The people in Bayview-Hunters Point have known it all
along, because they see it every day:
the air you breathe can make you
sick. Dr. Ahimsa Sumchai has pressed the point repeatedly, in the pages of
the
Bayview and elsewhere:
An above
average incidence of childhood asthma has been documented in BVHP ranging
from 17 to 25 percent, and some research evidence exists to support a high
incidence of childhood cancers linked to toxic exposure like lymphoma and
leukemia.
In
addition to the shipyard, the PG&E Hunters Point Power Plant is a
documented source of airborne pollutants as is the Southeast Sewerage
Treatment Plant and numerous private industrial plants in the region.
Recently, the Third Street Light Rail has emerged as a source of
airborne particulates that can damage heart and lung tissue and provoke
heart and asthma attacks.
San
Francisco is one of the
greenest cities in the country. But it has a little patch of noxious
weeds tucked away in the southeast corner that just won’t go away, no
matter how loudly the residents complain. In fact, nobody pays much
attention to what they say.
Maybe, just maybe, they haven’t been howling up the
right tree.
Few observers will deny that environmental problems
are making people in Bayview-Hunters Point sick. And their plight creates
poignant human-interest stories for the local papers. But in the
hard-headed world of modern government, where the bottom line counts big,
that argument apparently doesn’t add up to much. A country where,
according to the
U.S. Census, 45 million people lack health insurance, obviously
doesn’t place too much importance on keeping its population from getting
sick.
An article in the May-June issue of Harvard Magazine
called
“Clearing the Air,” suggests another approach that might be more
successful. The article sets the scene:
In the early 1990s, epidemiological research at
the [Harvard School of Public Health] began to suggest that fine particles
from combustion sources such as power plants and vehicles (known as PM2.5,
or particles that are 2.5 microns or smaller in diameter) are more
dangerous to human health than large particles or typical outdoor levels
of pollutant gases such as ozone, sulfur dioxide, and carbon monoxide.
Researchers comparing air quality in six cities across the United States
were stunned when their data showed that people living in cities with the
dirtiest air died on average two years earlier than residents of cities
with the cleanest air. The difference in death rates was linked to
elevated levels of fine-particle pollution.
People are dying from power-plant and vehicle
pollution.
In 1993 the researchers published their findings in
the New England Journal of Medicine. The article was quoted everywhere.
And a year later the American Lung Association sued the Environmental
Protection Agency for failing to revise its air quality standards in light
of new research, as the law requires it to do.
The American Lung Association won, and the EPA re-set
its standards.
And then… let’s let author Jonathan Shaw describe
what happened next:
The EPA is required to set air-quality standards
in the interests of human health without regard for the cost. But
separately, the agency is also required to produce a cost-benefit analysis
of its regulations. Economists who calculate costs and benefits value a
prevented asthma attack at hundreds of dollars, but a life lost at
millions of dollars. [Emphasis added.] When the Six Cities and ACS
studies linked fine particles to increased death rates, [researcher
Douglas] Dockery says, “The cost-benefit analysis flipped to show a huge
benefit from controlling particle emissions.” The EPA issued a new
standard in 1997. “Suddenly, we were talking about putting real controls
on power plants that would have significant monetary costs,” says Dockery.
Suddenly the stakes were raised. And the industries
that would have to foot the fill protested.
In the same mode that tries to make evolution just
one theory among many and tries to discredit the evidence for global
warming, the industries tried to challenge the science behind the
pollution study. Dockery continues:
Industry mobilized to attack the scientific
basis for the standards….Their strategy was to identify “key studies” used
as the basis for the proposed standards. If they could discredit those
studies, the scientific basis for the standards would be undermined.
The Harvard scientists fought back. They asked the
Health Effects Institute to re-do the study and decide whether it was
accurate. In 2000 the HEI, “a public-private partnership set up by the
EPA and industry in 1980 to resolve disputes of this kind,” announced its
support for the original findings.
In March 2005 the Bush administration failed to get
its proposed Clean Skies Act out of committee. Without its watered-down
provisions, the purity of our air is still under the protection of the
1990 Clean Air Act, which takes its mission to
protect and enhance the quality of the Nation's air resources so as to promote the public health and welfare and the productive capacity of its population.
But according to the Harvard article, despite the promises found in the Clean Air Act, the revised standard of 1997 has never been enforced. And because it has not, the “productive capacity” of the United States is being damaged, as its citizens meet early deaths in places like Bayview-Hunters Point.
The NAACP has successfully sued school districts for providing inferior education to people of color. Surely, it could find a way to sue the EPA for shortening their lives.
