It's a Gateway to cancer: groups
Tom Zytaruk
The latest battle over the controversial Gateway road program is being
fought at the microscopic level.
The menace, though mere microns in size, is not unseen. It's light
enough to float in the air for days or even weeks, but when it lands, it
collects to form the black gunk Sunbury residents near busy River Road
are sweeping off their sundecks and balconies.
A group called Gateway 30, representing a network of 30 community groups
south of the Fraser who oppose the massive transportation project, is
claiming the South Fraser Perimeter Road the government proposes to
build along Surrey and North Delta's Fraser River waterfront will poison
local school children within a kilometre of the highway.
"The Gateway Program's own literature acknowledges that cancer rates
will rise in Ladner, North Delta, Royal Heights and Fraser Heights as a
result of proximity to the truck highway, with children and the elderly
being the most seriously affected," says Don Hunt, of the Sunbury
Neighbourhood Association, one of the groups under Gateway 30's
umbrella.
The culprit is diesel particulate matter, 2.5 microns and smaller.
"Everybody knows these days about the danger of diesel particulate."
Though the Ministry of Transportation tries to give the data "a good
spin," Hunt says, it acknowledges in its own reports, in Technical
Volume 16, page 51, that "human health is the second largest category
impacted by the Gateway program" and "economic impact is very high
because the estimated economic damages from PM 2.5 (Diesel particulate
matter 2.5 microns and smaller) related health problems per tonne of PM
2.5 emissions are substantial."
Moreover, the data acknowledges that "close proximity to a major roadway
has a higher cancer rate and has higher respiratory disease rates."
According to Volume 7, page 50 of Gateway's own reports, the short-term
health effects of diesel exhaust inhalation include headaches, eye,
nose, throat and bronchial irritation, fatigue, stomach aches, nausea
and compromised pulmonary function. "There is growing epidemiological
evidence that increased cardiorespiratory mortalities follow increased
ambient concentrations of diesel particulate matter," it notes.
Dark by any standard. But hey, there's good news: Vol. 16, p. 39 of an
Environmental Assessment Office report states that "with increased air
pollution there can possibly be increased employment (eg. in the health
sector) because of the economic activity associated with correcting the
results of its impacts."
Teresa Townsley, vice-chair of the Delta school board, said the board is
"very concerned" about the potential for pollution in local schools and
will seek more information from the provincial government. The above
quotation from the EAO report did not warm her heart.
"That sounds absolutely shocking," she said. "We're talking about
children here."
Delta's children, she added, are nobody's collateral damage.
Ironically, Hunt's family moved to Sunbury 12 years ago to get away from
a road project. Two of his children, aged 7 and 10, attend Brooke
elementary, one of the schools Gateway 30 says will be adversely
affected by emissions.
Hunt noted that a UBC study found diesel particulate measurable up to
750 metres. "Seven hundred and fifty metres from this new proposed South
Fraser Perimeter Road is the other side of Nordel," he said.
Brooke elementary is 250 metres from where the proposed highway will
run. Diesel particulate, he notes, is "especially dangerous in a
playground because the kids are running and deep-breathing, so it gets
very deep into their lungs."
Gateway 30 alleges that thousands of local school children will be
harmed by the project. Thirty-seven parks and playgrounds and 16 Delta
and Surrey schools will be within one kilometre of the highway. These
schools are Annieville, Brooke, Delta Manor, Ladner, Holly, Devon
Gardens, Gibson, Erma Stephenson, James Ardiel, Bridgeview and Royal
Heights elementary schools, as well as Delview and Kwantlen Park
secondary schools and Bothwell, Igra Islamic and Pacific Academy
schools.
Prompted by a 1997 British study that found children dying of cancer
tend to live within five kilometres of a highway, Brian Brubaker of the
Bridgeview Community Association, another Gateway 30 member, asks the
obvious: "Why would they knowingly create conditions that will cause
cancer in children?"
But Kevin Falcon, B.C.'s minister of transportation, says Gateway 30 has
got it all wrong.
"I think it's sad and unfortunate that they try and peddle facts like
that, that are not true," he said. "In all cases air quality, which
includes human health effects, are improved in 2021 with or without the
South Fraser Perimeter Road_ that just puts a lie to what they're trying
to peddle."
Falcon noted that emission standards are improving in automobiles.
"Diesel particulates are still a problem, to be honest with you, but a
very minor percentage of the overall problem. Most of it is driven by
regular-fuel gasoline cars."
But won't there be a lot of trucks running up and down the proposed
highway?
"Yes," Falcon admitted, "but there already is a lot of trucks right now,
and what's happening right now is they're all jammed on the local
municipal roads, like River Road, and they're sitting there idling,
spewing all that stuff out into the environment and not being able to
move."
published on 03/07/2007
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