In Their Backyard (cont'd)

About 7 months ago, I wrote about a community meeting in West Oakland where most in the audience were "out-of-towners" who could leave this highly polluted neighborhood and return home to a healthier place.

At Wednesday's follow-up meeting on diesel impacts on health in West Oakland, the demographics were only slightly different, in favor of the local residents, but not different enough to dismiss the recurring question of why more people directly impacted by these issues were not there. Was it that the meeting hosts (California Air Resources Board, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Port of Oakland, and Union Pacific) didn't get the word out? Aren't the residents concerned about their health? Were they too busy or tired from working already long hours -- or possibly even at work during the meeting -- to attend?

Whatever the reasons, something needs to be done to get the community more engaged, because, as was confirmed last night, "The West Oakland community is exposed to diesel particulate matter concentrations that are almost 3 times [higher than in other parts of the Bay Area] (West Oakland Study)." This supplements findings that "In 2005,...state data [revealed] that West Oakland children ages 5 and under visited the emergency room for asthma at a rate nearly 3 times higher than children in the county overall,...and a study of death certificates dating to the 1960s showed that residents of West Oakland live 10 years fewer than people living in the Oakland hills (SF Gate article)."

So will this continue being an issue of "in their backyard, so not my problem"? For many of us, I think it needs the attention and involvement of the residents themselves first.