Share this
Twitter
Myspace
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Slashdot
Furl
Yahoo
Technorati
Newsvine
Facebook
Export PDF
Print
E-mail
TagsBY JOE TYRRELL
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Camden residents are suffering from health problems likely caused by their environment, and a new initiative will try to pull together the available information and use it to find solutions.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded a $20,000 "environmental justice" grant to a community group, the Heart of Camden, to develop an online database of health and environmental information by area.
Focusing on the impoverished Waterfront South and South-Central neighborhoods, "this project will go a long way toward helping the people of Camden identify specific environmental and health risks," said Judith Enck, EPA regional administrator, at a Jan. 15 press conference with Mayor Dana Redd.
Past studies have suggested problems but have been limited, according to Helene Pierson, Heart of Camden executive director. The new project "will provide a comprehensive evaluation of all exiting data... so that we can get to work on the most pressing issues," she said.According to a local group, the South Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, Camden has the highest concentration of polluting facilities, Superfund sites and diesel emissions of any city its size in New Jersey.
As a result, the group says, local residents are exposed to widespread soil contamination and dumping, scrap metal and hazardous waste businesses, heavy truck traffic to port facilities and factories, chemical contamination of city drinking water sources, and numerous examples of lead paint in older homes.
The chief investigator for the Heart of Camden project, Gary Young, said some of the effects became readily apparent to him at Cooper University Hospital in the city.
"The hospitalization rate for asthma in the city of Camden is 300 percent that of the state as a whole, and the asthma rate, particularly pediatric rate, in Waterfront South is higher than the rest of the city," he said.
"Nobody should be hospitalized for asthma, it's something you manage" through proper health care and limiting exposure to risk factors, Young said. But in the industrialized neighborhoods, truck traffic may be adding to the risks from factory and incinerator emissions.
"Diesel emissions include formaldehyde, and formaldehyde is something that triggers asthma in children," Young said.
Some individual polluters, such as the Camden Municipal Utilities Authority, already have taken steps to reduce emissions, he said. Re-routing trucks could help lower emissions in some parts of town, he said.
He works with researchers at the department of epidemiolgy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and the state Department of Environmental Protection also has provided data and support. The team will be able to compare information from individual neighborhoods, the city as whole, as well as other places in New Jersey.
The collective goal is to refine the information to get better handle on the cumulative health effects of exposure to "multi-point emissions" and their effects by geography neighborhood and economic level. Among the planned comparisons are rates of hospital visits, particularly for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
While the approach is not unique, participants said this is the first time it has been applied on this scale in New Jersey.
Joe Tyrrell may be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
