surface material contributions to heat is the priority as opposed to protecting people's bodies outdoors."

"I think cities should see reflective pavement as one tool among many, if deployed comprehensively, that could mitigate the regional urban heat island," Turner said. "They should see this goal as parsimonious from the public health goal of protecting people's bodies from the sun."


Ysabelle Kempe wrote this article for Smart Cities Dive.


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Low-income Latino communities often bear the brunt of wildfires, so the Hispanic Access Foundation offers a wildfire management toolkit and video series to help families and policymakers prepare.

So far this year, more than 1 million acres have burned in wildland fires in California, more than three times what was lost in 2023.

Hilda Berganza, climate manager for the Hispanic Access Foundation, said Latinos who work outside in agriculture or construction are at high risk from the smoke.

"When there's a wildfire near, they don't stop working, either because they're not allowed to or because they don't know," Berganza explained. "Lung cancer, asthma rates are going up. There are now links to neurological disease and cardiovascular diseases, all from the wildfire smoke and different air pollutants."

Latinos are also less likely than their white neighbors to have home or renter's insurance, so losses hit harder. They are less likely to have a car to make a quick escape, and may not be able to afford a hotel in case of an evacuation.

Berganza argued agencies should partner with trusted local community groups and Spanish-language radio stations to make sure the language barrier does not delay crucial information.

"The Red Cross has an application on the phones where they're sending out alerts," Berganza observed. "While that is a good thing to use technology, a lot of Latinos actually don't have access to internet and or don't have smartphones because they're more expensive."

The toolkit's authors encouraged lawmakers to fully fund programs to allow low-income communities to reduce wildfire risk and programs to help families recover after a natural disaster.

By Grace Hussain for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for Georgia News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

In April 2019, Chris Eubanks, head of the animal rights group Apex Advocacy, chanted along with a group of other activists in front of the city government building in Lithonia, Georgia. The local activists had been campaigning to shut down Bradford’s Livestock — a backyard slaughterhouse operated in the center of their small, predominantly Black community — since 2014. Eubanks joined in 2021, lending Apex’s resources and giving the campaign a highly needed energy boost. Right down the street from the public school and around the block from a church, the facility killed roughly 100 animals every month.

Though local to the area, Eubanks had been completely unaware of the campaign. “I’ve been doing this for years,” he tells Sentient. Yet the presence of the backyard slaughterhouse in the small Atlanta suburb caught even Eubanks by surprise. “I didn’t realize that there was a slaughterhouse five minutes from where I live[d].”

Late last year, the coalition finally accomplished their goal, thanks in part to Apex Advocacy. For Eubanks, his prior lack of awareness that there was a slaughterhouse in his backyard is indicative of a larger issue within the animal rights movement: not paying close enough attention to Black and Brown communities, and the issues they face.

By the time Eubanks entered the picture, community activists like Jan Costello had already been campaigning for years. In addition to her activism, Costello was working with the community development corporation at the time, encouraging new businesses to move to the area. Despite activists’ dedication, they struggled to overcome the numerous roadblocks they faced, largely due to a lack of time and resources to dedicate toward their campaign — the two things Apex Advocacy was poised to provide.

Grassroots Activists Working in Tandem With Community Members

In the years before Eubanks got involved, local activists attended council meetings, maintained an email list of more than 1,000 community members, kept meticulous records of exactly what the facility was doing and spoke to neighbors about the slaughterhouse operating in their backyards, says Costello. Their tactics relied heavily on the fact that the slaughterhouse was violating zoning laws by being located in a residential neighborhood.

Their efforts helped get the facility slapped with a cease and desist order from the county’s Department of Planning in 2019, but because the facility had a license from the state’s Department of Agriculture, it continued to operate, killing thousands more animals.

Problematic Optics

When Eubanks saw coverage of the situation on a local news channel, he knew he had to help. The news segment made it look like locals were “trying to take advantage of a small, Black business owner,” says Eubanks, and there was much more going on. “The news coverage didn’t help as much as the advocates in the community thought it would.”

What it did do was grab Eubanks’ attention, leading him to reach out to Costello.

“He brought in so much energy and advocacy at a point when we were just basically doing the same old thing,” Costello says. By leveraging Apex Advocacy’s network, the activists were able to flood officials’ emails with thousands of messages. “Although we got support from the outside, the foundation was community-based,” says Eubanks.

Focusing on Zoning Violations, Not Animal Rights

Despite most of the core group of advocates being animal rights activists, “we were just focusing on the zoning aspect of the law,” says Costello. “We were very careful not to turn this into an argument about the slaughtering of animals for consumption,” she continues, “because that wasn’t the law. [Bradford] could do that business, but just not there in the neighborhood.”

The major roadblock to their success came via the very legal system they relied upon to shutter the slaughterhouse due to zoning violations. Part of the problem was that the state issued the facility a license to operate as a custom exempt processing facility — meaning they couldn’t sell meat. “The slaughterhouse owner was able to use the loophole that he wasn’t selling meat, but selling the service of killing animals,” says Eubanks.

As critics pointed out, the facility was in fact offering entire animals for sale via Facebook. While the license didn’t remedy the local zoning problem, it did lend some legitimacy to the slaughterhouse’s operations — a fact the facility took full advantage of.

In response to the 2019 cease and desist order from the county, Bradford’s Livestock sued in 2020, arguing they had the right to use the land the way they saw fit. The legal team did their best to drag the case out as long as possible by repeatedly filing for extensions — an effort made easier by COVID. Dekalb county filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in June 2020.

While the case was decided, the slaughterhouse continued to operate, killing thousands more animals, according to the activists’ records. “When you’re trying to advocate for something that’s right, and it takes that long to get action, you create and breed cynicism in your group of supporters,” says Costello.

Activists Believe Race Drew the Closure Out

Eubanks suspects his joining the campaign leant it additional legitimacy within the community. “I think it was an opportunity to show that this isn’t a group of white people attacking a Black business, because that was the narrative beforehand,” he says.

Still, one factor that Eubanks believes heavily influenced the lack of urgency to get the slaughterhouse closed was race. Lithonia is “a small, Black community,” says Eubanks. “We really do believe that if this had been another community, a more affluent community, it would have definitely been shut down,” he says. “If this had been a more powerful community this would have been an issue that was shut down immediately.”

The lack of attention paid to Black and Brown communities has been an issue for social movements for generations. Environmental groups often ignore Indigenous communities, feminists often ignore Black women and animal rights advocates often overlook slaughterhouses in majority-Black neighborhoods.

“The animal rights community needs to make sure that we are not operating in a bubble and that we are pulling in the people,” Eubanks says. In recent years, the animal rights movement has shifted toward paying more attention to inclusion, with many organizations being more intentional about issues of equity and justice in how they allocate their resources.

Meanwhile, recent research suggests that animal-centered protests may actually backfire, leading some activists to shift towards putting the emphasis on arguments other than animal rights — such as zoning laws. 

Part of the evolving movement is also about increasing buy-in from Black and Brown communities. Apex recently launched a movement guide on why food systems issues are specifically important to marginalized racial groups, and if animal rights groups want to be more effective, they’d be wise to take note.


Grace Hussain wrote this article for Sentient.


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The Environmental Protection Agency has banned the pesticide dacthal, frequently used on farms in West Virginia and other states.

Mounting evidence shows the chemical affects the thyroid system of pregnant women, and is linked to babies born with low birth weight, bone problems, and reduced IQ.

The EPA first issued a warning about the pesticide earlier this year, and temporarily suspended its use over the summer. The agency became concerned about Dacthal, also known as DCPA, around 2013.

The EPA instructed the company that produces it to study its impact on human health.

Bill Jordan volunteers with the Environmental Protection Network, and is former deputy director of the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs.

"The action EPA took, with regard to DCPA, is really bold and really aggressive," said Jordan. "This is the first time in nearly 40 years that EPA has issued an emergency suspension order."

Dacthal is commonly used to kill weeds on crops like cabbage, onions, broccoli, and brussels sprouts. Farmworkers, particularly those who are pregnant, are at high risk.

First registered for use as a pesticide in 1958, people also spray Dacthal on parks, athletic fields, and other public spaces.

Jordan said he expects Dacthal to be out of the nation's food system by the end of next year, but said regulators have their work cut out for them when it comes to investigating pesticide safety.

"They've got a huge amount of work to do, to re-examine - as the law requires - all registered pesticides within a 15 year period," said Jordan. "And every year, Congress is cutting back on the resources that EPA has to do that."

Research shows widespread pesticide use is linked to the rise in cancer rates, and the decline in soil health and biodiversity.

Dacthal is just one active ingredient among thousands, in more than 17,000 pesticide products in the U.S. according to the group Beyond Pesticides.





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