DEIS: Air quality concerns; Asthma

ASTHMA

Draft EIS states:

The proposed project would not meet any of the thresholds warranting a public health assessment. However, to address comments made during the scoping of the proposed project, an analysis of asthma—its prevalence in New York City and its possible causes and triggers—was performed, and an assessment of the potential public health effects from the proposed project was presented.

The causes of asthma and its increase over the last two decades are not certain, and the triggers for its exacerbation are only partially understood.

Since the proposed project is not considered to have significant PM2.5 impacts, diesel emissions from project-related truck traffic are unlikely to significantly adversely affect public health and local asthma incidents.

Nonetheless, NYCDPR and the Yankees are sensitive to the community’s concerns with respect to the incidence of asthma among the local population. Accordingly, the project sponsors are working and will continue to work with the community to develop measures to address those concerns.

Response:

The South Bronx is well known as one of the epicenters of asthma affliction in this country. Because of this, it is imperative that we do not make important decisions to go ahead with projects if there is any chance that it will make the asthma condition worse. The DEIS indicates that this is not a concern for the Yankees or the City by making the dismissive remark: “The causes of asthma and its increase over the last two decades are not certain, and the triggers for its exacerbation are only partially understood.”

While it may be true that asthma is not fully understood as a disease, what is understood is that pollution definitely plays a role. This understanding, however partial, does not make it okay to just create more automobile congestion (and pollution) in our community. If there is even a chance that auto-pollution causes or exacerbates asthma, then everything should be done to reduce that pollution. There are real, human lives at stake. If even one life is spared or made better by reducing car traffic (and pollution) to the games then the effort is worth it.

I challenge the Yankees and the City to do a public health analysis where they quantify the monetary value of human lives and do a cost-benefit analysis with proposed mitigation measures to improve air quality in the area beyond what has been proposed. Such a sick, Orwellian exercise will serve to make a point that what is dollars and cents to the Yankees is actually the lives of thousands of people in our community. It is clear from the project scope and the project intent (more parking and driving to the stadium) that the Yankees are not “sensitive to the community’s concerns with respect to the incidence of asthma among the local population.”

To make such a statement to the community is an insult.