Jessica Lass's Blog: Health and the Environment

Meeting a Gentleman Shrimper on the Bayou

2010-05-03T05:53:12Z

I landed today in New Orleans not knowing exactly what I was walking into. I’ve been reading and studying up on the spill, the anticipated trajectory, the looming devastation it will have on the coastal economy and also the people whose lives will be forever changed by our addiction to fossil fuels.

In an effort to get a lay of the land and also perhaps glimpse President Obama while he visited ground zero before one of the largest environmental disasters of our time reached shore, I carpooled down to see Venice, Louisiana for myself this afternoon.

We missed Obama, but lucked out when we met Kip, a shrimper for 26 years who was watching the impending oil slick with trepidation. He told us about how shrimping is not only his livelihood and the livelihood of his friends and community, but it was his life. Already, shrimpers aren’t allowed to collect their harvest on the east bay and if the oil spill reaches as far and wide as expected, the spill will not only mark the end of this season (which only recently began), but could spell out the future of a dry spell for one of the most economically important industries in the Gulf for years to come.

Kip was concerned about this scenario as he spoke about Venice as the jewel of the Gulf. Not only was he concerned about what would happen to the marshes and reeds once oil seeped through them, but he knew many of his fellow fishermen and shrimpers were being hired by BP to clean up the mess once it hit shore. Knowing the clean up process will end (and possibly the jobs with it), the question remains about the health of an ecosystem and industry so many in Louisiana come to depend on to put food on the table.

Oil rigs catching fire or exploding is something Kip’s seen before while living and working along the Louisiana, but this time was different. The speed and quantity of the oil bubbling out of the water was too fast, is still too fast. He’s hopeful that the dispersant chemicals being used at the leak site will work, but also know the oil and chemical soup will remain in the Gulf’s ecosystem no matter how many gallons of dispersant are used. The oil will at some point sink to the ocean floor and just be out of sight, out of mind to many.

He knows America needs oil and knows it employs a number of people from the local communities, but he wants to see that oil go in someone’s tank and not the ocean floor where it destroys the ecosystem necessary for his business. He thinks oil companies like BP should be forced to prepare for every possible scenario when it comes to offshore drilling and there should be a number of safeguards, not one valve hinging on ending a massive disaster.

Kip said that he knows nature is resilient, just like the fishing community he’s lived in his entire life. They’ve seen floods, hurricanes, and other disasters disturb their way of life, but they’ve survived, picked themselves up and gone back to work. But they can only take so much and the wetlands and depleted marshes surrounding the Louisiana coastline can only take so much. Kip knows this situation is man-made and affects lives and jobs beyond his own. He sees people from around the country coming to Venice to try and help, people helping people, which reminds him of the support the community received after Katrina.

It’s too early to tell how widely the devastation from the BP oil explosion will be felt, but Kip questions how his reputation as providing the best shrimp in the country will fair and whether people will trust the seafood coming from the Gulf after this. He knows his crop and believes it will bounce back, but if it doesn’t and if customers distrust the safety of his catch, his years as a shrimper could be over along with the rest of the region’s fishing jobs. He’s hopeful, but perhaps realistic knowing that a scenario he never could have dreamed of happening is coming true before his eyes.

Stay tuned for video clips from the interview with Kip.

You Can Choose Where You Live, but Can You Choose to Breathe Clean Air?

2009-04-14T19:27:34Z

Is it really a choice to breathe clean air? A recent study announces that in addition to exercise and diet, clean air gains since the 1980s can add about two and a half years to the average American's life expectancy. The study concludes that clean air tacks about five months to your life (or 15% of the 2.5 years figure). It's certainly good news that our country's air has improved overall during the past 30 years, however, in LA, we persist with unhealthy air that cuts short thousands of lives.

Dr. Douglas Dockery, head of the Environmental Health Department at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston authored the study and reflects on the inequities of air pollution. "Clean or dirty air is something that is being imposed on you. You do have a choice on whether you smoke, drink, exercise or what type of food you eat. But you do not have a choice on what air you breathe." The article goes on to quote a local Boston scientist saying that "the damage caused by regularly breathing such air as like living with someone who smokes."

Yesterday, the Port of Long Beach unanimously approved the Middle Harbor expansion project, which they expect will cost $750 million and 10 years to build. The size of the expansion is likened to that of the Port of Vancouver and the level of cargo containers (throughput) to a third more of what the fourth-largest port in the nation, the Port of Oakland, handles. That's a massive project that will employ thousands of local workers, but will increase air pollution in an area that has some of the most toxic air in the region.

There is no doubt that both ports are trying hard to reverse the tide of their filthy pasts, but the question is, are they doing enough to quickly help harbor area residents? Based on our review of the project, the answer is no. While the Middle Harbor Project includes some good air quality mitigation (e.g. use of cleaner fuels in ships and shore side power), it fails to include several critical technologies like cleaner trucks or provide sufficient resources to protect the community from port operations.

Currently, the ports of LA and Long Beach generate roughly 2,000 tons of particulate pollution annually. This area is also home to some of the highest rates of cancer, asthma and premature death figures in the nation. Roughly 2,400 deaths are attributed to pollution from the Ports of LA and Long Beach every year. Because of these levels of pollution and the impacts to public health and the environment, NRDC is part of a coalition that's working with the ports to ensure local residents are represented when either port plans to expand.

The Port of LA has included community mitigation funds for recent expansion projects, going back to the $50 million it set aside for the $200 million China Shipping terminal expansion and more recently, $50 million for the 5-year TraPac terminal expansion project. The money goes toward installing air filters in schools, nursing homes and residences in addition to building more health clinics in what is considered a medically underserved area. These efforts go toward limiting diesel particulate pollution, one of the main culprits for respiratory disease.

After looking at the environmental impact report for the Middle Harbor project, the Port of Long Beach expects 2% of the total budget ($15 million out of $750 million) to go to community mitigation. That includes $5 million for greenhouse gas reduction, $5 million to install air filters, and $5 million for health clinics. Roughly 500,000 people live in the City of Long Beach, so that means that $15 million in community mitigation over the 10-year project works out to $30 a person in mitigation for the entire project, or $3 a year. About the cost of a small latte.

This is the first time the Port of Long Beach has offered community mitigation funding within an expansion project proposal. I look forward to the day when residents of LA can say they are breathing air that will help them live longer, but as long as the Port of Long Beach only allots 2% of a $750 million, 10-year project budget to protecting residents from its filthy operations, we'll need to breathe carefully.

When the LA Air Tastes Like Burning

2009-04-07T17:52:16Z

You know the winded feeling you get after exerting yourself a bit too much for too long? For me, that feeling usually happens with running, mainly since it isn't my favorite form of exercise and I don't find myself sprinting down the street that often. I should like it since the long distance skill runs in my family -- my dad ran marathons for years and my brother just finished his first one in Colorado -- but I've never hit my stride when it comes to hitting the pavement, which might explain why I haven't experienced the searing pain I felt in my lungs while in east LA over the weekend.

My friend Ana is pretty much obsessed with public transit and when you live in LA, that's a bizarre obsession since everyone gets around by car, but there are those lucky individuals who live close to the subway or main bus lines and swear by the efficiency.

Ana asked me a couple weeks ago to participate in the first ever Transit People race that was held this past weekend. The race asks teams to start from locations around the city and race to a final destination, all by using public transit to more or less elevate the fact that you can get around LA pretty easily using public transit. Transit People is also a charity that uses public transit to take inner city kids on field trips to the aquarium, natural history museum and numerous other LA attractions.

Our team was planning to start the race from the USC campus, so after meeting Ana at her apartment in Silverlake (sortof north LA), we headed to USC (south LA) via rail and bus, connected with the rest of our team, received our final coordinates and took off for the nearest bus. Turns out we almost missed the bus and everyone had to sprint for it. Not being a sprinter, this was mildly embarrassing, but we all made the bus which ended up taking us to the final destination without a transfer, but not before another rival team got on the same bus with us. Once we figured out they were also with Transit race, our team sketched out a strategy to jump off the bus and book it to our final destination, Heritage Square Park in east LA.

Sure the bus stop and park were maybe a little more than a half mile away, but again, we were sprinting and it was 75 degrees out already, and I swear, we were running uphill. Luckily, I was not the first to slow down, and thankfully the majority of the other team really never tried to catch us (they later referred to our team as "all fitness types"), which meant that we'd won the race, but for 30 minutes after we made it to the park, everyone on my team was still wheezing and most of us were still coughing. Everyone said it tasted like there was something in the air, like a fine coating of pollution, or as Ralph Wiggum describes it, it tasted like burning. More than 24 hours later, it still felt like I had something caught in my throat.

The type of air I inhaled after sprinting to Heritage Park and again to make the rail stop a couple hours later is the worst in the country and has been for decades. My colleague and an LA native, David Pettit, tells me how it felt like a knife was piercing his lungs after playing outside while he was growing up.

This was the first time I can remember breathing air like this. I'm lucky to live on the Westside of the city, near the ocean breezes that blow pollution inland, to hover over areas like east LA. It's a combination of weather patterns and the expansive pollution from cars, diesel trucks, trains, and stationary sources like power plants that contribute to this choking soup of air pollution. Who knows how much particulate matter I inhaled during those short sprints? What really concerns me is the kids who were at the park, putting on a talent show for us and their families from east LA. They have the rest of their lives ahead of them and are stuck breathing this toxic brew every day.

I want to say we can fix this, but LA has dealt with smog stinging Angelinos' eyes and lungs for more than 50 years. And now we know it also kills 24,000 Californians annually or 15 people a day if you live in the LA air basin (page 4, the 5,400 premature deaths figure, citing CARB). We need to do better. East LA is home to some of the region's worst polluters and many minority families. Those families deserve to go outside and sprint if they want to without feeling like they're taking years off their lives.