Picture this: You’re a kid in New York City living in the South Bronx and you have asthma. While friends go outside to play, you stay behind, worried that an asthma attack could send you to the hospital. Your neighborhood is surrounded by three highways and five bridges, with 300 trucks driving by every hour spewing toxic pollution. Unfortunately, this is common for many children in the lower income areas of the city who face disproportionate air pollution. Children in the South Bronx face a 17% asthma risk, over double the national average. In 2016, asthma-related ER visits were over six times higher in New York City’s low-income areas.

Neighborhoods like the South Bronx and Harlem are uniquely vibrant, but their problem with pollution is not unique as over a third of us—39% of the country—live in areas with failing air quality grades. Despite this clear public health crisis, the Trump administration is actively dismantling solutions to reduce these transportation emissions that disproportionately harm low-income communities and communities of color.

Traffic, industrial activity, and other sources create Particulate Matter 2.5 (soot) pollution. In NYC, soot contributes to 2,000 deaths and 5,150 emergency visits and hospitalizations for respiratory and heart disease each year.

Increased emergency room visits, cancer rates, and even premature deaths are the consequences of our current economic system and policies that pollute our communities, schools, workplaces, and places of worship. Traffic, industrial activity, and other sources create Particulate Matter 2.5 (soot) pollution. In NYC, soot contributes to 2,000 deaths and 5,150 emergency visits and hospitalizations for respiratory and heart disease each year. For people of color this risk is greater as they are 2.3 times more likely than white people to live in a county with failing air quality grades. Our freight system, which moves the goods we all rely on, creates especially dangerous “Diesel Death Zones,” that harm primarily low-income and communities of color. Freight trucks and buses make up less than 10% of the vehicles on U.S. roads, but are responsible for more than half of the soot and nitrogen oxide emissions from the transportation sector. Decades of racist zoning decisions, weak environmental and public health protections, and other discriminatory policies have resulted in a dirty transportation system that overwhelmingly hurts our communities.

The reality is not hopeless: The electrification of personal and freight vehicles, the expansion of mass transit, and other strategies can expand affordable transportation options, reduce air pollution, and save lives. Electrifying trucking and transitioning our grid to clean renewable energy would result in over $1.2 trillion in public health benefits and an 84% decrease in deaths from diesel emissions by 2050. With public transit expansion, we could further reduce emissions and lower transportation costs for families. Currently, low-income families spend around 30% of their salary on transportation, but with transit expansion we could save residents in urban areas an average of $2,000 per year. This would also open up options for those unable to drive and save 84,000 lives from traffic fatalities by 2050. The bottom line is that transitioning to cleaner vehicles and improving public transit makes us healthier and more connected, reduces emissions driving........

© Common Dreams