A collaboration between researchers and residents of a New Jersey city provided evidence that heavy truck traffic affected a neighborhood’s air quality and compromised health.

For decades, heavy diesel trucks taking cargo from container ships at the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal used a residential street in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to avoid the tolls between Exits 13 and 13A on the New Jersey Turnpike. The trucks also routinely idled on the street awaiting their next load.

Their route along the narrow, two-lane First Street took them past many homes, two schools, a childcare center, and an athletic field, prompting concern that the community’s rising rates of asthma were connected to the diesel exhaust.

In 2014, residents contacted Robert Laumbach, director of community outreach for Rutgers Center for Environmental Exposures and Disease and the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute for help.

The data “gave us irrefutable proof that the trucks were making a negative impact on our air quality. They were the catalyst for change.”

Laumbach enlisted residents as “citizen-researchers” to work with his team and count trucks and measure particulate matter air pollutants between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. on a typical weekday morning when children walked to school. Their goal was to create a profile of the air pollution levels on First Street.

“We tracked 60 trucks an hour at one intersection and 120 trucks per hour at a second intersection,” Laumbach says. “These trucks were passing children walking on the street at a rate of one truck per minute. We also saw a spike in black carbon with each passing truck, which indicates diesel exhaust pollution.”

Diesel exhaust is a major component of particulate matter air pollution, which has been linked to asthma, lung diseases, and heart disease. Researchers have also studied the role of diesel exhaust in causing an increased risk of death from heart attacks and stroke, premature birth, and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Additionally, its toxic gases and vapors are linked to cancer and can affect cognition and learning.

“The effects of diesel exhaust on asthma are particularly troubling in Elizabeth, where there is concern about high rates of asthma, especially among children,” Laumbach says.

After Laumbach and community leaders presented the collected data to local officials, the City of Elizabeth’s council passed an ordinance in 2017 to restrict traffic on First Street to vehicles under four tons, essentially banning tractor-trailers.

Four years after the first truck count, Laumbach and his researchers partnered again with residents for a post-ordinance assessment on truck count and diesel emissions. They found an 86 percent reduction in truck traffic and an 80 percent reduction in black carbon and ultrafine particle counts.

“The emissions and smog polluting the air was environmental injustice, making our residential area where children walk and play dangerous to their health,” says James Carey, director of social services of Elizabethport Presbyterian Center on First Street, who assisted with the research. “When we went to the hearings, their statistics gave us irrefutable proof that the trucks were making a negative impact on our air quality. They were the catalyst for change.”

The researchers presented their findings at the Public Health and Our Ports: The Road to Clean Air conference in Newark.

Source: Rutgers University

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People of color breathe more air pollution

People of color are exposed to more pollution from cars, trucks, and power plants than whites, a new 10-year study shows.

Researchers estimated exposure to outdoor concentrations of a transportation-related pollutant—nitrogen dioxide (NO₂)— in both 2000 and 2010, based on neighborhoods where people live and found that disparities in NO₂ exposure were larger by race and ethnicity than by income, age, or education. Further, that relative inequality persisted across the decade.

While absolute differences in exposure to the air pollutant dropped noticeably during that time period for all populations, the relative difference—or the percent difference between pollution levels to which white people and people of color were exposed—narrowed only a little.

For the study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers developed a model combining satellite and regulatory measurements with land use data to predict pollution at a neighborhood level throughout the United States.

The positive news is that across the US, average exposure to NO₂ for all races and income levels dropped from 2000 to 2010. Measured in parts per billion (ppb), estimated average annual NO2 exposure decreased from 17.6 to 10.7 ppb for nonwhite populations, and from 12.6 to 7.8 ppb for white populations.

Yet people of color were, on average, consistently exposed to more air pollution than their white non-Hispanic counterparts during the decade.

“At any income level…there’s a persistent gap by race, which is completely indefensible.”

Considering relative differences, nonwhites experienced 40 percent higher exposures than whites in 2000; in 2010, that gap shrunk only slightly, to 37 percent. Furthermore, in 2000, concentrations of NO₂ in neighborhoods with the highest proportion of nonwhite residents were 2.5 times higher than in neighborhoods with the lowest proportion of nonwhite residents. In 2010, that value increased slightly, to 2.7 times higher.

If people of color had breathed the lower NO₂ levels experienced by whites in 2010, it would have prevented an estimated 5,000 premature deaths from heart disease among the nonwhite group, researchers say.

“The finding that shocks us is that when it comes to how much NO₂ a person breathes, it’s still race that matters,” says senior author Julian Marshall, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington.

“At any income level—low to medium to high—there’s a persistent gap by race, which is completely indefensible. It says a lot about how segregated neighborhoods still are and how things are segregated.”

NO₂ comes from sources such as vehicle exhaust, power plants, and off-road equipment and is one of six important “criteria air pollutants” monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency. It has been linked to asthma symptoms, increased susceptibility to respiratory problems and heart disease.

The research team, which began their work at the University of Minnesota, previously analyzed NO₂ concentrations for the year 2006 by race, income, and other demographic factors identified in the US Census.

The air pollution model, which combines existing EPA air quality monitoring and satellite data with detailed land use information, allows them to accurately predict pollution concentrations across the country at the US Census block level—information previously unavailable at that scale.

For the study, researchers wanted to examine how much progress was made in addressing inequalities in NO₂ exposure over a decade. They compared environmental injustice metrics in 2000 and 2010 on a national basis and by region, state, county, and urban areas.

Does racial bias show up in the crosswalk?

On the whole, policies to reduce NO₂ air pollution are working. But the finding that exposure differences are larger by race and ethnicity than by income, age, or education was as equally true in 2010 as in 2000.

“Everyone benefited from clean air regulations and less pollution; that’s the good news,” says lead author and civil and environmental engineering doctoral student Lara Clark. “But the fact that there is a pervasive gap in exposure to NO₂ by race—and that the relative gap was more or less preserved over a decade—is the bad news.”

The study didn’t explore the underlying reasons for that gap, but its findings are consistent with previous research. Both racial minorities and low-income households are disproportionately likely to live near a major road where transportation-related pollution is typically highest. US cities, in general, also tend to be more segregated by race and ethnicity than by income.

The narrowing of the racial gap in NO₂ exposures was driven more by improving air quality than by demographic changes over the 10-year period. “That suggests that air pollution is coming down faster than cities are becoming less segregated,” Marshall says.

Dylan B. Millet of the University of Minnesota is coauthor of the study. The National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency funded the work.

Source: University of Washington

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