http://m.laweekly.com/informer/2014/04/30/how-la-freeways-busy-streets-and-big-intersections-make-people-sick
By Jill Stewart, April 30, 2014
More bad news showing that people living next to a freeway or a big,
congested road face super-bad health results: the MacArthur Foundation
says in "How Housing Matters," that premature birth plunged among moms
living near a pollution-belching toll plaza - after the plaza switched
to E-Z pass, ending its stop-and-go traffic.
We reported in
"Black
Lung Lofts" the findings by UCLA and USC that children living within
two blocks of a freeway or congested road like Hollywood Boulevard face
permanent lung damage. The culprit is an invisible ribbon of
particulates and exhaust. Scientists warned L.A. planners to stop zoning
for family housing in these thickly polluted ribbons of land, but the
L.A. City Council responded by repeatedly approving "black lung lofts":
L.A. officials helped finance this family complex, filled with kids, erected nearly atop the 5 freeway.
Even the national media can't quite accept UCLA's and
USC's extensive longitudinal studies, which show that nobody under 18 -
when their young lungs are still developing - should live within 500
feet of a busy, congested roadway.
In today's news about the
MacArthur study, Slate reported:
MacArthur Foundation's "How Housing Matters" initiative, looked at the
effects of an E-ZPass tolling program installed on roads in New Jersey
and Pennsylvania. Such technology results in less pollution because cars
drive right through toll plazas rather than stopping and starting. In
one location within the study area, nitrogen oxide fell by 11 percent
after the implementation of E-ZPass.
Another thing that went down markedly? Premature births. After
analyzing birth records, researchers estimated that among the 30,000
births to mothers living within two kilometers of a toll plaza, 255
premature births and 275 low-birth-weight births were avoided. In dollar
terms, the researchers - writing in the American Economic Journal:
Applied Economics - estimate the savings was between $9.8 and $13
million.
But
Slate's writer misses the point, suggesting that the
MacArthur analysis "raises the question of why we continue to encourage
driving, with free on-street parking, toll-free bridges, disinvestment
in public transportation, and sprawl development."
The most immediate problem, in Los Angeles and elsewhere, is that city
planners are jamming family housing and schools up against busy urban
roadways, where land is cheap.
We didn't know better in the 1950s.
But we do today: That land isn't truly cheap, once you factor in the
$444 million per year that MacArthur's research says would be saved if 1
million fetuses were not exposed to, and hurt by, "air pollution from
congested roads" near their mom's homes.
This tiny one turned out fine.
Another report today, the 15th annual State of the Air
2014 by the American Lung Association, shows dramatic improvements in
Southern California's overall number of "unhealthy days."
American Lung Association officials in California tell
L.A. Weekly there's been a big drop in dangerous soot particles over the years, despite population growth in the Los Angeles metro area.
All very good.
In Los Angeles, family housing along congested roadways near transit
stops is termed "transit-oriented development" - another positive
thing.
But as the
Weekly reported, four years ago:
In 2004, USC's landmark Children's Health Study made waves nationally,
confirming that thousands of Southern California children living in
near high-traffic roadways were contracting higher levels of crippling
asthma and children living in smoggy areas were suffering impaired lung
development.
The study proved long-held beliefs that fine particles such as those
caused by tire rubber and brake metal - so tiny that scientists say
the dust seeps through the smallest cracks and holes and thus is not
blocked by air filtration systems or triple-paned windows - were
burrowing into people's lungs.
Former City Councilman and planning commissioner Mike Woo.
Some city officials, like former councilman Mike Woo, tried to get Los
Angeles planners to take seriously an even more detailed 2007 followup
study by USC, but he didn't get far.
As the
Weekly reported:
The new study showed that alarming numbers of children ages 10 to 18
who live within about a block - 528 feet - of a Southern California
freeway suffer reduced lung development, a deficit likely to persist
through adulthood, and which may increase the risk of respiratory
disease and premature death. (Three weeks ago, a group of USC and
European scientists delivered more bad news: Hardening of the arteries
is twice as common among Angelenos living within a block of an L.A.
freeway.)
Bonnie Holmes-Gen, senior director for policy and advocacy at the
American Lung Association in California, says her group is acutely aware
of the problem.
But the bad health outcomes in children raised in the new housing being
erected next to bustling roadways is being weighed against the popular
statewide push for "sustainable communities."
Sustainable communities is an idea that embraces multi-unit family
housing that's purposely located along congested roadways in dense urban
areas - to encourage the childrens' parents to use mass transit.
Holmes-Gen says:
"Number one, we need to bring down the pollution from all the sources
as we move to zero emission vehicles" and other methods, Holmes-Gen
says. "And we are working to promote a regional plan ... a community
strategy that plans for more transit-oriented housing."
Somehow, she says, the compact growth movement has to be pursued "in a
way that protects health, clearly. ... But there is still a lot of work
to be done to better assess the impacts of current community planning
and make changes to the planning process" so that asthma and other
lifelong illnesses are not increased in kids.
Holmes-Gen says people who are worried about the 2004 Children's Health
Study findings "have their finger on a big issue. I agree it is a huge
concern - any community built within 500 [feet] of a freeway is a big
concern, according to the studies."
Is anyone in Los Angeles City Hall paying attention?
The adjoining map shows the 2010 project, "The L.A. River Corridor"
development, which city officials, and even the federal government,
planned to subsidize. It included a village of family housing on
2,000-plus acres crisscrossed by major freeways.
The L.A. River Corridor housing development faded away
when the state disbanded all of California's redevelopment agencies,
including the LA/CRA.