By Leo Garcia
Today, New York City is in close competition with cities like Los Angeles, Houston, and Pittsburgh. It has been a bitter battle, resulting in thousands of deaths, a great deal of legislation, and millions of dollars spent on research. But the latest results are in, and it appears that we have come out on top.
According to the most recent Environmental Protection Agency data, New York City has the dirtiest air in America. In the whole country, no city population has a greater risk of getting cancer from breathing air than residents of our five boroughs.
This isn’t the greatest honor to bestow upon the city, but thanks to a big cleanup effort in the last several years, we may soon lose the title. New York got the number one spot from the National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment in 1999, which takes a look at all of the health risks that come from air toxins. If the emissions levels remain unchanged, we will still have the worst air in the nation.
Since 1999, Mayor Bloomberg’s work in cutting back on diesel truck and school bus emissions, as well as a successful New York lawsuit against the nation’s biggest energy companies, has probably put us in a runner-up spot. Many cities in California might surpass NYC in atmospheric filth (although nowhere in the U.S. has as much air pollution as Mexico City). But, since the EPA hasn’t conducted any studies since 1999, we have to hold on to the dubious honor until the next round of data comes out.
For a more updated look at the situation, we can turn to the American Lung Association’s “State of the Air” research for 2006. It ranked the NYC metropolitan area ninth in the nation for the most ozone-polluted regions. That’s the seventh year in a row.
Why is our air so dirty? The most obvious reasons are coal-burning power plants to our west and north, and diesel trucks.
History also plays a part. After WWII, General Motors bought up most of America’s railways and destroyed them or left them unused, forcing interstate commerce to shift away from trains and become mostly dependent upon the trucking industry. GM admitted this in a document entitled “The Truth About American Ground Transport,” which was submitted to the U.S. Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate in April 1974. GM was convicted along with Standard Oil and Firestone for this conspiracy in 1949. This conspiracy led to more emissions from cars and trucks, especially in California where these oil and car companies battled against transportation alternatives not powered by petroleum. As a frightening result, all over the country, pollution became concentrated in high-traffic urban areas.
In 1963, a phenomenon called thermal inversion occurred in New York City’s atmosphere. Warm air trapped cooler air below it. Pollutants were trapped in the lower layer and 405 people died, mainly from carbon monoxide poisoning. Inversion struck again in November 1966, with 168 fatalities. The worst incident of thermal inversion happened in London in December 1952, resulting in 4,000 deaths. Thermal inversion spurred the swift passage of the Clean Air Act in 1963.
New York City’s closest neighbors also help make our atmosphere unhealthy. Coal-burning power plants in upstate New York and in New Jersey spew over 1,000 pounds of mercury and 187,677 tons of sulfur dioxide into the skies. Mercury damages the immune system, and causes neurological, reproductive, developmental, respiratory and other health problems. Not only that, but when mercury gets into the atmosphere, it falls as rain onto our soil and into waterways like the Hudson and the Atlantic, making local seafood or vegetables dangerous menu choices. Thanks to all of the pollution drifting into the Atlantic, Maine’s fishing and lobster industry is in deep trouble. Children and pregnant women are advised not to eat too much seafood, as the mercury contained in most varieties dramatically increases risks of birth defects and cancer. In fact, out of the fishes popular in the American diet, Wild Pacific Salmon is considered one of the few safe to eat.
Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide are other byproducts of burning coal, and cause smog, acid rain, and increases respiratory diseases such as asthma. Of course, if you’re looking to get asthma and don’t think the power plants will do it for you, the amount of diesel burned by trucks and buses can help out. These fumes also have been tied to cancer.
Last but not least, don’t forget politics. The Bush administration, good friends with the oil, gas, and nuclear energy industries, has been easy on dirty power plants. By allowing energy industry bigwigs like Enron’s Ken Lay to write our national energy policy, government and business interests gutted the Clean Air Act. The “new source review” provision of the Act required facilities to implement the newest pollution controls when they upgraded their plants. The lapdog EPA exempted years 2002 and 2003 from the new source review rules.
And, let’s not forget the EPA’s recent decision to reopen downtown Manhattan soon after Sept. 11, 2001. They caved in to business pressure and claimed the air was safe, while ignoring data to the contrary. Christie Todd Whitman, former head of the EPA, is being sued by residents, students, and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn for failing to tell New Yorkers that the air was filled with dangerous materials, and for failing to do an adequate cleanup of the site.
What are we doing about the air pollution problem? Mayor Bloomberg has tried to get New York City to clean up its act. In fact, he recently “donated” his Lexus to some New Jersey carjackers to do his own part in reducing automobile emissions. On a more serious note, Bloomberg has joined a nationwide coalition of city mayors who are ignoring the Bush administration’s lax approach to America’s pollution problem.
While Bush rejects international anti-global warming measures, Bloomberg is part of a group of more than 131 U.S. mayors who have decided to meet the requirements set out by the Kyoto Protocol. Bloomberg also signed a landmark pollution bill in 2005 which sharply reduced diesel fumes from school buses, tour buses, and sanitation vehicles. The mayor has been updating our bus fleet with hybrid vehicles to meet the Kyoto provisions by 2012.
New York City already has some pretty impressive stats in terms of our public transportation system and clean vehicles. With the most extensive transportation network in the U.S., New Yorkers use mass transit (or alternative methods) to get to work 60 percent more than most Americans. More than 50 percent of households here don’t own a car (75 percent in Manhattan), and one out of three users of mass transit in the U.S. live in the greater New York area. Not only are we cleaning up our mass transit, but in 2004, New York filed suit with seven other states against the nation’s biggest energy companies, who own or operate 174 fossil fuel burning power plants in 20 states. In 2005, the coal plants in New York agreed to slash their emissions. Nitrogen oxide emissions will be cut by more than 18,000 tons, and sulfur dioxide emissions will decrease by more than 123,000 tons per year.
Jason K. Babbie, senior environmental policy analyst for the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) said “studies show that the sooner you make the cuts, the sooner you see the results. So during the public comment period, we will encourage moving up the compliance timeline for maximum results.”
However, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island received an “F” from the American Lung Association (ALA) for air quality. Manhattan and Brooklyn don’t even have an ALA researcher collecting data. And NYC moved up to 15th in the rankings for short-term particulate pollution (tiny aerosols trapped in the atmosphere that eventually settle to the ground, such as soot from truck exhaust). So we have a long, long way to go. As long as energy is produced using the same old methods in this country, air pollution will continue to be a problem. Clean technologies such as solar and wind power would change our air for the better. A recent Zogby poll found that 75 percent of Americans thinks the U.S. Congress should fund clean energy technology. We all have to take a part to help make the air cleaner.
Kempshall McAndrew is a writer in Brooklyn. Visit his website at www.nycscavenger.com or email him at
kmcandrew@fordhamgrad.com
Robert Brennan contributed to this article.
According to the most recent Environmental Protection Agency data, New York City has the dirtiest air in America. In the whole country, no city population has a greater risk of getting cancer from breathing air than residents of our five boroughs.
This isn’t the greatest honor to bestow upon the city, but thanks to a big cleanup effort in the last several years, we may soon lose the title. New York got the number one spot from the National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment in 1999, which takes a look at all of the health risks that come from air toxins. If the emissions levels remain unchanged, we will still have the worst air in the nation.
Since 1999, Mayor Bloomberg’s work in cutting back on diesel truck and school bus emissions, as well as a successful New York lawsuit against the nation’s biggest energy companies, has probably put us in a runner-up spot. Many cities in California might surpass NYC in atmospheric filth (although nowhere in the U.S. has as much air pollution as Mexico City). But, since the EPA hasn’t conducted any studies since 1999, we have to hold on to the dubious honor until the next round of data comes out.
For a more updated look at the situation, we can turn to the American Lung Association’s “State of the Air” research for 2006. It ranked the NYC metropolitan area ninth in the nation for the most ozone-polluted regions. That’s the seventh year in a row.
Why is our air so dirty? The most obvious reasons are coal-burning power plants to our west and north, and diesel trucks.
History also plays a part. After WWII, General Motors bought up most of America’s railways and destroyed them or left them unused, forcing interstate commerce to shift away from trains and become mostly dependent upon the trucking industry. GM admitted this in a document entitled “The Truth About American Ground Transport,” which was submitted to the U.S. Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate in April 1974. GM was convicted along with Standard Oil and Firestone for this conspiracy in 1949. This conspiracy led to more emissions from cars and trucks, especially in California where these oil and car companies battled against transportation alternatives not powered by petroleum. As a frightening result, all over the country, pollution became concentrated in high-traffic urban areas.
In 1963, a phenomenon called thermal inversion occurred in New York City’s atmosphere. Warm air trapped cooler air below it. Pollutants were trapped in the lower layer and 405 people died, mainly from carbon monoxide poisoning. Inversion struck again in November 1966, with 168 fatalities. The worst incident of thermal inversion happened in London in December 1952, resulting in 4,000 deaths. Thermal inversion spurred the swift passage of the Clean Air Act in 1963.
New York City’s closest neighbors also help make our atmosphere unhealthy. Coal-burning power plants in upstate New York and in New Jersey spew over 1,000 pounds of mercury and 187,677 tons of sulfur dioxide into the skies. Mercury damages the immune system, and causes neurological, reproductive, developmental, respiratory and other health problems. Not only that, but when mercury gets into the atmosphere, it falls as rain onto our soil and into waterways like the Hudson and the Atlantic, making local seafood or vegetables dangerous menu choices. Thanks to all of the pollution drifting into the Atlantic, Maine’s fishing and lobster industry is in deep trouble. Children and pregnant women are advised not to eat too much seafood, as the mercury contained in most varieties dramatically increases risks of birth defects and cancer. In fact, out of the fishes popular in the American diet, Wild Pacific Salmon is considered one of the few safe to eat.
Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide are other byproducts of burning coal, and cause smog, acid rain, and increases respiratory diseases such as asthma. Of course, if you’re looking to get asthma and don’t think the power plants will do it for you, the amount of diesel burned by trucks and buses can help out. These fumes also have been tied to cancer.
Last but not least, don’t forget politics. The Bush administration, good friends with the oil, gas, and nuclear energy industries, has been easy on dirty power plants. By allowing energy industry bigwigs like Enron’s Ken Lay to write our national energy policy, government and business interests gutted the Clean Air Act. The “new source review” provision of the Act required facilities to implement the newest pollution controls when they upgraded their plants. The lapdog EPA exempted years 2002 and 2003 from the new source review rules.
And, let’s not forget the EPA’s recent decision to reopen downtown Manhattan soon after Sept. 11, 2001. They caved in to business pressure and claimed the air was safe, while ignoring data to the contrary. Christie Todd Whitman, former head of the EPA, is being sued by residents, students, and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn for failing to tell New Yorkers that the air was filled with dangerous materials, and for failing to do an adequate cleanup of the site.
What are we doing about the air pollution problem? Mayor Bloomberg has tried to get New York City to clean up its act. In fact, he recently “donated” his Lexus to some New Jersey carjackers to do his own part in reducing automobile emissions. On a more serious note, Bloomberg has joined a nationwide coalition of city mayors who are ignoring the Bush administration’s lax approach to America’s pollution problem.
While Bush rejects international anti-global warming measures, Bloomberg is part of a group of more than 131 U.S. mayors who have decided to meet the requirements set out by the Kyoto Protocol. Bloomberg also signed a landmark pollution bill in 2005 which sharply reduced diesel fumes from school buses, tour buses, and sanitation vehicles. The mayor has been updating our bus fleet with hybrid vehicles to meet the Kyoto provisions by 2012.
New York City already has some pretty impressive stats in terms of our public transportation system and clean vehicles. With the most extensive transportation network in the U.S., New Yorkers use mass transit (or alternative methods) to get to work 60 percent more than most Americans. More than 50 percent of households here don’t own a car (75 percent in Manhattan), and one out of three users of mass transit in the U.S. live in the greater New York area. Not only are we cleaning up our mass transit, but in 2004, New York filed suit with seven other states against the nation’s biggest energy companies, who own or operate 174 fossil fuel burning power plants in 20 states. In 2005, the coal plants in New York agreed to slash their emissions. Nitrogen oxide emissions will be cut by more than 18,000 tons, and sulfur dioxide emissions will decrease by more than 123,000 tons per year.
Jason K. Babbie, senior environmental policy analyst for the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) said “studies show that the sooner you make the cuts, the sooner you see the results. So during the public comment period, we will encourage moving up the compliance timeline for maximum results.”
However, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island received an “F” from the American Lung Association (ALA) for air quality. Manhattan and Brooklyn don’t even have an ALA researcher collecting data. And NYC moved up to 15th in the rankings for short-term particulate pollution (tiny aerosols trapped in the atmosphere that eventually settle to the ground, such as soot from truck exhaust). So we have a long, long way to go. As long as energy is produced using the same old methods in this country, air pollution will continue to be a problem. Clean technologies such as solar and wind power would change our air for the better. A recent Zogby poll found that 75 percent of Americans thinks the U.S. Congress should fund clean energy technology. We all have to take a part to help make the air cleaner.
Kempshall McAndrew is a writer in Brooklyn. Visit his website at www.nycscavenger.com or email him at
kmcandrew@fordhamgrad.com Robert Brennan contributed to this article.
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