Toxic Air Pollution is a Public Health Crisis
Photograph: Hollie Adams/AFP/Getty Images
Last December, UK authorities declared that Ella Kissi-Debrah's death in February 2013 was caused by air pollution. Ella was 9 years old and lived in Lewishman, less than a mile away from London's South Circular Road, where she was overexposed to nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter (PM). This ruling is the first of its kind in the UK, it makes legal history for being the first time air pollution was recorded as a cause of an individual death and increases the pressure on the state to protect the public from dangerous air pollution levels. It also forces us to reflect and take notice that here in the U.S., there are 2.3 million people that live within a three-mile radius of of municipal solid waste incinerators.
New York (NY) has the second highest number of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) incinerators in the United States, with ten incinerators.
The Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School has compiled state-specific reports for Florida, New York, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, the 5 states with the highest numbers of municipal solid waste incinerators. These waste incinerators have been known to emit mercury, lead, particulate matter 2.5 and 10, sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, and carbon monoxide, all of which pose significant dangers to public health. Eighty-one percent of these trash incinerators are located within environmental justice communities. Evidence has linked an increased risk of death from COVID-19 to long-term exposure to particulate matter, a dangerous air pollutant, and the risks from the virus are especially deadly for those living in communities with elevated levels of air pollution.
The Tishman Center produced fact sheets for each of the five states detailing the effects of the waste incinerators, including updated air pollution emissions data, climate impacts, incinerator effect on local communities, and the economic costs. For more information and access to each fact sheet, visit: https://www.tishmancenter.org/projects-publications