It’s difficult to imagine, but it is only in the last decade or so that the academic community has really begun to dial in on how air pollutants affect health of people living next door to major highways. But stacks of new research papers have been published in recent years, in part inspiring a new $2.5 million study that promises to be one of the most convincing to date. It’s based at Tufts University in Chinatown and may even send investigators out to Dorchester’s Columbia neighborhood.
It will tour three neighborhoods to detect pollutants, such as carbon monoxide and nitric oxide, as well as the less commonly heard about but more feared particulate matter, but it will also do much more. One of study’s hypotheses is that Ultra-Fine Particles (UFP), form of particulate matter, are causing systemic inflammation in adults, which in turn can clog arteries and cause a multitude of major problems including heart attack or stroke.
“There are studies that show there are gradients of ultrafine particles next to the highway, but they don’t [include] health impacts, they’re atmospheric,” explained Doug Brugge, the principal investigator of the CAFEH study and a Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts. “And there are certainly studies that show that people who live near highways area at a higher risk for various types of diseases, like cardiovascular and asthma. There’s also a lot of toxicological data that show that ultrafine particles are very toxic in animals. But there are very few studies that tie all that together. ”
The CAFEH, which stands for the ‘Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health’ study, intends to do just that.
Starting in Somerville this August a team of scientists and students began carefully navigating a motor home filled with air quality analysis equipment through the narrow streets of the Mystic View Development in Somerville, and then through a neighborhood of two-family homes just across the expressway.
A second part of the study underway now is gathering detailed surveys from hundreds of residents in the same neighborhoods, in part determining what other health impacts may be affecting them.
A third wave of data collection will get even deeper, focusing on clinical data, taking blood samples, measuring blood pressure and ankle artery width, and performing other tests that will help reveal how our bodies cope UFP and other pollutants.
The Somerville data collection promises to take about a year, said Brugge, and then the team will tackle Chinatown, a neighborhood split in two when I-93 was built in the 1950s. And then will move on to a third, yet-to-be determined neighborhood, but Brugge and his team are taking a long look at two areas in South Boston and one in the northern edge of Dorchester that would together comprise a third study area.
The Dorchester Environmental Health Coalition has been helping the team explore the possibility of studying Dorchester, much more community-based work has gone into the study. A steering committee comprised of representatives from the Somerville Transportation Equity Partnership (STEP), the Latin American Health Institute, the Chinese Progressive Association, the Committee for Boston Public Housing and the Chinatown Resident Association are helping to guide it along, and in fact civic activist Wig Zamore and his group STEP played a big part in inspiring it.
If the study’s hypothesis is correct, Brugge sees a number of possible outcomes, including a rezoning that would prevent new residences from being built near the highway, or the implementation of air filtration systems in homes and other facilities along its path.
“We’d like to do a study of whether [filtration systems are] effective or not, but we haven’t been funded for that yet,” said Brugge. “Another area we’re thinking about is that sound barriers and dense vegetation seem to have an effect.”
For more information, see the CAFEH homepage.
