Where not to breathe: the waterfront
Are you surprised that the Seattle waterfront area, with all of its big container ships, is home to some of the unhealthiest air in the country [Times]? Because I’m not. If you live in one of the nice burnt orange areas on this map for 70 years you’ve got what seems to be a 100 out of 95,000 chance of getting lung cancer from the diesel emissions–or, rather, the cancer-causing agents in diesel fuel.
Also unsurprisingly, federal regulations intended to clean up diesel emissions have skipped over the biggest ships, exempting them from having to use lower-sulpher fuel. But both our port and the port of Tacoma are moving on their own to use biodeisel in some boats and to generally be a little more environmentally friendly. That way, on the off chance that you’re still living around these parts in 70 years, you might still have healthy lungs.
If you want to keep up on how the clean up is going, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is all about keeping you informed.
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I wish there was a comparison chart available to some of the East Coast cities. We used to joke that you knew you were in Philly when you got off the train at 30th Street Station and could taste the air.
There’s a pretty effective map here, although it doesn’t let you, say, zoom in by region. The EPA actually has a bunch of cool maps where you can look at concentrations of each individual cancerous agent.
Thankfully, Reps like mine in the 36th district (Dickerson, Sommers, and Kohl-Welles) are doing something about this. They’re making sure that ships which can plug in … DO SO. I think they should make them all do this. I think it took some retrofitting to make this happen for some of this. But, we could make it work for ALL of these ships.
I think the Seattle Times story missed a very important point: the seamen from developing countries that breath that pollution every day throughout their working careers. Seattleites almost never talk about these men (and they’re mostly men) from the Phillippines, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and eastern European countries who bring us our cellphones, our cheap clothing, and our fancy automobiles. It’s easy to deride these ships as polluters, forgetting that we rely on them for trade, and wouldn’t enjoy the lifestyle we have if it weren’t for the low-paid seafarers who make our material lives possible. Let’s worry about their health, too.