Houstonians need to know how much dirty soot we are breathing
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
All communities should live free of the burden of harmful air pollution.
Many do not, especially when it comes to soot, the most widespread and the deadliest air pollutant in the U.S. Black, Hispanic and Asian people on average are exposed to the most soot from the most sources.
In Houston, almost everyone is exposed to too much soot, or PM 2.5, though some communities closest to the largest sources of it do not have the information they need to protect their families. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is considering installing two new monitors this year that would help.
Let’s tell TCEQ to add these monitors.
The monitors would be sited where there aren’t any in Fifth Ward and Pleasantville, two historically Black neighborhoods where hard-working people live with higher rates of health issues like asthma and COPD from generations of degraded air. New monitors would help everyone know how much dirty soot they are breathing day in and day out, so they can take action and advocate for themselves.
The monitors would also be one more tool the entire Houston region needs to clean our air for good. Soot, escaping from the coal burned at power plants and the gasoline and the diesel burned by cars, trucks, trains and ships, blows everywhere. The tiny particles can lodge in the lungs, enter the bloodstream and cause heart disease, stroke and lung cancer. There is too much of it already in Houston. In just one year, new research by the Harvard School of Public Health and Environmental Defense Fund shows, soot contributed to more than 5,200 early deaths and $50 billion in economic damages.
We need to know what we are breathing. These new monitors would empower two communities directly and better equip our entire region with the information we need to understand the threat in our air.
Tell TCEQ by May 21, 2021, to deploy these new monitoring sites in Fifth Ward and Pleasantville by emailing Holly Landuyt at tceqamnp@tceq.texas.gov. Or you can add your name to our letter below, and we will deliver it for you.Sponsored by
To:
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
From:
[Your Name]
I write in response to the draft of the 2021 Annual Monitoring Network Plan.
Please deploy the proposed new monitoring sites in Houston’s Fifth Ward and Pleasantville areas, as indicated in Appendix M in the AMNP. These monitors are needed to comply fully with the EPA regulatory requirements that residents and local officials have access to air pollution data in a timely manner, and they have sufficient data to inform public health policy decisions.
These communities have a right to know what they are breathing. They have a right to breathe clean air. There is no monitor in Fifth Ward, and the nearest monitor is two miles away from Pleasantville.
Both communities live with poor air quality from a range of sources, including congested freeways, metal recyclers and diesel trucks.
It is an issue of environmental justice. The monitors represent a new tool our shared home needs to be able to understand the levels of PM 2.5 and volatile organic compounds (VOC) throughout the region and advocate for the actions that will clean our air. New research from Environmental Defense Fund and the Harvard School of Public Health using ensemble and satellite data shows that almost everyone in Houston breathes higher levels of PM 2.5 than we should, higher than the health-based standards the Environmental Protection Agency is setting.
We need to be able to protect ourselves. The best tool is better information. Deploying new sites in Fifth Ward and Pleasantville would help provide it.