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

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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.
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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.

 

Thanks Governor: An MLK Day Special Posting

It was a night that might’ve even made atheists Believe.

Answering the impromptu call to action, the weary had come to sit in the pews at the community church. At issue this time was the appearance of their white Governor cynically using elements of the local minority establishment to deflect attention from his racist record. He was coming in three days. Something must be done.

There was the United Front of black clergy in dark suits, the surprisingly feisty local NAACP leadership, the Young Turks, Latino union sympathizers, and white supporters, all making their own personal calculations about bail money and jobs and what lines would be crossed for what reasons when the protest happened.

Only the details of the arrest protocol were yet to be determined in last-minute negotiations with the city and Police Department. Girding themselves, the evening was a gathering of determined souls who seemed to need each other’s company at least as much as they needed legal aid. There was going to be some preaching, some singing, and some praying. Lots of praying.

Inside, the gathering was stalwart and righteous. Outside, howling winds were nature’s metaphor for the political storm created by the decision to confront. It had not only angered the usual suspects but split the black community as well. Some black groups and elected officials, as well as a host of murkey-motivated whites (and of course the local daily paper) didn’t see anything wrong at all with the Governor’s visit. This made tonight’s meeting all that more controversial and conspiratorial-like. They were all out on a wind-battered limb.

But just as schedules were being cleared and cash collected, there was a trickle of whispers. Whispers that made people quietly exalt “Hallelujah.” Whispers that lifted the psychic load from faces like sandbags being thrown off a hot air balloon. Whispers full of the Good News.

Finally the words were uttered out loud from the pulpit. There would be no protest because there would be nothing to protest. The governor was not coming. Fearing the possible negative publicity of a major civil rights demonstration in their town, local officials had found a blunt if face-saving way to avoid the confrontation. They had canceled the entire event. Applause and louder Hallelujahs” and “Amens” filled the Sanctuary. The Governor’s office had no comment. Outside the sun came out at dusk.

If you squinted, you could almost see it in grainy black and white.

But it was 2018.

And it wasn’t Montgomery or Jackson. It was Arlington.

For one shining moment last week a part of the local civil rights movement found the intestinal fortitude to save the legacy of the entire civil rights movement. In doing so it illuminated the reason why all of us need a deeper appreciation of that legacy.

When a new MLK Day parade for Arlington was announced with Texas Governor Greg Abbott as its honorary Grand Marshal shortly after New Year’s, the producers unleashed many of the same debates and quarrels stirred-up by almost every protest King was ever in.

The plaque that STILL hangs on the Texas State capitol wall and that Gov. Abbott STILL refuses to recommend removing

In raising King to secular Sainthood, people forget how controversial he was and still should be. We forget how many times he was called a Communist or a dupe of the Communists by mainstream commentators and government officials. At the very least he was said to be “misguided” and “impatient.” We forget the FBI secretly tried to sabotage his work and family. Many of us don’t know or remember his house being bombed while he and his family slept in it. We forget how many times he went to jail to make a small but important point or spotlight a local campaign. We forget how many black and white clergy warned against him and his brand of radical Christianity.

We also forget King was about confrontation as much as reconciliation. The White Establishment would not reconcile themselves to black equality under the law until they were forced to confront the impacts to their communities up close and personal. Non violent direct action was an effective tool to get whites to the table and begin to win concessions and change the system. Reconciliation came only after negotiations as equals took place and progress toward equality was produced. Sometimes that meant integrating interstate transportation. Sometimes it meant hiring more black clerks at downtown department stores. But it always meant some progress was achieved, the system was changed somehow.

Those who didn’t see any problem with Governor Abbott heading up an MLK parade throw away half of King’s approach and go right to an unrequited act of reconciliation without any meaningful or even symbolic concessions from a man who’s made a career out of singling out The Other.

For them, entry to MLK’s legacy is free of charge to the Governor just because of his title. He doesn’t have to earn his way there. He doesn’t have to concede a policy. He doesn’t even have to express remorse or even request a reconciliation. It showed up in his driveway unannounced in a Camry.

That was too cheap a price for those in the church and their supporters. They argued even MLK would have at least made Governor Abbott remove the pro-slavery “Children of the Confederacy Creed” plaque on the state capitol wall before allowing to ride unencumbered in a parade saluting human rights.

One of the most inane comments about the whole affair came from the Governor’s press secretary who regretted that the MLK Day parade her boss, the Governor of Texas up for reelection this year, was riding in was now being “politicized.” Yes, the Morning News tsked tsked in its own circa-1964 way, how unfortunate it was to see an event honoring a leader who was assassinated for his political beliefs devolve into something so unseemly as politics.

Arlington NAACP President Lisa Simmons. Rev. Kennedy Jones is the first from the left.

Rev. Kennedy Jones didn’t agree. He’s the pastor of the Greater Community Missionary Baptist Church in Arlington, Thursday night’s ground zero for the anti-Abbott forces. He was born in Lowndes County, Alabama, known during King’s lifetime as “Bloody Lowndes” for its white residents’ violent resistance to integration. His father marched over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma and he watched from his shoulders when King finally made it to Montgomery. Is it political when you get beaten or killed because you want to vote?

To Rev. Jones, and his father before him, and his father before that, it was. And nothing since those bloody days has convinced him there’s any daylight between politics and civil rights progress. Inviting someone to be Grand Marshal of a King parade who brags about Voter ID laws with the goal of disenfranchising black and brown people was rubbing salt in those wounds. Nobody asked, but if there are 2019 MLK parades looking for Grand Marshals, Rev Jones would be a heck of a good one.

Taking a stand with him was the Arlington NAACP chapter he belonged to, which is another hero of this showdown. It was their prior relationship with the City, as well as their status as community leaders that made the threat of protest credible and serious. If the oldest civil rights group in town had not stepped up and said “not in our name” the rest of the protesters would have likely floundered. The Fort Worth NAACP had no comment on Abbott’s parade ride. The Dallas NAACP had no comment. And King’s own group, the Southern Christian Leadership Council, was planning on marching in the parade with the Governor, not marching against it.

Let’s face it, in North Texas you’re just not used to seeing the NAACP get out in front of a controversy like this.  Doing so took a lot of gumption, personified by Arlington NAACP president Alisa Simmons who used every ounce of her professional PR skills to deliver a dignified but forceful reaction to the parade cancellation. Pressure on the group to fold must have grown to hypertension levels. But it never backed down. It was another little group that did.

There have been recent local “resist” protests that attracted more people and were better organized but maybe not as effective in so short amount of time. Nor quite as vaguely reminiscent of the old liberal alliance that powered so many reforms in the late 1950’s and early 60’s. It’s not an overstatement to observe that last week the DFW civil rights movement had a spontaneous and genuine revival so heartfelt it kept an incumbent Governor from committing an act of civic desecration he desperately wanted to commit in friendly “red” Tarrant County. That’s effective resistance. And its lessons gave us one of the most educational and memorable MLK weeks ever.

Chances are Abbott will never be asked to ride in another MLK parade and the producers of this one will not be showing up in Arlington with another scheme. But if there was any question as to the response from those assembled in the church, it was answered by the closing Hymm. One picked by Rev. Jones himself.

Enjoy the marches. By all means attend the demonstrations. But you’ll be hard pressed to beat the spine-tingling, swear-you-can see-it force field generated by a group of successful true believers holding hands in a black church defiantly singing “Go and tell the Governor: we shall not be moved.”

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.