Stop, Drop and Roll

26 June 2007 | Alameda Community, Alameda Community Development Forum, Measure A | John Knox White

So I’m really tired of writing about Measure A, because honestly, it’s not all that I think about, it’s not even a lot of what I spend my time thinking about. Perhaps it’s something that ties into things that I think about, and that’s the excuse that I’m using today for the fact that I’ll end this post with a mention of it.

That said, if you, like me, are tired of hearing about it, just stop short of the final paragraph and you won’t hear a word about it in this post (except of course for the preamble to the post, which if you’ve read this far, I can’t change).

In my non-blogging life, which is about 98% of my life, I come across a lot of public agency documents while researching things for work, home and the kids. In one of these recent endeavors (I won’t mention which), I stumbled across a map produced by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) (I kid you not, it must be one of the most unpronounceable acronyms in history – Back-Mud (very soft “u”)). On first glance, it makes a lot of sense, the places where there are big cities, there is a high level of exposure to PM 2.5 emission (which represents particles less than 2.5 micrometres in aerodynamic diameter which is bad to breathe.

From Wikipedia:

“particles smaller than 2.5 micrometres, PM_2.5, tend to penetrate into the gas-exchange regions of the lung, and very small particles (< 100 nanometers) may pass through the lungs to affect other organs. In particular, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Pope et. al, 2002), indicates that PM_2.5 leads to high plaque deposits in arteries, causing vascular inflammation and atherosclerosis — a hardening of the arteries that reduces elasticity, which can lead to heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems. Researchers suggest that even short-term exposure at elevated concentrations could significantly contribute to heart disease.”

But then I looked closer, particularly at the Alameda portion of the map, and I was surprised to find well over half of Alameda’s population in the Top 50% for exposure to PM2.5 particules, and a large section in the Top 25%.

Here’s the map and legend:

Map: Exposure to PM2.5 Emissions of Combined Under-18 and Over-64 Populations in Year 2000 (based on a weighted product of population and emissions)

Obviously the areas with the highest industrial sites, West Oakland, the Port, the fruitvale to the coliseum corridor, have high exposure, but given the winds around here, I was surprised to see the high level of exposure over the entire east end of the city.

If you don’t want to read about how this could possibly tie into measure a or at least discussions about Alameda Point, I’d stop reading now.

In many discussions on what to do at Alameda Point, some have pushed a “light industrial” solution in lieu of housing. Moving beyond the fact that local cities that want to retain light industrial that they currently have (Berkeley, Oakland, etc.) are struggling to do so, do we also want to plant more of this type of development in an already highly concentrated area of industrial? In fact, wouldn’t it make sense to put housing at the point, where there is a lower incidence of PM2.5 exposure than in much of the surrounding area?

There! It’s out of my system for the day. I hope you enjoy yours.