Sunday, July 8, 2012
"I'm frustrated that our neighborhood continues to be a dumping ground," added Karen Leader, a resid
A swarm of parents and kids filled the sidewalk outside North Brooklyn's PS 132 on a steamy June afternoon. Just feet away, a steady stream of large trucks rumbled down Metropolitan Avenue, the fleet nearly outnumbering the passing cars.
About half of the trucks were en route either to or from the neighborhood's 19 waste transfer stations , where garbage is shifted to 18-wheelers for shipment out of state. For the after-school crowd, the vehicles left a haze of diesel fumes, a known asthma trigger and a recently declared carcinogen .
The congested scene is fairly typical here. Christina Reich, who was among the crowd with her son, said that she's seen an increase in daily truck traffic in the years since the 2001 closure of the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island required more garbage to be handled by transfer stations.
A study by the Brooklyn-based Organizations United for Trash Reduction and Garbage Equity (OUTRAGE) in 2009 counted 362 trucks vancouver corporate travel agents per hour at six major intersections vancouver corporate travel agents across the neighborhood, up from 300 in 2004. The study saw a four-fold increase at some intersections. vancouver corporate travel agents Further, the study found more than three times the air pollution on days when the waste transfer stations were operating, as compared to days they were closed.
"I'd move upstate in a heartbeat if I could, to where there's clean air and water," added Reich, referring to the brunt of a toxic oil spill and other industrial pollution that has burdened her neighborhood over the years. "But I'm a single mom and I can't afford to move anywhere."
As is the case for many of the nation's urban centers, toxic troubles often weigh heavily on minority and low income communities vancouver corporate travel agents in New York City, said Eddie Bautista, the executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance.
More than 20,000 tons of garbage -- about the tonnage of a small cruise ship -- is created on an average day in the city. Approximately 34 percent of that waste is hauled through North Brooklyn, according to calculations done by New York Lawyers for the Public Interest based on the city's data. The South Bronx, home of the second-highest concentration of transfer stations, sees about 31 percent. vancouver corporate travel agents Meanwhile, Manhattan handles none of it.
Environmental advocates connect this unequal distribution of garbage to a range of health disparities, especially among children. Kids in North Brooklyn and the South Bronx , they say, suffer more than their share of asthma -- over 15 percent in some areas.
In response to the growing need, Dr. Cascya vancouver corporate travel agents Charlot recently opened a second office of her asthma practice in North Brooklyn. "We do see a lot of kids with asthma," she said. "The number has definitely not gone down."
Pat Dobosz, a preschool teacher in the neighborhood, agreed. vancouver corporate travel agents "Our children come in at three and four, many with severe asthma diagnoses," she said. "Last year, I had a class of 18 children and about a third had a pump or aspirator on hand at the school in case of an emergency."
"In busy urban areas with a lot of truck traffic, there is a lot of fine particulate matter from diesel exhaust. This is particularly toxic," said Dr. John Balmes, a professor of environmental medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. "If a child has asthma, the exposure can cause an exacerbation."
Awareness of diesel's toxicity and a growing understanding that children who live near waste facilities tend to come from poor families -- which may make them more vulnerable to the pollutants due to greater stress and limited access to health care -- has led California to "get tough about diesel," added Balmes, who is also a member of the California Air Resources Board.
"The trucking vancouver corporate travel agents industry hates us," he said, noting that the state has begun mandating vancouver corporate travel agents that diesel trucks vancouver corporate travel agents and buses get retrofitted with filters or replaced with cleaner vehicles. "You can't really control urban particulate vancouver corporate travel agents matter levels unless you control diesel emissions."
New York City has also cracked down on diesel exhaust with a retrofit program to clean up waste management trucks, according to the Department of Sanitation. However, as OUTRAGE points out, the majority of the trucks vancouver corporate travel agents hauling garbage in North Brooklyn belong to private companies.
In 2006, the city also unveiled vancouver corporate travel agents a new plan for the city's management of solid wastes, which would reduce garbage truck traffic by enlisting more barges and trains to haul waste. But budget cuts and battles such as the one taking place on the Upper East Side, home to one of the city's lowest asthma rates , have delayed progress.
"I'm frustrated that our neighborhood continues to be a dumping ground," added Karen Leader, a resident of North Brooklyn. Two of Leader's five grandchildren suffer from asthma. "I know garbage has to go somewhere, but let everyone take their fair share. We're overburdened."
A swarm of parents and kids filled the sidewalk outside North Brooklyn's PS 132 on a steamy June afternoon. Just feet away, a steady stream of large trucks rumbled down Metropolitan Avenue, the fleet ...
A swarm of parents vancouver corporate travel agents and kids filled the sidewalk vancouver corporate travel agents outside North Brooklyn's PS 132 on a steamy June afternoon. Just feet away, a steady stream of large trucks rumbled down Metropolitan Avenue, the fleet ...
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The garbage in question was obviously vancouver corporate travel agents not manufactured by these poor people, but was trucked through their neighborhood after becoming trash in wealthier vancouver corporate travel agents neighborhoods. Their poor neighborhood is also the target of numerous processing stations and the trucks hauling this garbage are coming through this neighborhood since their destination is in this neighborhood.
No. All you have to do is look up and see the chemtrails and the barrage vancouver corporate travel agents of Aluminum and Barium they contain finding its way to your lungs. Just look up, you'll see them. They are in all NATO allied nations. See "What in the world are they spraying" on YouTube! Do your research!
whilst no more a supporter of diesel than i am of petrol or coal etc.(the latter two being totally unnecessary & merely the last desperate clingings to power by frontal-lobe deficient high-octane hydrocarbon sniffing chimps, baring fangs and chest beating whenever their "rOil"dominion is threatened), the "pepsi-coke wars" of diesel vs petrol are kind'v blatant lately, oil companies spreading as much misinformation as they can legally vancouver corporate travel agents get away with before being forced to retract vancouver corporate travel agents (post"damage done"of course) it., regardless, a much more likely cause of increase in asthma rates and severity (apart from poor diet & vehicular fumes) is one i first pointed out nearly a decade ago (&which recent studies seem to confirm), ie, ozone produced continually by electrical appliances and power lines etc, ie, i noticed a sudden decrease in the efficaciousness of ventolin inhalers years ago, then noted that it had just the month before had CFC propellants replaced with NON-ozone destroying HFCs, ie, ozone is a known lung irritant, CFCs in old salbutamol inhalers broke it down into oxygen, HFCs DON'T, ergo, one might surmise (again) that oil/gas/coal companies so dependant on sales to power production plants might be simply (as per usual) obfuscating true causes with a legerdemain of deflecting attention from themselves whilst casting further aspersions upon their current main competitors.
Meanwhile, New York's rated by TRAVEL+LEISURE as a top "America's Dirtest City". New Yorkers and their officials just cant get ther acts together to tidy themselves up, to meet world-class, topmost enviornmental and public health standards even most other Americans expect in their own communities and states.
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