ToxicTour02

ToxicTour02

NOTE: This is an abridged version of a story that originally appeared in LA Streetsblog. To read the unabridged version, click here.

Environmental experts, local health advocates, urban designers, and citizens took a bus around Long Beach on November 14 in what the Communities for a Better Environment call their Toxic Tours, an educational experience they have been offering throughout California since 1995.

California is home to more than half of the nation’s dirtiest cities—of which Long Beach and Los Angeles are two of the worst, largely thanks to the fact that the two cities’ port entries are responsible for taking in more than half of the nation’s goods. The Toxic Tour of Long Beach showcases the way in which marginalized communities are effected by the constant back-and-forth between industrial advancement and its corresponding effects on the environment.

The tour began at Century Villages at Cabrillo, a small neighborhood lining the Terminal Island Freeway and directly across from where BNSF Rail wants to build their massive (and controversial) Southern California International Gateway (SCIG) rail yard and just south of Hudson Elementary. A small, heavy contraption known as a P-TRAK was passed around, the number on its display continually bouncing between 23,000 and 35,000.

The P-TRAK was measuring ultrafine particulate matter (PM), the minuscule particles of pollution that are given off from the exhaust pipes of cars and trucks, or carried by the winds from nearby port complexes, auto body shops, power plants, and factories. Somewhere in the range of 3,000 particles per square centimeter is considered safe, in order to prevent respiratory problems. As a diesel truck roared by some 40 feet away, the P-TRAK skyrocketed to 33,800. Approaching a nearby patch of foliage in the Cabrillo community garden, the number then dropped again to 12,400.

The tour largely revolved around one simple point: it is one thing to know, in an abstract sense, the effects of pollution; of the way in which the shipping industry contributes to the creation of incompatible land sources (that is, polluting to such an extent that the land surrounding the pollution source is rendered unusable), but it is another thing entirely to see that pollution quantified, to see what is happening every second, in real time.

More tangible examples were given as the two-hour bus ride examined the largely disproportionate effects of pollution on Long Beach’s less affluent neighborhoods, from those near Union Pacific’s ICTF rail yard to those in Cambodia Town. While passing by the trash-intake facility where Route 47 and the southern tip of the 710 meet—40% of the trash it processes comes from Long Beach alone—tourists were each handed a thin, red cocktail straw, the type one commonly stirs their drink with. They were then asked to plug their noses and use only the straw to breathe through, thereby experiencing the physical stress and disability that is asthma.

The asthma exercise echoed the work of Dr. Andrea Hricko, a preventative medicine professor at USC whose studies have altered the perspection on living near freeways and port complexes in Southern California: not only did children who lived near corridors struck with perpetual traffic experience growth stunted by 20%, children who lived within a quarter of a mile of a freeway had a staggering 89% higher risk of asthma. At Hudson, which sits directly next to the proposed SCIG project, 250 of their 1,100 students already have asthmal. If the SCIG project is built, it will bring an additional 1.5 million truck trips past Hudson every year.

Cambodia Town—stretched along one of Long Beach’s key arterials, Anaheim—is home to the world’s largest concentration of Cambodians and Cambodian-Americans outside of Cambodia itself, and is also home to Long Beach’s highest concentration of auto body shops. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), auto body shops emit pollutants such as hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), particle pollution (dust), and volatile organic compounds (VOC). Chemicals found in paints, cleaners, and paint strippers can react in the air to form ground-level ozone (smog), which has been linked to a number of respiratory effects. Lead, chromium, and cadmium are all heavy metal toxins that form particle pollution during sanding and welding. Breathing particle pollution can cause respiratory problems and other harmful health effects. Diisocyanates, the leading cause of occupational asthma, are hazardous air pollutants emitted during painting operations. Oftentimes in Cambodia Town, houses and parks sit side-by-side with these shops, despite health agencies suggesting a 1,000 feet radius surrounding such businesses.

There was a silver-lining to the Toxic Tour: the fact that community and health organizations are attempting to educate citizens about their cities, the relation between consumerism and environmental affects, and encouraging involvement on a larger level.

For those interested in a Southern California Toxic Tour, contact Gisele Fong, Ph.D., Executive Director of EndOil / Communities for Clean Ports at [email protected] or call 562-424-8200.

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