Health-risk zones tied to traffic: study (Via Streetsblog) - March 27th 2007
New York residents living within two blocks of a busy roadway face big health risks, including asthma attacks and heart disease from tailpipe emissions, according to a new report obtained by the Daily News.
The report, by the nonprofit group Environmental Defense and researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, estimates that 2.4 million people in the five boroughs, more than a quarter of the city's population, live within 500 feet, or two city blocks, of a heavily trafficked street.
"The impact is significantly higher the closer you are to the road," said Andy Darrell of Environmental Defense. "There is a 500-foot risk zone around busy, congested roadways. That is a conservative estimate." (Read on in the comments)
4 comments:
The report is the first to estimate the risks at street level.
From the Horace Harding Expressway and 125th St. in Harlem to Brooklyn's Flatbush Ave. and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, traffic-snarled roadways snake through the city's residential neighborhoods.
"The air is very polluted," said Uma Vanjani, 34, as she dropped her daughter off at Public School 206, adjacent to the Long Island Expressway and across the street from her Rego Park home. "My son has asthma, he's 2 years old."
The hardest-hit blocks are in Manhattan, where 1.2 million people - and 75% of the borough's kids - live within 500 feet of a big roadway, the study found.
According to Peggy Shepard, head of West Harlem Environmental Action, 125th St. has "gotten to the level of Canal St." in terms of shopping strips. "If you're a kid [on those streets], you're down at the tailpipe level."
The authors hope the report, titled "All Choked Up," will influence a proposal expected soon from the Bloomberg administration to improve the city's air quality, which has for years failed to meet federal standards.
According to the report, 400 public schools, 350 health facilities and 170 playgrounds in the city are located within two blocks of a congested road.
Darrell called the city's traffic pollution the "outdoor version of secondhand smoke."
The group is calling for action - including controversial congestion pricing, which charges motorists to enter high-volume zones at peak hours - to reduce pollution emitted by the 1.9 million vehicles traveling in and out of Manhattan every day. It points to gains against pollution in London since fees were instituted there, including a 30% drop in vehicle traffic.
A Bloomberg spokesman said Environmental Defense is a member of the city's sustainability advisory board working on a pollution-reduction plan, but that city officials had not seen the report.
Local elected officials said congestion pricing may be an uphill battle.
"People are not going for joy rides in their cars," said the chairman of the City Council Transportation Committee, John Liu (D-Queens). He said many residents drive "because they don't have real mass transit options."
The report - based on work by Harvard researchers who examined 33 air-pollution studies done around the world - estimates how far from a roadway pollution remains elevated. It documented how particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide (a precursor to smog), and soot from gasoline and diesel decrease as they travel specific distances.
Two health studies Environmental Defense examined found a 50% rise in the risk of asthma for children living within 250 feet of a busy road.
The risk of heart disease jumped 85%. The New York findings are not meant to scare residents but to trigger pollution-control policies, advocates said.
"People should not flee the city," said Jonathan Levy, an associate professor at Harvard. "It's more a function of what type of intervention strategies are plausible to reduce this risk."
A quick fix to assaults on our lungevity from the cartillery? Privatize exhaust!
thanks for posting this. Of course I happen to live right next to a busy road.
Awful photograph... in the sense it speaks to how most cyclists die. Under the wheels of a truck.
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