Nearly a decade on, the Flint water crisis still looms large in the minds of environmental toxin researchers. It was — and continues to be — evidence that not all communities in the United States are equally affected by environmental pollutants.

“It’s true that they’re sort of ubiquitous, but they aren’t uniformly distributed. And I think that’s part of what’s so disturbing,” said Andrea Branch, a professor of medicine at Mount Sinai’s School of Medicine in New York.

Now, research from Branch’s team suggests a link between Black Americans’ higher exposure to environmental toxins and advanced liver scarring, which can lead to disease and cancer. The work was presented at The Liver Meeting earlier this month.