Rep. Adrian Madaro’s bill, H.968, An Act Improving Air Quality in Airport Environmental Justice Communities has become a key piece of legislation being considered on Beacon Hill that aims to improve the quality of life for thousands of Eastie residents.
“I was proud to work with the committee last session on landmark Environmental Justice legislation, and look forward now to building upon this work by addressing issues affecting Environmental Justice communities,” said Madaro. “For my district of East Boston, the focus of environmental justice is Logan Airport. As an Environmental Justice neighborhood composed of working-class, immigrant, and communities of color, we deal with a disproportionate burden of both noise and air pollution from the airport.”
First, the bill mandates a network of air pollution monitors throughout airport host communities because Massport does not actually do regular real-time measuring of air pollution.
“Monitors will give us data of where and when we are experiencing the most pollution, how high those levels are, and even the specific sources responsible,” said Madaro.
Under the the data will be made available to the public in real-time, so residents are able to use it to inform their own health and activity decisions. The bill would also require a revised Logan Health study,” he said. “The last health study occurred in 2010. It went over-length and under-budget, and didn’t make any explicit connections between health issues and pollution. This revised health study will fill in some of those gaps.”
Due to the higher numbers of pulmonary diseases in the area due to Logan operations, members of AIRInc. recently sent a letter urging lawmakers to adopt Madaro’s bill.
“Aside from childhood asthma and COPD, the noise and air pollution generated by airports, among other transportation sources, have been found to cause cancer, heart disease, hypertension, autism, stroke, and learning disabilities in school children, among many other morbidities,” said AIRInc.’s Vice President Chris Marchi. “Moreover, a preponderance of recent research suggests that ultrafine pollution particles which bypass the body’s defenses and are currently unregulated by the EPA cause systemic inflammation and accelerate all morbidities toward death.”
Marchi said the legislature takes the only reasonable and responsible actions available to require Massport to assume accountability for the pollution impacts created by their tenant airlines and passengers.
“The legislation also establishes a transparent system by which measurements of these impacts can be taken with sufficient spatial and temporal granularity to characterize the severity of exposures across the impact area,” said Marchi. “Massport will assume responsibility for these impacts by establishing reasonable thresholds and objectives necessary to protect public health in exposed communities as well as implement effective and immediate safeguards to reduce and mitigate these impacts to the greatest extent possible.”