a publication of mothers for clean air

summer 1999 - vol. 2, issue 2

Puppets for Clean Air

Pesky Particulate and Odious Ozone were quite busy telling kids about Houston's air pollution in April and May. Pesky and Odious are two of the five characters in a traveling puppet show, generously loaned to Mothers for Clean Air by the Clean Air Coalition. The show was presented at several Earth Day events including the KRBE/Enron Earth Day Festival at Buffalo Bayou Park, the Houston Arboretum, and the Woodlands. The puppet quintet was also invited to participate in the 5^th Annual Drinking Water Festival at the Zoo, and the Asthma Awareness Funfest held at the Museum of Health and Medical Science.

Of course, Pesky, Odious and friends are pretty lifeless without real live puppeteers. We extend our thanks to our great puppeteers from Girl Scout Troops 2142 and 7122 and to Christine Cao, Cecilia Ethun, Merrill Turner, and Laura Sinden. These teens are great ambassadors for Mothers for Clean Air. They have been invited to take Pesky and Odious to the Astros Game on July 22! Great going, girls!

Suzie, Pesky, Whiff, Boy, and Odious perform at the Houston Arboretum in May.

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs.....

Ants, roaches, termites, fleas, mosquitoes, wasps. Do any of these pests make their way into your home? Chances are you didn't need to attend our May 25 meeting, Pesticides Indoors: Controlling Pests Without Hurting Children to know that bugs are a problem in Houston. However, if you did attend you would have learned that the pesticides commonly used to treat these pests have several entry routes for getting into the human body and can be harmful to the nervous and reproductive systems. Children are particularly good at getting pesticides into their small, generally pudgy bodies because they frequently put their hands or other objects into their mouths, roll on carpet indoors or grass outdoors, and play in the dirt. Mary Ann Smith, Assistant Professor of Toxicology at the UT School of Public Health explained that it is not only the active ingredients in pesticides that we need to be concerned about, but that inert ingredients can also contribute to toxicity.

There are several non-chemical alternatives and maintenance measures for controlling pests that can be used in place of pesticides. Mary Ann Kelly of the Texas Pesticide Information Network of the Texas Center for Policy Studies in Austin emphasized the importance of maintaining a clean, dry, well-sealed home, both inside and out. She recommended alternatives to pesticides such as pouring two to three gallons of boiling water with soap on ant mounds, using boric acid to kill roaches and controlling termites with builders sand and 10% diatomaceous earth spread around the house foundation. Representatives of pest control companies at the meeting assured us that they are looking into less toxic methods for treating pests because consumers are demanding them.

Principles for Cleaner Air

In a historic move in January, representatives of business, government, and environmental organizations in the Houston-Galveston region jointly signed a declaration of Principles for Cleaner Air. These nine principles state that our air quality is a regional problem and that the participation of every individual, governmental unit, and business will be required to reduce emissions. The region includes eight counties: Harris, Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Liberty, Montgomery, and Waller. The principles also state that pollution control measures should be implemented as quickly as possible at the lowest possible cost to achieve health benefits and prevent loss of federal funding to the region. The principles further state that all reasonable efforts should be made to avoid State Implementation Plan (SIP) disapproval by EPA (see Air Quality Basics, pg. 3). Mothers for Clean Air is one of many organizations endorsing the Cleaner Air Principles. You can see the principles and the organizations endorsing them on the Clean Air Coalition website at www.cleanairaction.org

Costs of Cleaner Air

In Houston, as many as 435 lives could be spared and the Houston area could benefit as much as $2.9 to $3.1 billion dollars each year if the federal health standards for ozone and fine particulate matter were achieved by the year 2007. These figures were estimated in a study paid for by the City of Houston to quantify the health and economic benefits of achieving the federal health standard for air pollutants using various methods of controlling emissions.

The study focused on eighteen counties including and surrounding Harris County. The dollar values of the health benefits were based on direct medical costs, loss of work and school days, discomfort, inconvenience, and loss of enjoyment and leisure time. The health benefits assessed in this study did not include children because most existing data has been collected for adults only. If children were included in the study, the number of lives spared and the economic benefits would be much higher.

Environmental Justice in Barrett Station

Harrison Barrett, a freed slave from Louisiana, settled the property now known as Barrett Station in 1840. His great grandson, Fred Barrett, carries on the name in Barrett Station, a small city south of Crosby, Texas and close to the San Jacinto River. It is a good place to live and raise children because everyone looks out for each others' children, and is active in trying to make Barrett Station a better place to live.

Lurking in the shadows of this pleasant little community are two of the country's worst Superfund sites, Sikes and French Ltd - dumping grounds for cancer-causing industrial waste. The French, Ltd. site, located near U.S. Highway 90, was once a small lake where children swam and played unaware that it was filled with harmful toxic waste. From 1967 to 1973, thirty companies dumped 100,000 barrels of toxic chemicals each year causing ground water contamination. There are now 5-6 million gallons of organic sludges consisting primarily of oily wastes, acidic galvanizing wastes, pickling acids, some phenols, PCBs, and heavy metals. The Sikes Superfund site, located 1.7 miles from Crosby High School, closed in the 1960s and was used as a Baptism pool for the community.

Mr. Barrett thinks his community was chosen as a dump site because it is a minority community. "If you look at the top 50 Superfund sites in the country, the are located in minority areas," he states. The sites have been cleaned up, but much irreparable harm has been done to this community. Mr. Barrett believes that his community has been hurt economically, because no one will want to move to or work at Barrett Station. He talks about how many people are dying from cancer in his community. He lost both of his parents to cancer; his father to lung and his mother to pancreatic cancer. Another family lost a mother to lung cancer and two children to leukemia.

People in the community are concerned about the number of young people in Barrett Station getting cancer. Mr. Barrett believes that the high cancer rate is due to the toxic environmental wastes in his community. Despite all the environmental problems, Mr. Barrett continues to live in Barrett Station. He says, "This is my home. I am a Barrett. I grew up here and raised my children here."

Mothers for Clean Air is developing a chapter in Barrett Station through an EPA environmental justice grant.

Air Quality Basics

SIP=State Implementation Plan

The EPA sets air quality standards or limits for six air pollutants: lead, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and ozone. These standards are established by reviewing extensive research about the adverse health effects of each pollutant. Areas that do not meet the air quality standard are classified as either "marginal," "moderate," "serious," "severe," or "extreme" based on the violation of the standard. Since the 1970's, the eight-county Houston-Galveston area¹ has greatly exceeded the federal health standard for ground-level ozone and has been designated as a "severe" non-attainment area for ozone. This designation stipulates certain pollution control requirements and specific deadlines for meeting the ozone standard.²

Since 1979, the State of Texas has been submitting a required plan to the U.S. EPA indicating how the Houston-Galveston area will reduce ozone pollution and achieve the air quality standard. This plan is called a SIP or State Implementation Plan. The State has until November of this year to present a SIP to the U.S. EPA demonstrating how this area will meet the ozone standard by 2007.

The November 1999 SIP must show what changes will be made in the Houston-Galveston area that will reduce ozone to the federal standard. Changes, called "control strategies", are entered into a computer model that predicts to which level ozone will be reduced. When enough control strategies are entered into the model to reduce ozone levels to the standard, the SIP can be submitted to the EPA.

The process of deciding which control strategies will be entered into the model can be complicated. The control strategies for the November 1999 SIP are a combination of federal and state actions and local options. The Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission (TNRCC) has given each non-attainment area the opportunity to determine what changes will be made in each area to achieve the ozone standard.

A local group representing business, industry, government, and environmental interests has been meeting since November to decide on possible control options for the Houston-Galveston area. This group came up with a list of over 200 changes that could be implemented to reduce ozone pollution. These include controls on industrial and utility boilers, expanded inspection and maintenance for vehicles, cleaner fuels for cars and trucks, reduced speed limits, low emission vehicles, and pollution controls on construction equipment. Local control strategies were sent to TNRCC to be modeled along with federal and state controls. With all these controls entered into the computer model, the Houston-Galveston eight-county area still did not meet the federal health standard for ozone.

The November 1999 SIP must be able to demonstrate that this area can achieve the ozone standard. Failure to do so could result in economic restrictions that would place requirements on new businesses moving to Houston, freeze Federal highway funds, and stop highway building projects.

The TNRCC is asking for your input about the State Implementation Plan (SIP) that they will be submitting to the EPA. You can comment about the importance of meeting the federal clean air standard for the health of children or the economic well being of the area, the control measures you would like or not like to see in the SIP, or another issue.

Comments can be made in person at the public hearing or mailed to Ms. Bettie Bell, Office of Environmental Policy, Analysis, and Asssesment, MC 205, P.O. Box 13087, Austin Texas 78711-3087, or faxed to (512)239-4808.

^{1 Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery, Waller,}

^{2 Air Quality Reference Guide for the Houston-Galveston Area, June 1998. Houston-Galveston Area Council}

No Ozone: Keeping Our Kids from Ozone

^{Mothers for Clean Air is conducting an ozone education program called No Ozone in day care centers in East Harris County. Two hundred fifty day care centers licensed for preschool children were sent a No Ozone packet containing a full-color brochure and an application form. Day care centers enrolled in the program receive free fax notices of ozone watches (days predicted to have high ozone), a personal visit, a free presentation for staff and parents, and four newsletters a year. Day care directors are briefed on the negative effects ozone can have on children's breathing and urged to keep children inside during an ozone watch.}

^{Mothers for Clean Air is also collaborating with researchers at the University of Houston and helping to collect data about when children at day care centers are exposed to outdoor air. To date, 25 day care centers have been visited and presentations are being scheduled for August and September. Presentations will focus on the health effects of ozone and what can be done to reduce air pollution. This program was funded by the W. Alton Jones Foundation and the brochures were generously printed by the Clean Air Coalition.}