Thursday, June 25, 2009

Car Exhaust -- or Poverty? Can the two be separated?

Disruptions in organized traffic flow can crea...Image via Wikipedia

Interesting study here positing a link between a new mother's residence, the amount of traffic-generated pollutants in that area, and premature babies and preeclampsia. Having read only the blurb and not the study, can't say for sure, but they don't seem to have had the ability to separate the effect of poverty (which also leads to a plethora of natal health issues).

Although that's a problem from a scientific point-of-view, it's not much of a practical difference, because there is one thing that is true in every city in America: it's the poor who get to live near the busy roads, thick with autosmog. Bad air quality from car and truck exhaust is something that we carefully protect wealthy neighborhoods from.

Just like with the proposed "Salem River Crossing." The object with this boondoggle is provide an even greater subsidy for driving to the wealthy, mainly white commuters in Polk County and beyond by giving them yet more lane miles ---although at the cost of carving a huge chunk out of several NE Salem neighborhoods and turning them into blast zones for a torrent of cars that will zip through, leaving only pollutants, the occasional hubcap, and the odd maimed pedestrian behind. Nobody in ODOT or any of the local governments give a rip about the people in NE Salem, many of whom are Hispanic -- perfect targets, in other words, for yet another sprawl project built atop the homes of the poor, as is the American way.
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