Air Quality
On Eve of Council Vote, First-Ever Monitoring Finds PM Levels Already Too High in Joppa
Downwinders PM Committee did the unthinkable this last week and monitored ambient air quality in the tiny Joppa community, where two proposed new concrete batch plants coming up for a Dallas City Council vote on Wednesday want to set-up shop.
This was unthinkable because despite months of controversy over the siting of yet more concrete batch plants in a predominantly-minority neighborhood already jammed with heavy industry nobody had thought of doing it before our team of SWAT Citizen Scientists showed-up.
Not the batch plant operators seeking approval of their permit requests.
Not the staff of the City of Dallas, who are recommending approval of those requests.
No…it was our all-volunteer “Soot Sisters” armed with their newly acquired fully-calibrated portable PM monitors who had the audacity to actually see what levels of pollution Joppa residents were breathing now – before the addition of any new sources of bad air.
After we got our results, we kind of understand why air monitoring was unthinkable to those other folks: because the air in Joppa is often unbreathable.
Since our monitors arrived late to the scene in Joppa, we’ve only been able to get snapshots of air quality before the scheduled council vote in the 28th. Two hours on this day, another two on that day. The sample is very small, but it’s also very disturbing.
Joppa is already surrounded on three sides by heavy industry
First, they found significantly higher levels of ambient PM pollution in Joppa than was recorded by the only official EPA PM monitor in Dallas, located near Stemmons Freeway during the same time period, and higher than the levels the Committee found at various DART bus stops and routes they’ve also been monitoring as part of the new Green Streets bus electrification campaign
Levels in Joppa were as much as 30 to 50 % higher than the EPA monitor – even on a Sunday. Residents there are already breathing more PM pollution than residents in other parts of the city.
Secondly, if the Committee’s results were extrapolated over the course of a full year, these daily levels would add up to a violation of the EPA’s annual PM pollution standard. That is, if our findings are indicative of daily exposure, Joppa could already be exceeding the EPA standard and any additional PM pollution would only make matters worse.
You can read the entire short report on Joppa, Round one, prepared by Dr. Tate Barrett, our PM Science Director here: Joppa Report #1
Shannon Gribble and Cresanda Allen on a monitoring run in Joppa
Because there’s been no monitoring in Joppa until now, it’s possible the area has been in routine “non-attainment”of the EPA PM standard. It takes three years of annual averages above the standard, recorded at an officially designated EPA monitor, to classify an area as non-attainment and qualify for new federal new controls. However, Dallas’ only official EPA PM monitor is nine miles north of Joppa near Stemmons Freeway and Mockingbird.
Study after study has shown how People of Color generally, and African-Americans specifically, are disproportionately exposed to, and harmed by, PM pollution. While Dallas’ one and only EPA-designated PM monitor could be accurately recording PM levels north of the Trinity River, it’s not reflecting the reality of residents in Joppa, West Dallas, Cadillac Heights, or Cedar Crest.
There’s been a lot of discussion recently concerning inequity of resources in Dallas. It’s not news that this inequity extends even to the very air residents breathe and how the current regulatory system ignores those differences. But our Joppa monitoring casts a new spotlight on that fact. No equal protection is possible unless you have equal access to official monitors which determine enforcement of the laws.
That’s why when we turned our first results over to District 7 Council Member Kevin Felder on Friday, we recommended the City either consider moving Dallas’s sole EPA-designated PM monitor to Joppa, or pay for a second EPA-designated PM monitor to be located in Joppa, to begin recording data as soon as possible to determine if the area is indeed violating the EPA PM standard year-round.
These Joppa results also become another compelling example of why DFW needs its own local air quality monitoring network. It’s ridiculous that there’s only one PM monitor for all of Dallas County’s 2. 5 million residents stretched out over 900 square miles. PM levels as low as 5 ppb
Downwinders has joined with local universities and governments in pursuing the establishment of a local air quality monitoring network that could place inexpensive year-round PM monitors throughout Dallas and North Texas with real time information accessible to the public by a simple phone app. Dallas County Commissioner Theresa Daniels is expected to sponsor a resolution for the creation of such a network at the Commissioners Court in the coming weeks.
Dallas should follow. The City’s Office of Environmental Quality approves or disapproves of zoning changes like the ones being sought by the batch plants in Joppa without knowing what environmental burdens residents are already carrying. Even though they have the ability and capacity to do real time monitoring of neighborhoods where new industry wants to expand or locate, the OEQ never does. Nor does it have a single toxicologist or public health expert on its staff who’d want to see that kind of information before passing judgement on a zoning request. Instead it’s headed up by a lawyer and is mostly concerned about not making any definitive statements about local environmental health problems or environmental justice issues at all. With all the house-cleaning at Dallas City Hall since a new city manager took control, the OEQ now looks to be one of the last repositories for Business As Usual thinking. That must change.
Downwinders PM Committee was back out in Joppa this last weekend for more rounds of air monitoring. Those results will be dowloaded and analyzed by Dr. Barrett and presented to the City Council on Wednesday by PM Committee member Misti O’Quinn. Stay tuned.
Two of these “Soot Trackers” Are On Their Way to Downwinders…and You
Thanks to a grant from the Simmons Sisters Foundation, Downwinders is proud to announce we’ve purchased our first two portable Particulate Matter sensors for our No Safe Level Campaign against PM pollution.
They’ll be the only PM monitors of their kind in the region, and their arrival will inaugurate a new era in DFW citizen-empowered science.
The sensors are made by AEROQUAL, a New Zealand company, and you can’t find them on Amazon. They measure both PM 10 and PM 2.5 (microns) at the same time. Their sensor heads use laser and optical sensors to measure light scattered from particles passing through the laser beam. A built-in fan ensures a stable and precise flow of sample air to the sensor. They also compensate for humidity by way of an on-board humidity sensor.
Each comes with a long-life Lithium battery which allows for 24 hours of remote operation between charges. Recharging takes just 3 hours. The monitor can be plugged-in and left to run indefinitely. Besides displaying levels in real time, measurements can be stored on the device and downloaded later to a computer via the USB cable and bundled software.
They come factory-calibrated to European Union standards and are capable of being re-calibrated for side-by-side use with an EPA monitors, or any other local baseline. 
These monitors have two parts – a base and a a detachable sensor head – making them even more useful. In the future Downwinders can buy other kinds of sensors from AEROQUAL to plug into the base and test for gaseous pollutants like Ozone, or Sulfur Dioxide. In all, 28 other sensors are available.
Before now you either had to buy $16,000 PM sensors that were fully calibrated or settle for much less reliable equipment. But the technology is moving so quickly and demand is scaling up so fast that a middle-income niche market for scientifically-rigorous instruments is beginning to provide opportunities to non-profit groups like Downwinders, and the public in general.
Along with these portable sensors, we’re also ordering stationary PM monitors as part of the regional network being established by UTD and others.
As a result of this influx of technology, Downwinders is creating a PM Project Science Director position to maintain the integrity of our research. The Science Director will be in charge of these monitors, training citizens on how to operate them, and overseeing their use in the field.
Our plans are to begin using the sensors in neighborhoods and suspected hot spots as soon as possible to help us fill out our PM Map of DFW. We want to be able to loan them out to those citizens who’ve gone through the training and have a problem they want to investigate. They’ll also be available for use during accidents, explosions, and fires.
We’re not letting state and EPA rollbacks stop us. We’re creating our own regional air monitoring network. Are you interested in joining? Stand by. We’re just getting started.
New Study Links PM Pollution to Depression and Suicide
Reviewing a decade of death statistics revealed a 16% increase in mortality risk on the first day of haze and a 27% increase on the second day compared to better air days.
If the haze was accompanied by high ozone pollution, the risk of death increased by 79%.
As shocking as this sounds, it aligns with other recent studies that have found a connection between short-term increases in air pollution and aberrant mental behavior. Significantly higher rates of Autism, Parkinson’s, ADHD and juvenile delinquency have all been linked to PM pollution, most at ambient levels assumed by regulators to be “safe.”
PM pollution has even been linked to low stock market performance in more than one study.
Researchers believe air pollution affects a person’s emotional state, making them more likely to feel depressed. They urge mental health professionals to be aware that bad air days are triggers for acute episodes.
PM pollution is so microscopically tiny it not only goes deep into your lungs, it actually can pass through your lung lining directly into your blood stream. Think about the places where your body uses a lot of blood – your heart and your brain. We’ve known PM causes heart attacks and strikes for some time. But research linking it to a wide variety of brain disorders is only fairly recent.
Authored by faculty at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, this most recent study examined more than 284,000 deaths, including those among people with mental and behavioral disorders including depression, bipolar, schizophrenia and dementia. It defined “haze days” as those on which pollutants gather in the air and cut visibility, usually dry days with low winds. In the study period from 2007 to 2014, there were 111 haze days when particle pollution was on average twice as high.
These findings are compatible with a recent Belgian study, which reported “[Short-term] increases in outdoor air pollutants such as particles or ozone can trigger suicide, particularly during warm periods, even at concentrations below the European thresholds.”
Unfortunately, we may have a local way to further prove this hypothesis. On October 19th of last year there was a still unexplained catastrophic air event that caused PM levels to go much more than twice a high as “normal,” accompanied by an increase in ozone pollution so severe it bumped the entire regional average by a part per billion. Could an examination of death certificates in Ellis, Dallas, Tarrant and Denton Counties reveal if this really “bad air day” caused a spike in North Texas suicides?
Downwinders at Risk’s “No Safe Level” PM Pollution Campaign Committee has scheduled its next meeting for Saturday March 10th at the Meadows Center at 2900 Live Oak.
How Do You Make Progress in the Trump Era? Two Words: Particulate Matter
Public Health
Economic Development
Transportation
Housing
Childhood Development and Education
Environmental Justice
Crime
In the same way lead exposure was linked to lower IQ in children and anti-social behavior like crime, PM Pollution is now being linked to learning disabilities and juvenile delinquency.
And in the same way public health mandated the removal of lead from gasoline and paint, many public policy measures are needed to help eliminate PM pollution exposure.
Many if not most of these are local in nature. They don’t need EPA or TCEQ approval.
__________
In California, buffer zones between new homes and freeways are under consideration because so many 
studies have shown children living next to freeways suffer significantly higher rates of Autism and learning disabilities.
Some local governments, school districts, and public transit agencies, including DART are beginning to electrify their bus fleets to reduce exposure to PM pollution and save money. “No idling zones” around schools and are being enlarged.
In DFW, Downwinders is sponsoring a broad public health initiative aimed at identifying and reducing PM Pollution from all sources, called “No Safe Level.”
Just as PM pollution poses all kinds of adverse health effects it also provides lots of opportunities at the local level to make things better for your neighbors:
Safer homes and schools.
More sustainable public transit.
More equitable zoning.
Pollution controls.
Public Health protections in the neighborhoods that need them most.
We can make progress. But we need your help.
“NO SAFE LEVEL”
Particulate Matter
CAMPAIGN MEETING
SATURDAY, JANUARY 27th
2 – 4 PM
Hill Country Room
Meadows Conference Center
2900 Live Oak in Old East Dallas
Get the Basics on PM
Help Pick Campaign Targets and Create Strategies for Change
Your Hosts, Our No Safe Level Committee members:
Cresanda Allen
Shannon Gribble
Amanda Poland
Evelyn Mayo
Misti O’Quinn
FOLLOW-UP:
West Dallas residents won their fight to close the RamCrete batch plant at the January 10th Dallas City Council meeting. The vote was 14-1 with Council Member Rickey Callahan the lone outlier. However, The City’s Office of Environmental Quality didn’t distinguish itself when a spokesperson reassured Callahan that any facility meeting TCEQ standard exemption permit levels of pollution “could not be causing a problem.”
Incompetence or Negligence? It Doesn’t Matter: Local Air Pollution Catastrophes on Oct 19th & Dec 11th Show Why DFW Must Have Its Own 21st Century Independent Air Quality Monitoring Network
Q: What caused PM and Ozone pollution to spike so high and fast on Oct 19th that health alerts had to be issued from Dallas to Denton?
A: The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality couldn’t care less.
That’s the take-away from Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe’s story that appeared over the weekend in the Denton Record Chronicle.
You may remember we reported on the mystery shortly after it happened and tracked down all the local and non-local suspects cited by officials in the media that day. None of them turned out to be the cause of an air pollution incident that was so potent it raised the entire regional ozone average a whole part per billion and forced PM levels into the triple digits.
Heinkel-Wolfe goes one step further and makes inquires from the TCEQ itself. And the run around she gets is Catch-22 material.
TCEQ says they can’t investigate an air pollution problem unless there’s a known cause. But if there’s a known cause, what you’ve got there really isn’t an investigation any more, it’s an enforcement action, isn’t it?
This article may be the single most compelling case for why DFW needs its own locally-controlled air quality monitoring network. Find it here.
Q: Where are the results of the air samples the Dallas Fire Department supposedly took when a West Dallas Recycling was sending large plumes of black smoke over the surrounding and downwind neighborhoods on December 11th?
A: Nobody seems to know.
A huge pile of metal scrap burned and smoldered for over 24 hours at Sunshine Recycling on Ruder Street in West Dallas on December 11th. Thick plumes of smoke streaked the sky for half a day and into the night.
According to WFAA-TV, a Fire Department Hazardous Materials response team was on site because there were hazardous materials on site – although exactly what those were, or are, remain nameless.
That evening the Dallas City Councilman who represents West Dallas, Omar Narvaez, posted on his FaceBook page that “The Fire Dept has conducted testing and there is no hazardous materials burning.”
Really? Because when a scrap yard like that catches fire, you can bet there’s “hazardous materials” burning whether it’s officially noted or not. Plastic tubing and hoses become Dioxin-generating embers. Used oil has all kinds of metals in it that attach themselves to the smoke particles. Vinyl can generate very toxic fumes. Just the PM pollution from the smoke alone was enough to trigger all kinds of harmful health impacts. Very likely the entire pile of metal waste that was burning that night was indeed “hazardous.”
But OK, you say you took tests and they showed nothing out of the ordinary? Let’s see them. In December Downwinders submitted a Texas Open Records Act request to the City of Dallas for the results of those tests. We’re still waiting. As of today, and despite three phone calls to the Open Records Division of the City Secretary’s office, we still don’t have what it’s supposed to take no more than 10 business days to get. It’s been a month and counting. We’re trying to get some legal help to extract the information. Stay tuned.
For $500 a piece, we can install a dense grid of PM monitors across the region, tie them all together and present the information to the public in a transparent accessible way. It can be locally-controlled, directed by scientists, and independent of political influence.
It would automatically track plumes in real time, not an hour ago. It would give you reliable and specific levels of pollution rather than vague reassurances. It would transfer the power from officialdom to citizenry.
That’s the new Network we’re building. Stay tuned.
New Grant Gives Us a Campaign Budget for 2 Years
Downwinders at Risk is proud to announce we received a very generous $40,000 grant from the Dallas-based Simmons Sisters Fund in December to cover the costs of our “No Safe Level” PM pollution protection campaign for the next two years.
This money will be going to buy both portable and stationary PM pollution monitors, educational and outreach materials, including videos, websites and social media campaigns, new studies we need to advance the cause, and a host of other things we would not have even thought possible before the arrival of this grant. We can’t tell you how excited we are to have this kind of budget. We can really start to make a difference right out of the gate.
But we still need you. We need you to show-up at our monthly meetings and learn how you can plug into this campaign, which has the potential to reshape public policy in so many ways. We need you to invite us to your PTA, club, or church gatherings to present the information about PM that makes every audience gasp. And yes, we still need your donations – to pay for salaries of our one and half staffers, other projects, and special events like our Root and Branch Conference.
We just got a huge vote of confidence in our new campaign from the Simmons Sister Fund. Please consider giving your own as well. Thanks.
New Study Adds To PM Harms: Exposure Linked to Increases in Juvenile Delinquency
The first study to look at the effects of PM pollution exposure on the social behavior of children found that that the more bad air a child inhaled, the more likely they were to engage in delinquent activity.
Published in December’s Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology by researchers at UCLA, UC Irvine, and Orebro University in Sweden, “Longitudinal Analysis of Particulate Air Pollutants and Adolescent Delinquent Behavior in Southern California” is already a landmark study in the growing field of PM research. It further demonstrates the similarities between PM and the handful of other neurotoxins linked to delinquency – like lead.
While past studies have identified a range of neurological impacts associated with PM pollution, including Autism and Parkinson’s Disease, this is the first time it’s been linked specifically to anti-social behavior. According to the authors, cumulative exposures were found to result in developmental differences lagging as many as 3 to 4 years behind the norm.
Not surprisingly, African-American boys, and children who lived in neighborhoods with poorer air quality and less green space had both higher PM exposure levels and higher delinquency rates.
This is only the latest reason why Downwinders at Risk has identified PM as Air Pollution Enemy #1. There’s not another pollutant that’s been linked to so many different health harms – from lung cancer to strokes and heart attacks, to immune and reproductive system damage to a host of brain illnesses both profound and subtle.
All of these harms are caused by “normal” levels of exposure to PM. And that’s why that exposure level must come down.
West Dallas Batch Plant Vote THIS Wednesday, Dallas City Hall
The RamCrete Batch Plant at the corner of Marilla and Commerce in West Dallas has been so poorly run that last fall the Dallas City Planning Commission took the unusual step of overruling staff recommendations and voted to close the facility down: lock, stock and particulate matter.
RamCrete’s operators are appealing that shut-down decision to the full council Wednesday. Action was postponed from December based on a request from the company.
Historically, West Dallas has been used as a dumping ground for both industries and people the Dallas establishment didn’t want in their own backyards. Obsolete zoning allows all kinds of industrial activity to be sited too close to residential areas.
This specific batch plant is only a symptom of that zoning, but it presents a clear and present danger to West Dallas residents that can be stopped with this vote.
Downwinders at Risk’s “No Safe Level” Campaign to reduce Particulate Matter exposure has identified this council vote as an important first step in decreasing the emissions of PM in this neighborhood and West Dallas as a whole.
The public hearing on this permit denial is #51 on Items for Individual Consideration on the Council’s Wednesday’s agenda. Citizens will have 3 minutes or less to speak in favor of or against upholding the Planning Commission’s decision to yank the permit.
We’re sorry we can’t give you an exact time this will come up, but City Hall veterans know these things are unpredictable. You pretty much have to show up at 9 am and stay until they get to it.
If you can, please come join us for the first PM battle – and we hope victory – of 2018.
A Group That Shouldn’t Be Here…Still Is. Thanks.
By all rights, there shouldn’t be a Downwinders at Risk around anymore.
The life expectancy of a local grassroots group rising up to fight a bad permit is a couple of years if you’re lucky, twice that if you’re extremely lucky.
We’re beginning our 23rd year. Throughout that time, we’ve ridden our share of organizational roller coasters and still managed to disembark with our group intact.
When we lost our hazardous waste permit fight with TXI in 1999. When we fought our Green Cement battles. When we debated taking on lead smelters and gas drilling in addition to cement kilns. Those were tough times.
But this year was among the most disheartening and frustrating… and hopeful and exhilarating. On Inauguration Day, the program work of the last five years centering on DFW smog evaporated with the installation of a hostile EPA. We then lost 50% of our board between January and July through moves, illness, and exhaustion. We weren’t sure we were going to make it to the end of this ride.
But then things started to happen.
15 brave souls signed-up for an inauguration of our own as we began the College of Constructive Hell-Raising as an experiment in cross-movement, cross culture networking. By May’s graduation, there was a consensus it was a successful one and we recruited at least one board member from its alumni.
Our “Science and Socializing” events in June attracted new blood, including young scientists and researchers that wanted to help with 21st Century high-tech air quality monitoring.
We conceived a new campaign centered on Particulate Matter pollution, a pervasive and potent toxin linked to everything from early death to learning disabilities. A toxin we can reduce exposure to without the permission of the EPA or State of Texas. We believe this effort will take us places no DFW environmental group has ever gone before: highway and urban planning, transit and housing policy, as well as the familiar ground of environmental racism and citizen empowerment.
And we’re back to close-to-full board strength, with most of our new members a generation or two younger than the board members they replaced. Twenty somethings are almost in the majority now. We have a board member who was born the same year we were.
In short, Downwinders at Risk as reinvented itself…again.
There’s no better proof of that than what was going on a couple of weekends ago.
In Dallas, the newest members of our board were running the first meeting of our “No Safe Level” Particulate Matter campaign – without Director Jim Schermbeck anywhere in sight.
Meanwhile, in Austin, Associate Program Director Anthony Gonzales was meeting with Libertarian Party officials in an attempt to build a never-before-attempted bi-partisan grassroots alliance to advocate for more “local control” in upcoming Republican Primary races and the 2019 Legislature.
North, in rural Wise County, UNT graduate student Kari Nothiem was working to establish a location for our very own ozone monitor – in the only “non-attainment” county where the state still refuses to monitor for smog. It’s part of a citizens network of new air quality monitors we’re working with UTD and others to establish across North Texas to replace the state’s obsolete system.
We hope you agree both the geographical and thematic reach of this new Downwinders at Risk is impressive for any group, but especially one that’s entirely dependent on DFW residents and resources. This is our home office. Your neighbors are our board members. This is our only work.
And if you’re reading this, you’re an important reason we’re still here. Even as our mission has broadened and deepened, you’ve been supportive. That’s taken a lot of faith at times. Thank you to each and every board member, volunteer, and contributor.
We started 2017 in suspect shape. We’re ending it with renewed vigor and optimism.
If 2017 was about renewal, 2018 is shaping-up to be a Reveille right out of the gate.
Batch plant permits in Joppa and West Dallas are due to show back up on the Dallas City Council Agenda in January. We’ll be there as part of our campaign to reduce PM pollution and argue that both communities need a bottom-to-top zoning review to better buffer people from pollution.
Those fights, plus transit system and school-based initiatives are on the agenda at our next No Safe Level campaign meeting on PM pollution scheduled for Saturday January 27th from 2 to 4 pm at the Meadows Conference Center 2900 Live Oak in Old East Dallas. All are welcome.
It looks like we might have our first vote on a new regional air monitoring network at Dallas Commissioners Court on January 16th – the first step to a truly 21st Century approach directed by local governments.
Later that same day, the 2018 class of our College of Constructive Hell-Raising begins meeting (late-comers still being accepted….)
And if everything goes as planned, we’ll be announcing the creation of a broad left-right coalition working to restore local zoning powers to local governments in Austin sometime next month.
We had a very good Giving Day this year and you may feel as if you’ve paid your clean air resistance dues for 2017. We understand. But if you like the direction the group is going and you want to do some early 2018 voting with your pocketbook, we could sure use the help as our work expands.
Thanks for your continued support and your consideration of a contribution to the cause we’ll try our best to serve for a 23rd consecutive year.
DONATE HERE
Meet Our New Campaign Targeting Toxic Particulate Matter: “NO SAFE LEVEL”
Toxic Particulate Matter – “PM” – is the New Lead
PM is the scientific name for industrial soot. It comes from burning things. Wood. Gasoline. Diesel. Coal. Waste. Everything that depends on on burning something, produces Particulate Matter: cars, trucks, buses, locomotives, boilers, furnaces, kilns, etc.
PM pollution is tiny. It’s much smaller than nature’s dust particles that our nose hairs, throat and lungs have evolved to handle most of the time. Because its so small PM pollution can actually pass through your lungs’ lining and goes directly into your bloodstream. From there it goes to any organ it’s carried to – the liver, the reproductive system, the brain.
Numerous studies have shown the terrible impact of PM pollution on human lungs and hearts.It causes heart attacks, strokes, asthma and COPD. More recent studies have shown a whole new threat. Exposure to PM is now linked to AHAD and Austim in children, and Dementia and Parkinson’s disease in adults. Immune system and reproductive organ damage have also been ties to PM exposure. Like lead in paint and gasoline, this pollution can do damage to a person’s social and intellectual capacities, not just physical ones
PUBLIC INFO & BRAINSTORMING SESSION:
The Dangers of PM Pollution and What We Can Do About It in DFW
Saturday, December 9th
2 – 4 pm
2900 Live Oak in East Dallas
ALL ARE WELCOME
This year the most comprehensive study on PM pollution health effects ever produced was published by Harvard’s School of Public Health. It covered 60 million people over 12 years.
It found significant health damage occurring at levels well below the current EPA standard and concluded there is no “safe” level of exposure to PM pollution. That is, there is no exposure that is not capable of doing some harm to you, no matter how small.
That same study found African-American seniors were three times more likely to die from PM exposure than any other group, with Latinos and Asians also suffering disproportionately. “Point Sources” (smokestacks) of PM are more likely to be in located in low-income communities of color. People of color are more likely to ride diesel-powered buses used for public transit or live along PM-spewing freeways. There’s no other type of pollution that’s linked so closely to how “undesirable” industries and people were forced to live next to one another over the decades.
Here in DFW we’ve flirted with high regional levels of PM pollution but we really don’t know the extent of it since the EPA and State only have four PM monitors for the entire DFW area of seven million people.
That’s why our first job is to help map PM pollution hot spots in DFW. Downwinders is building a “Citizen’s Guide to PM Pollution” that identifies all the largest sources of PM pollution – factories, railways, freeways, transit and school bus routes.
We’re purchasing portable PM pollution monitors citizens can use to police their own neighborhoods and helping to build a new monitoring network that cities can use to track events like the one on Oct 19th – that still remains a mystery.
What can be done in DFW to reduce our exposure to PM pollution? New controls on industry of course, including the cement kilns and coal plants. But also electrification of bus fleets, buffer zones beside freeways, and a detangling of pollution and people in places like West and South Dallas and the Northside of Fort Worth that require pushing the reset button on local planning.
Just turning bus route shelters 180° around so they don’t openly face street traffic has been found to reduce exposure to PM pollution by 30-50% for transit riders – one of the populations at highest risk for PM exposure.
PM pollution is everywhere. It’s so ubiquitous we take it for granted. Much like people took cigarette smoking for granted 40 years ago. And that’s where we’re at with this campaign, at the very beginning of a massive public health education and advocacy effort, a no-smoking campaign for machines that also has the potential to reshape planning, politics, and culture. We have a huge task ahead of us. And we need your help.
Come join us on December 9th to learn more about this insidious from of air pollution and help us come-up with the best approaches for where to start reducing it in DFW.
Saturday, Dec. 9th 2-4 PM Meadows Conference Center 2900 Live Oak