Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host, Jaron.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: And I'm your other co host, Lonnie.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: And today we're joined by WeAct's very own Valentina Rojas to talk about air quality and some updates about an important report that was released last year. But before we get to that, can you share we act's mission?
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Lonnie Absolutely. We act's mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Thank you. So, as I mentioned, we've got two topics to discuss today that are closely related. Air quality and this thing called the New York City Environmental Justice Report, AKA the EJNYC Report. You'll hear hear us refer to it in both ways. So just so you know, some folks may remember this report from a previous episode that we did last year with our executive director, Peggy Shepherd. So if you haven't already, I'd recommend you go back and listen to that episode because there's some good stuff about what is this report all about? And whatnot. But we'll have some, you know, we'll provide a little bit of context anyway, just, just for folks who haven't listened to that.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So for, for, for those who are maybe unfamiliar with EJNYC Report or have not listened to that episode, it's a comprehensive report on environmental justice issues impacting our neighborhoods across the city. And that includes Harlem and other northern Manhattan neighborhoods. And New York City is the first and only city we know of that has issued such a report.
And the goal of the report is to better understand what the disproportionate environmental impacts are, what communities are impacted and by what issues.
It's a good, comprehensive report and ensures that environmental justice is on the city's agenda. And now that we have the report and mapping tool that came along with it, everyone in the city government can fully understand the disproportionate environmental burdens our communities face.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: So we've got a great episode in store for you to get more into that and to talk about how it relates to air quality. But with all that said, we also did an episode last year with Dr. Nikki Sheets where we talked about this idea of cumulative impacts and how it fits into the larger conversation about environmental justice. And we'll touch on it briefly and how it relates to air quality in our conversation with Valentina. But I recommend you Also, check out that episode if you haven't listened to it already. It's a good one.
But with that, Lonnie, what do you say? Let's go ahead and jump into our interview with Valentina.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Yeah, let's get into it.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: All right. Thank you so much for joining us, Valentina. We're super happy to have you on this episode to talk about air quality and the EJNYC report. But, you know, before we get too far in, I just want to have you briefly introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about your role at WE act.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: Thank you both so much for having me. I've been a long time fan of this podcast.
My name is Valentina Rojas. I am the environmental health manager at WEAct, Jaron's old job.
Big shoes to fill, I found as soon as I started.
But the biggest project that I do at WE ACT is I oversee the community air monitoring project.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: Cool. Yeah, big shoes, about ten and a half. So not too big, just like moderately average, average male size shoes. But you know, there's lots of work to be done on air quality in New York, so we're grateful to have you to talk about some of that and to dive into some of the issues that you're working on and all that. So thanks for being here with us.
[00:03:51] Speaker C: Yeah, of course. I'm excited to be here.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: So earlier in the year we mentioned that some work that WE ACT has been doing related to air quality monitoring. Can you give us an update on that work and what's going on there?
[00:04:03] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely.
So WE ACT has a very long history of doing work around air quality. Some of their first big campaigns were around air quality when it came to the wastewater treatment center or the mta, the diesel bus campaign. So WE ACT has always been really focused on air quality. When I came into this role, there was two different projects around community air monitoring. Two really great projects. The first one was a smaller pilot version with Purple airs, which are low cost sensors, very low cost sensors that only monitor for PM2.5. And PM2.5 is one of the best pollutants to be monitoring for because of its really extreme or really well researched. Links between PM2.5 and health PM2.5 for many has many different health impacts, including early childhood asthma, including respiratory problems, including cardiovascular problems. A lot of these things are linked to high levels of PM2.5 in neighborhoods. So the two community air monitoring projects that we had set up were really specifically trying to see what the levels of PM2.5 and other pollutants in northern Manhattan Were and also we are still trying to answer the very critical question of how is congestion pricing going to impact the air quality in uptown northern Manhattan? Congestion pricing was put into effect after a very long battle starting in January 2025.
And we thankfully had these purple airs up since October 2023.
The last batch of data that we had, we actually had a really good ability to compare the first couple months of congestion pricing air quality to other previous months before congestion pricing had been put into effect using the same kind of batch of data and using the same monitors. So the mailman students that were with us this past spring semester were able to look at the impacts of congestion pricing on the levels of PM2.5 in northern Manhattan from January to May of 2025 compared to 2024.
The students found that the levels of PM2.5 actually slightly decreased in northern Manhattan, which is really great news because as a policy we act does support congestion pricing. We think that it's really, really important for the MTA to invest in cleaner, more efficient subway systems. But we were really concerned about the impacts of increased traffic on air quality in northern Manhattan.
So to hear that there was actually a decrease in PM2.5 was really good news.
What we did learn also though is they compared the levels of PM2.5 in northern Manhattan to different kinds of data sources that New York City and the state puts out, including the New York City Community Air Survey, which is a city, a dohmh city survey of air quality. And they found, they also did an assessment shortly after congestion pricing went into effect, and they found that there was a Greater decrease in PM2.5 levels in areas near the central business district or around the central business district compared to the decrease that we found in in northern Manhattan. What we see here is that there's an inequitable distribution of the benefits of the congestion pricing policy we use. This is a great example of how community science, community research can help us and our community advocate for greater investment in air pollution mitigation in northern Manhattan.
The other community air monitoring project that we've put into place since I've been here since last year is this larger, more high tech project. We got a grant from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to put up 18 quant EQ monitors. So these are more high tech than the PM 2.5. They're also more expensive than the purple Airs, but it has, they monitor for seven different EPA criteria pollutants. So PM 2.5, but also PM 1, PM 10 ozone, nitrogen oxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide.
We were able to partner with the Department of Education's Office of Energy and Sustainability to actually get access to schools in northern Manhattan to set up these monitors, which was really exciting partnership. One of the biggest kinds of red tapes that we kept running into when we were trying to set up these monitors is, yeah, just the red tape of bureaucracy and having these really expensive monitors out in the streets. So that partnership was incredibly helpful and it also is giving us a lot of opportunities to work with students and teachers in these schools to actually get some data that's actually being collected in their own schools into the hands to do some kind of like research projects or just like Introduction to Environmental justice and what air quality is intercurricular in schools, which is really exciting.
So the quant AQs have been up since March of this year.
So we've had maybe six months now of data.
We're doing kind of like the early rounds of analysis we have. The good thing is that we have the purple air data from, from almost two years back. So there's the ability to compare our quant AQ data to the purple air data to make some analysis, to do some analysis on, on the impacts of congestion pricing on air quality uptown.
But we will have a report out on that soon enough. We're also working with the New York City community Air survey people, so the actual department at DOHMH who does that, to cross share our data. So we're really excited about being able to get access to their data, have them look over ours and so that there's like a more broad understanding of air pollution in New York City, especially in environmental justice neighborhoods.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: You kind of just touched on this in your answer. But I remember, you know, a question that I got a lot, you know, when I was in this role and just in general working in EJ space, especially around air quality stuff is why are we doing monitoring? You know, we know air is bad in certain places, like we know certain facilities that they're polluting whatnot. Can you just elaborate more on what the benefit of doing this kind of monitoring, especially with the different types, you know, really low cost sensors, more community based monitoring and then these more high tech sensors. What's the benefit of doing this work and why is it important to have community members involved?
[00:10:51] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely.
So I think there's a lot of different types of benefits for having this kind of work. I think something that I've been really excited about in doing this work is actually connecting with a lot of community organizations outside of the state through our EJLF forum for Example, there's been a lot of community organizations that have reached out to me who have specific concerns about specific polluters in their neighborhoods, specific industries. Or they see that there's really high cases of asthma or respiratory problems and they see this as a symptom that there must be some kind of air pollution that we don't know about impacting our neighborhoods.
I find the community air monitoring to be a really amazing way for communities to start gathering evidence of their felt impacts of the unjust burdens of polluters in their neighborhoods. Hard evidence, because people in spaces, especially policymakers, especially people with money, they love to talk numbers. They won't take you seriously unless you have numbers to back up what you're saying.
So I find this one of the best reasons to do community air monitoring. But it does come with its own challenges because these are really low cost sensors. Sometimes policymakers or polluters themselves will kind of dismiss your projects. So there are still barriers for community organizations that are doing these kinds of projects. Usually you either have to have really good relationships with academics who will help you validate your data, or yeah, working with, with startups or with people who have kind of more like data science experience.
But yeah, I do think that they're incredibly important and it's also really an amazing way to see people feel in community that they feel that they can start actually address some of the things that are happening to them. They can start investigating it for themselves. They can start to think of solutions for themselves. Recently, this summer we worked with Biobus, which is another nonprofit organization that's based up here in Harlem that does a lot of science STEM education for Harlem high schoolers.
This summer they had a whole junior scientist program and there was a group of students who was really interested in doing air quality.
I went at the beginning of the summer and I gave them a presentation about all the work that we.
All the different kinds of programs and projects. And there was one group that was specifically really interested in air quality, which was really exciting for me because they're never interested in air quality. They're always interested in beauty justice.
They never care about air. But they were really excited. They were geeked out about the numbers. And it was a really amazing project to collaborate with them on. We just kind of gave them access to the data set. They wanted to see if there was a correlation or a connection between extreme weather events and increased levels of pollution, of air pollution. They looked at PM2.5 specifically, they created this whole research project. From beginning to end, they thought about what Days there was extreme heat warnings. They found that data from our data set and they just started analyzing it. It was really an incredible project. Then they came recently in September and presented to our membership at our monthly membership meetings. And the we act members were also really interested in asking them follow up questions. And these were 15 year olds, I think they were sophomores in high school. So it was just like a really another amazing way to make people feel like they have the capability to understand these really hard topics.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: Thank you for that. I appreciate the extra context.
Like I said, I just remember being in this role and just getting lots of questions of why is so much time energy going into these projects. And to your point, you know, it's important to have community members involved in the process. Typically these, you know, air quality monitoring is very academic. It's often, you know, held and focused in academic institutions, government organizations. So having it led and done by community members is really important. So I just appreciate you shedding some light on that.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: One thing I always find interesting too when it comes to air quality as well is that I think now it doesn't seem as. It doesn't seem as visible as it probably was in the past. Like when we talk about when you look at like other countries or places where it's extremely toxic air, where you see like smog and you see the darker, denser air and you see everyone kind of struggling with the mask. I don't see you see that as much. You don't see that as much in New York. But you have to understand that our air quality can get really bad, almost approaching some of those levels. But it doesn't seem as visible for a lot of people. So I think it's important to kind of understand these numbers and the data and where they're coming from and that they do fluctuate depending on different circumstances, different times of the year, where air quality, if we have an air quality emergency, which we had the big wildfire issues or something, now that seems a little more visible to folks. You know, we were just before we started the podcast, we're talking a little bit about diesel buses and how you don't necessarily see that black smoke coming out of buses anymore because most of them are hybrid. And like, I feel like there was such a visible aspect to air quality where not so much as more so I think it's still important kind of to Jaron's question of like, we still need to monitor it, we still need to make sure we're seeing when these levels are changing based on various different things. Whether it be a new building going up or another, or some type of policy that takes place or a warehouse being built, or because we don't necessarily see all the smokestacks and the heavy industry stuff that we see in like other parts of the country as well.
[00:16:19] Speaker C: Yeah, but it's undeniable that the health impacts of air pollution are very visible and very felt in northern Manhattan and the South Bronx. The South Bronx has the highest rates of childhood asthma of any place in the United States.
So yeah, it's undeniable that the health impacts of air pollution are still very gravely felt in our communities, even if the black smog isn't seen as often.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: And I think you're starting to allude to this as well, but kind of transitioning to this in our conversation about some of those findings. I know some of the, some of the data from the, you know, more expensive monitors will, we'll see what comes out of that. But there are some early findings from those low cost sensors with the purple air sensors that there was, you know, these discrepancies, you know, and changes in air quality as a result of congestion pricing.
Are there. Maybe this is something we're going to talk about anyway. But some of the action items, you know, whenever you collect data, there's always the question of what's next? Now what do you do about it? So based on some of those findings from that early data, what do you think some of the action items are some of the conversations that you're having about, okay, what next, what to do with the findings from that data and how to address some of those inequities.
[00:17:36] Speaker C: The reason we were even granted the money to buy these really nice monitors in the first place was because dec, as required by the New York State Climate act, began on their air quality initiative in 2022. They did a year mobile monitoring in 10 different environmental justice neighborhoods or communities in all of New York State. And five of them were in the five boroughs.
And then after they did all this mobile monitoring, they did a huge story map. They put out all these different kinds of information.
Most of the information we already knew to some extent or to most of the extent. Same thing with the EJNYC report. A lot of the information that we learn about air quality and who the polluters are are things that we already know. But so they put up this whole report.
And then the second part of their air monitoring initiative was to create what they call a communities report.
So the first report kind of just had all the different polluting facilities that they found in all the different neighborhoods, all the different levels of pollution.
And then the second report. They wanted to involve communities in thinking through what the impacts are and what possible solutions, recommendations or priorities communities have. So what they did was they set up the structure of having community action Councils. We're just going to call them CACs.
I get confused with all the acronyms in the state.
CACs in each of the 10 study areas we act helped lead the Manhattan CAC. The study areas in Manhattan were Northern Manhattan and the Lower east side, which is another EJ neighborhood.
We convened a group of different community based organizations that were either doing their own local air monitoring initiatives or were somehow interested. We're doing race research, we're analysts in this space.
We worked together to create a list of community priorities and recommendations to send back to the state to send back to DEC for them to include in their communities report.
And what we were thinking when DEC asked us to do this work for them for free, they were kind of asking us to do a bunch of different community engagement sessions where we showed our members the results from their mobile monitoring and to just ask people like what do you think about this? Where do you think the wor the worst pollution is? And kind of like a very unorganized engagement session which tends to happen when it comes to like comment periods and public engagement.
And we as different, you know, people who worked for community organizations knew that we could only get so much out of this kind of process. And so what we thought was okay, let's just think about all the work that we've done over the course of all the time that we've been at our organizations that has to do with air quality, that has to do with air pollution.
And then we'll compile those into the recommendations.
And what we found was, or what we thought about a lot was a couple different things.
We I can just start listing off some of the recommendations that we had for the state which is one, we want there to be more focus, less focus on traffic emissions.
You can look at the EJNYC report or also the Deck DEC climate report, but traffic emissions only account, it depends on the report. But for the EJNYC report, for example, traffic emissions only account for 14% of PM 2.5 pollution in New York City where versus commercial cooking or building emissions are account for a much higher part of that. And so what we really wanted to tell the state to do and we also want to tell the city to do is to focus on, even though it's more complicated, I think it's one of the reasons that they do focus on traffic emissions so much is because. Because it's a bit simpler to think of different policies or different ways to encourage people to use hybrid or electric vehicles. But we really need to start tackling the root of air pollution in New York City, which is using dirty fuel to heat our buildings.
That was one of the big recommendations that we had for it then. Also, other recommendations that we thought about was there's a lot of money pouring in from the state from different, let's say, philanthropy foundations or EJ Foundations for community organizations to do their air monitoring.
And this kind of alludes to some of the complications that I was talking about earlier when it comes to community air monitoring. There's a lot of money going to community organizations to buy the monitors and set them up. But there's not much infrastructure in place to make sure that the data that's coming from that is actually useful, helpful, and that there's actually going to be used in some kind of policy or to be used for something that will actually benefit the community. So we were also trying to think of ways to encourage this state itself to think about how they can fill this gap in this lack of infrastructure.
For community organizations that are doing air monitoring. Then the third thing that we talked about a lot was the pollution.
This came directly from a lot of different kinds of community engagements that we've done just as organizations in our work is the pollution that comes from construction specifically. There was one community organization, the 6th Street Community center in the Lower east side, that does a lot of work with the Jacob Rees Housing Nitro Development that right now or for the past two years have been suffering a lot from the east coast resiliency project. Construction that was done with very limited community engagement.
The city kind of just like bulldozed it right through. And now it's like there's been like years worth of really, really heavy construction.
They've turned up soil that the residents are really concerned about because they've been told before that it was a brownfield. But now the city's coming in, or whoever. No one knows who really is coming in, digging up all this soil. What if it's contaminated soil? What if it's not good for us? There's also a community member was telling us about just all the construction, all the pollution from the construction. She cleans every day, but she goes back and her tub is still lined with dust. And so we also found that was another recommendation that we made to the state and something that we want to keep pushing or thinking about is there's always construction in New York City like and no one's taking seriously how bad the pollution from construction is for, for our health.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I really appreciate that kind of analysis in terms of some of the recommendations is, you know, maybe we're focused on the wrong things and that's why the data collection is really important. And also the community insight and like the lived experience is important too because we don't think of construction the same way as we do a car. Right. In a lot of different places. And you alluded to something and I want to see if you have any more insights from it. But you talked about the EJ NY Report, which we've had a full episode about before in the past on the podcast. But I know that the report's complete and there's a lot of different aspects to air quality and some different metrics there. And I'd be curious if you want to share some of the highlights from the EJNYC report. When it comes to air quality, like you mentioned, we realized we know that traffic may be not be the thing or cars or transportation may not be the thing that we need to be focusing on with air quality, but more so our buildings and how we heat them in those systems as well. But what are some of the other insights from the EJ NYC report?
[00:25:16] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. So a lot of the insights, like I mentioned before, are things we more or less knew before. But it's nice that they compiled it all together for us and want to plan something out.
Some findings include the New York City neighborhoods with the greatest level of pollution attributable hospital emergency department visits are all environmental justice neighborhoods so really focused on northern Manhattan and the South Bronx specifically.
All of these neighborhoods with the highest emergency department visits are also within a mile of large stationary source polluting facilities such as a power plant or a manufacturing facility.
There's a lot of really incredible maps that EJNYC report has about the overlap between EJ areas and neighborhoods and Title 5 polluting facilities which put out a lot of pollution. Basically it's, it's a complete overlap and it's just the same kind of conversation that we have every time that we engage in these environmental justice conversations. The way in which a redlining map will overlay perfectly with polluter facilities map will overlay perfectly with health department visits attributable to pollution.
And then also they found that it also shares that communities of color are disproportionately exposed to emissions from heavy duty diesel vehicles due to the Locations of arterial highways, commercial waste routes and delivery routes. This is just an understanding of the ways in which our city's long planning, urban development and the racism steeped in the way that we plan the city has impacts on our health to this day.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: Yeah, so just thinking about the facilities that we're seeing that are really a major story, both, both in terms of power generating facilities within buildings, you know, the things that we know and have known, but maybe have better data now for the impact on our health.
There's been some important work policy wise over the last years. You know, one of those being the environmental justice siting law, otherwise known as the cumulative impacts law, which is really centered around this exact issue. Thinking about when facilities are placed in a community, thinking about how does this add to the burden of pollution and environmental impacts in that community already. So my understanding is that you've been doing some outreach work related to this law. So just kind of curious about how you see this law impacting air quality for EJ communities and just related to some of the things that we've been talking about. What's the relationship there and what, what are some of your observations that you've noticed?
[00:28:03] Speaker C: Yeah, this law I think has the potential to do so so much, but I think it takes a lot of hard work to make sure that it's actually written down as a very strong law. So the environmental health team, the way that we've been kind of working with Brianna and the internal WE act team is that we're providing a lot of the background environmental health kind of education and information around why, what cumulative impacts is, how it impacts our health and also community generally health and then why it's important to have a strong law around this. And then Brianna kind of takes on the more like technical pieces of what the law is and how to make comments and things like that. But there's a lot of communities that identify high levels of asthma again or high levels of respiratory health problems or cardiovascular health problems as something that they want to get to the root to. And I think air quality is a really great way for, to create those connections between, you know, identifying health problems in your community, trying to understand the underlying issues of those. And then, okay, so let's take a step backwards and what are the policies that we actually have to put in place to protect those.
So right now we're engaging the cumulative impacts. Like the actual process for writing the law down is a pretty long, extensive process and we're doing a lot of community engagement with different groups that have that we've reached out or to, or have reached out to us that maybe have like a very specific kind of idea of environmental justice or kind of like have like their specific policies already in mind. But I do think, like, this is a law that applies to absolutely everybody that lives in New York State.
I think anyone who lives near a construction site or sees construction near their site, school, their child's school, who sees like a line of buses or trucks always coming in and out of a last mile facility or warehouse, that's a problem that we have a lot in New York City is these warehouses that are stationed all across the city that have thousands and thousands of trucks coming in and out of it every day. Anyone who's ever seen like black fumes from, from these trucks and has thought, oh, maybe that's not a great thing for me to be breathing in every day like you, you have something to say for the cumulative impact Sock. And you, you're the, the note that you have or the comment that you have is really important to ensure that the strongest law gets written because there's a lot of different lobbying powers when it comes to building their new development or building their new facility.
And so they're pushing back with everything that they have to make this a weak law or to make this just another box that they have to check. And then they can continue to do construction as they wanted. So this is right now a really important opportunity for, for us to think a little bit more thoughtfully about where, why how many and where we actually put new facilities.
And if there's a way for us to avoid developing at all, I think that would be the solution.
So the cumulative impacts law is a state law, but at the same time, there's in my mind at least a similar process happening right now with the EJNYC planning.
So I was talking a little bit earlier about the EJNYC report.
They did this whole big investigation, all the different kinds of environmental justice issues that happen in the city. And now they're doing a part two, which is what are we going to do about it? Let's build a plan together and we act is helping, is working with the Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental justice to do the community engagement around this plan. So this past Saturday, LJ and I actually led a discussion group not on the air pollution. I don't know why we didn't do that one or why I didn't do that one, but we led a discussion group on one of the impact areas and we talked to community, community members about their experiences with the issues that are outlined in the report. So the report has a bunch of really, you know, fancy numbers and all these maps. But it's really important as we build out a plan to think about how people are actually being impacted day to day by these, by these kind of theoretical, like, abstracts that we can sometimes think about or argue with.
And you know, what I was really struck by, by this conversation, I don't know if you want to add, lj, is people were just really talking about, like, the thing that they need to, like, get through the day with some kind of dignity.
And a lot of it had to do with, you know, making sure that their, the buses were clean and that people are nice to you on the buses and that you can actually get on the bus. And I was just really. Yeah, I, I, it's always really useful for me when I can connect the issues that I'm working on at work back to this idea of, you know, we're fighting for New Yorkers to have a little bit of dignity, a little bit more dignity every day.
And that's so the EJNYC report, the community engagement sessions. If you're in New York City, that's coming to an area near you soon and you should come to one of those and tell us what you think.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Thanks for listening. If you like this episode, make sure to rate and review the show on whatever platform you listen on. If you have thoughts about the show, we encourage you to reach out to us with your thoughts and suggestions.
[00:33:27] Speaker A: @Podcasteact.Org check out we act on Facebook at react4ej. That's W E a c t F O R e j on Instagram, bluesky and YouTube at react4ej. That's W E A C T number 4ej. And check out our website react.org for more information about environmental justice. Until next time, bye.
