The Mile and a Half Plume
The Infrastructurist notes a new study on freeway pollution:
Living “close” to a freeway means being right next to it, right–like overlooking it pressed up against one of those ugly noise walls? Sadly, no. Researchers at UCLA have found that a large freeway’s pollution plume extends as much as a mile and a half from the roadway–in this case, I-10. “This distance is 10 times greater than previously measured daytime pollutant impacts from roadways and has significant exposure implications.” Those nasty carcinogenic ultrafine particles–not to mention polycylic aromatics–don’t obey the niceties of staying in those close to the roadway. No, the call is coming from inside the house for plenty of rich people in Santa Monica and other communities around the country. Even if you’d never be one of those poor unhealthy schlubs who lives next to a freeway — practically speaking, you’re probably already one of those poor unhealthy schlubs who lives next to a freeway.
Clever When a Stranger Calls reference there, but I found this interesting — not only as someone who lives within a mile and a half of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway trench (I will be buried long before it is), but someone who was recently having some questions about daycare facilities in my neighborhood. One of these has a play area very close to the BQE, and several parents have hinted to me of asthma problems. Correlation is not causation, yadda, yadda, yadda, but in this case I’m less inclined to take this as typical Brooklyn parent neurosis.
But this led me to wonder: Has anyone done a “PollutionScore” application, similar to WalkScore? It would be a nice, and useful, GIS overlay — and why not on WalkScore itself? (as an aside, I’ve noticed that, even within my general neighborhood, which is close to 100 on the WalkScore, the number drops as one heads towards the elevated section of the BQE and the large traffic artery of Hamilton Avenue; and not surprisingly, I try to walk down there as little as possible).
In any case, here’s more on the study.
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This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 7:23 am and is filed under Environmental factors, Etc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 13th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Tom,
This WalkScore website does a pretty poor job of differentiating quality businesses from substandard ones. Living, like yourself, inside the BQE I was interested to see what the WalkScore of my residence would be. I’ve always considered my neighborhood (Bed-Stuy off the J, just across Broadway from the beginnings of Bushwick) to be fairly dull and empty and rarely go anywhere within a short walking distance (let’s say 20 mins) from here for errands or in my free time. There is one bar I can walk to, a cheap and not very good diner, and a cafe that has recently opened up that I have yet to check out.
So I was very surprised to see that I got a score of 85 (Very Walkable). Looking at the map, there appears to be a profusion of grocery stores, restaurants and cafes which, knowing what they actually are, turn out to mostly be bodegas. There is certainly no good grocery store within walking distance, which you wouldn’t be able to tell from the map. In fact, my neighborhood fails most of their criteria for a walkable neighborhood (parks and public space, mixed income mixed-use, accessible) despite the high score.
I know this wasn’t the topic of your post, but just wanted to let you know that the metrics they use to define businesses should ideally be improved to take into account quality. This is of course impossible to do without user input which would mean they wouldn’t be able to use a simple algorithm as they do. Great idea though and I hope they are able to keep improving it. Anyway, love your blog, keep up the great work!
-Ivan
July 14th, 2009 at 10:35 am
This is incredibly interesting and raises two questions for me (and maybe others).
1. Does harm from car pollution rise at the rate of increased volume, or is there an exponential impact as traffic volume hits a critical mass?
2.Similarly, is it just as harmful if all that traffic is distributed among a set of side streets in a neighborhood, or is the harm more intense if all the traffic is on a single highway…maybe that’s actually less bad?
-Chris H., urban planner in SF