Posted on 10/29/2006 10:30:53 PM PST by neverdem
In New York City, air pollution levels have typically been monitored by inanimate objects, at more than a dozen locations around town. But in the South Bronx, from 2002 to 2005, air pollution monitors went mobile. They went to the playground, to the gritty sidewalks, even to the movies.
A group of schoolchildren carried the monitors everywhere they went. The instruments, attached to the backpacks of children with asthma, allowed researchers at New York University to measure the pollution the children were exposed to, morning to night.
The South Bronx is home to miles of expressways, more than a dozen waste-transfer stations, a sewage-treatment plant and truck traffic from some of the busiest wholesale produce, meat and fish markets in the world.
It is also home to some of the highest asthma hospitalization rates for children in the city.
The N.Y.U. study found that the students were exposed to high levels of air pollutants in their neighborhoods and that children in the South Bronx were twice as likely to attend a school near a highway as were children in other parts of the city.
The findings paint a bleak picture of the air quality in one of the poorest sections of the city and have focused renewed attention from community groups and elected officials on curbing pollution from truck exhaust.
“The levels did surprise me,” said José E. Serrano, the Bronx representative whose district includes the South Bronx. “They are really telling us that this is a very serious problem.”
Mr. Serrano, who is a Democrat and who helped secure federal money for the study, and the researchers held a news conference this month about the findings.
Ten children from each of four public schools in the South Bronx — P.S. 154, M.S. 302, M.S. 201 and Community School...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It's not just truck exhaust. Britain, I think, did a study on this years ago. Kids who live near highways suffer a higher rate of asthma. Period.
Not to mention kids who are in cars and in traffic daily.
The North River Sewage Treatment Plant is located west of the West Side Highway between 137th Street to 145th Street. It treats North River treats about 125 million gallons of sewage every day.
Since it went into full scale operation in 1991, there have been persistent complaints about athsma in Harlem and the South Bronx, which are both down-wind from this plant. But the NYC DEP and other environmental groups, which would normally be the first to look at a major air polluter like North River to explain this cluster of athsma, look the other way. They are more interested in the fact that North River prevents the discharge of sewage into the Hudson River. So they beat their brains out looking for other explainations for these athsma cases, such as roach droppings or highway traffic, and studiously ignore the obvious.
The health of the Hudson River has been determined to be more important than the health of the children of Harlem and the South Bronx. The fix is in. There is no way the NYC DEP will ever solve this "mystery", because they will never allow themselves to look in the right place.
How does one spell "agenda"? M-o-n-e-y.
I'm not so sure that being *in* cars contributes to asthma.
Now that I'm an adult sufferer of it, it's very apparent that mine didn't develop for the 50+ years I drove around in cars, but happened 3 weeks after I moved to a poorer environment and had to start walking everywhere, without a car. I am in car and truck exhaust every time I go anywhere and am sick as a dog all the time.
What's wrong with treatment or placement?
Well, thank goodness they banned indoor smoking in NYC, now everyone will be a lot safer!!! /s
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