Environmental Health Perspectives Volume
103, Supplement 6, September 1995
[Citation
in PubMed]
Building Healthy Communities for Children: The Transportation Link
Henry Holmes
Urban Habitat Program, Earth Island Institute, San Francisco, California
Abstract
Two concepts are essential to a definition of a healthy community: social
justice and ecological sustainability. These principles must be at the heart
of creating healthy communities, cities, and regions. Children and young
people are an integral part of socially just and ecologically sustainable
communities. Transportation and land-use policies are critical tools for
shaping healthy communities, cities and regions. The health impacts of the
private automobile and its full cost to society, including public health
and environmental damage costs, need to be clearly understood. The developing
physiology of children put them at particular risk to medical impacts of
automobile emissions and air pollution. The public health impacts of transportation
and land-use policies cannot be divorced from the planning and decision-making
process. Transit, bicycle, and pedestrian-oriented transportation modes
can serve the transportation needs of children; they can stimulate land
uses more conducive to a healthy social, economic, and environmental quality
of life. -- Environ Health Perspect 103(Suppl 6):00-00 (1995)
Key words: transportation, social justice, ecological sustainability,
healthy communities, environmental health
This commentary was presented at the Symposium on Preventing
Child Exposures to Environmental Hazards: Research and Policy Issues held
18-19 March 1994 in Washington, DC.
Address correspondence to Henry Holmes, Associate Director,
Urban Habitat Program, Earth Island Institute, 300 Broadway, Suite 28,
San Francisco, CA 94133. Telephone (415) 788-3666. Fax (415) 788-7324.
Social justice and ecological sustainability are essential for a healthy
community. Social justice can be defined as meeting people's basic needs
equitably, that is, fairly and justly. Social justice demands that societal
institutions be accessible, responsible and accountable to all people in
society regardless of social or economic standing. Ecological sustainability
is based on principles of ecology, which recognize the connectedness and
interrelationship of all living things. Ecosystems are living systems; they
are complex webs of relationships involving the natural world and human
beings. Long-term survival (sustainability) of any species in an ecosystem
depends on a limited resource base. A sustainable society is one that is
able to satisfy its needs while maintaining its natural resources and life
support systems. The more diverse the system the more alternative relationships
are available when other parts of the system break down. This applies to
the human community as well as the natural world. Diversity is critical
to the long-term survival of future generations of human beings and the
natural world of which we are a part (1).
"Socially just and ecologically sustainable communities" are
those that assure an equitable, healthy, and sustainable social, economic,
and environmental quality of life as a minimum standard for all people.
These principles must be at the heart of creating healthy communities, cities,
and regions. Children and young people are an integral part of socially
just and ecologically sustainable communities.
Within the public policy arena, transportation and land-use planning
are critical tools for shaping healthy communities, cities, and regions.
U.S. transportation policy has for many years sought to accommodate personal
motor vehicle travel by developing extensive roads and highway and freeway
networks. These networks, primarily serving the transportation needs of
suburban commuters, sap the life out of inner city communities, leaving
them isolated from the economic base necessary to sustain efficient infrastructure
and good quality urban services. They degrade the environment and detrimentally
affect environmental and public health. Highway systems that cut through
urban communities, most often populated by people of color, poor and working
people, create environmental, economic, social, and community-stability
hazards. Measurably higher levels of immediate and incremental toxicants,
air, water and noise pollution, and debris disrupt local land values and
destabilize community quality of life.
Our society's over-reliance on motor vehicles and the attendant public
policies and private practices that reinforce such over-reliance have substantial
adverse impacts on public health and community environmental well-being,
particularly for children. The health impacts of the private automobile
and its full cost to society, including public health and environmental
damage costs, need to be clearly understood.
Motor vehicles are known to emit the following toxicants:
* Lead was an additive of gasoline before it was banned in the 1970s,
however, it is still sold for use in older vehicles. Lead is extremely toxic,
and it can affect almost any organ in the body. Low level chronic exposure
affects the nervous system (learning disorders) and the blood (anemia).
Since the late 1970s, mounting evidence indicates that even low levels of
lead can impair the mental abilities of children. Environmental and social
justice activists in Los Angeles and West Oakland, CA, point to lead as
one pervasive pollutant destroying their children's lives. The soil in parts
of West Oakland, for example, a neighborhood crisscrossed by highways and
leaking underground petroleum storage tanks, is so highly contaminated with
lead that it qualifies as a Superfund Hazardous waste site (2).
* Carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless and odorless gas. Carbon monoxide
affects human health by impairing the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood
that results in impaired perception, slowed reþexes, and drowsiness.
It can increase the occurrence of headaches and it affects the central nervous
system, the heart, and the transference of blood around the body (2).
* Benzene is used to improve the performance of unleaded gasoline. The
major sources of benzene in air are emissions from motor vehicles and evaporation
losses during handling, distribution, and storage of gasoline. Levels are
higher in urban areas than in rural ones and are at their highest near filling
stations, gasoline storage tanks and benzene producing and handling industries.
Benzene is a proven carcinogen, and there is no known safe threshold level
(2).
* Nitrogen oxides (NOx) include nitrogen dioxide (NO2),
nitric oxide (NO), and nitrous oxide (N2O). All of these pollutants
are derived from automobile emissions and are considered to have adverse
affects on both human health and the environment. In humans it can irritate
the respiratory tract, reduce lung function, and increase susceptibility
to asthma and viral infections. Nitrogen oxides also play a major role in
the formation of acid rain and ground-level ozone (2).
* Hydrocarbons, or volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are emitted from
the unburned or partly burned fuel from a car's exhaust. Road traffic is
largely responsible for hydrocarbon emissions and some hydrocarbons, like
benzene, are carcinogenic. Others cause drowsiness, eye and respiratory
tract irritation, and coughing. Hydrocarbons cause environmental and human
health damage by reacting with nitrogen oxides to form tropospheric ozone,
a principal component of photochemical smog (2).
* Photochemical smog (ozone) causes eye irritation, headaches, coughing,
impaired lung function, and eye, nose and throat irritation. Asthmatics
and children are most at risk. The chances of experiencing adverse health
affects from elevated ozone levels increase during heavy exercise or outdoor
activity (2).
* Particulates are fine particles such as soot that result from the incomplete
combustion of fuel. Particulates in the air can aggravate respiratory diseases
such as bronchitis and asthma. Possibly the most troubling aspect of particulate
matter in the air is the link to cancer (2).
* Aldehydes are a group of chemicals emitted from car exhaust as a result
of incomplete fuel combustion. They generally have a pungent odor and are
probably responsible for much of the smell associated with traffic, particularly
diesel vehicles. Aldehydes, including formaldehyde, can cause irritation
of the eyes, nose, and throat together with sneezing, coughing, nausea,
and breathing difficulties. Children are most sensitive. Laboratory evidence
suggests that formaldehyde is carcinogenic (2).
* A complex mix of trace metals are emitted from car engines. Some of
these trace metals, such as arsenic, beryllium, mercury, cadmium, and lead,
can be highly toxic at low concentrations (2).
The developing physiology of children puts them at particular risk to
medical impacts of automobile emissions and air pollution. Children consume
three times as much air per body weight and receive three times as much
pollution per pound of body weight as adults. They are also more susceptible
to loss of lung function because of smaller lung surface area and proportionally
higher concentrations of air pollution and smog in the lungs (3).
Correcting the adverse environmental and public health impacts of transportation
policy requires vision and fundamental change in the way public policy planning
and decision-making is carried out. The public health impacts of transportation
and land-use policies cannot be ignored or divorced from the planning and
decision-making process.
In the same way that there is a need to integrate transportation and
land-use planning to address their interconnected social, economic, and
environmental impacts, so too must the public health impacts be integrated
into such policies. The framework by which we understand and seek to address
issues must be an integrated and holistic one. In considering the public
health impacts of transportation and land-use policies, we must consider
the particular impacts on children and young people.
Children are too young to drive so their transportation needs must be
addressed by providing multimodal transportation alternatives. Urban communities
must provide public mass transit that is accessible, safe, efficient, and
affordable and that takes people where they need to go. Transit-oriented
development that provides housing, jobs, schools, health services, recreation,
and other basic human needs in close proximity to one another helps foster
a sense of community and place that is of a manageable scale and conducive
to a healthy quality of life. Bicycle and pedestrian access also provide
transportation options for young people while also offering personal and
public health benefits.
Personal health benefits from mass transit include better safety and
reduced risk of injury or death from automobile accidents. Bicycling and
walking naturally provide personal health benefits, given their inherent
physical and aerobic qualities. Public health benefits result from reduced
reliance on automobiles and the air, land, water, and noise pollution they
create and from more efficient and sustainable use of natural resources
and urban space.
Transit, bicycle, and pedestrian-oriented transportation modes can stimulate
land uses that are more conducive to a healthy social, economic, and environmental
quality of life. Rather than devoting so much urban land space to accommodating
automobiles, more emphasis can be given to parks, community gardens, open
space, and city-centered compact development. Neighborhoods, cities, and
regions need to be places where young people can make contributions to and
actively participate in the social well-being through opportunities for
self-exploration, exploration of the places where they live, and community-building.
Together, we must create a vision of our future and that of future generations.
As we approach the 21st century, we must embrace principles of social justice
and ecological sustainability as the foundation of neighborhoods, communities,
cities, and regions. We must change transportation and land-use policies
in ways that help build healthy, sustainable communities and that respond
to the particular needs of children and young people. If we really are to
have a future worth living, we must design and implement public policies
that integrate social, economic, environmental, and public health issues,
values, and costs and provide a comprehensive, holistic framework for understanding
how the pieces add up to the whole. Only then can we ever hope to achieve
socially just and ecologically sustainable communities in a world that will
survive for future generations.
REFERENCES
1. Capra F. The Principles of Ecology. Berkely, CA:The
Elmwood Institute, 1993.
2. Beard J, ed. The environmental impact of the car: a
greenpeace report. Air pollution and autos 20. Seattle, WA: Greenpeace,
1992;21-26.
3. Mann E. On the human toll: people at risk. In: L.A.'s
Lethal Air. Van Nuys, CA:Labor/Community Strategy Center, 1991;21-22.
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