Nearly 10 years ago, when EWG and other California environmental groups were sounding the alarm over the dangers of methyl bromide and other airborne pesticides drifting from farm fields into schools and subdivisions, the state’s pesticide agency tried to pooh-pooh our concerns with this twisted logic:
"[Just] because there is a presence of something doesn't mean you are at risk from it,†said Department of Pesticide Regulation spokeswoman Veda Federighi. “[Millions of] Californians live within a half-mile from a freeway. Does that mean they are at risk from auto exhaust?"
Well . . . yeah.
In the years since, there’s been a steady stream of science documenting that kids who live close to traffic corridors are at increased risk of asthma and stunted lung development – damage that may lessen if the child moves to an area with cleaner air, but still lasts for a lifetime. Last week, the LA Times reported:
Recently, studies have shown that the lung capacity of children who live within 500 meters (1,650 feet) of a freeway is significantly reduced compared with those who live more than 1,500 meters (4,950 feet) away.For kids who already live in an area with high levels of pollution, living near a freeway is "adding insult to injury," says Dr. John Balmes, professor of medicine at UC San Francisco and professor of public health at UC Berkeley.
The new findings, by a team of USC researchers, were published in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet. They found that, over an 8-year period, kids who lived in a heavily polluted city like Los Angeles and lived within 500 meters of a freeway had almost 10 percent worse lung function than those who lived farther away or in less smoggy cities.
In recognition of the risk, four years ago California passed a law prohibiting schools from being built within 500 feet of major freeways, with exceptions allowed only if there’s no other available location or the school district takes steps to reduce the exposure.
So why is the Los Angeles Unified School District, according to the Times, planning at least seven new schools within 500 feet of a freeway?
The Times didn’t say how LAUSD – where there are an estimated 700 existing schools serving 60,000 students within 500 feet of freeways – is getting around the law. Given the vast web of choked freeways in LA County, our guess is the "no other available location" loophole. The district did say they’re now ranking schools for a variety of air pollution risks, including the number of students, the number of years students spend at the school, distance to freeways and the volume of diesel trucks that travel the nearby freeways. At the same time, the district is exploring “all options†for reducing exposure at the most at-risk schools.
And we certainly agree with the district on the most important point: The best way to protect students is for state and federal regulators to enact rules that reduce air pollution at its source. EWG research found that reducing smog to the levels set by the Air Resources Board would mean 3.3 million fewer school absences a year. Since attendance determines how much money each district gets from the state, cleaner air would mean an additional $82 million in school funding a year. There's just one problem: California's smog standards are only goals, and not legally enforceable.
GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE DEPT.
We don't know if the AP's Terry Chea reads Greetings from California. But a few days after we posted last week's entry on once-and-maybe-future governor Jerry Brown's global warming crusade, Chea filed a national story taking the same angle. The right-wing Pacific Legal Foundation complains that the attorney general is "using the courts to set national social and environmental policy . . . [and] trying to force certain types of solutions on very difficult problems."
Well . . . yeah. Isn't that his job?