Frank X. Moraga
By Frank X. Moraga / Amigos805
Back in the day when I was the environmental reporter for the old Star-Free Press, I received a binder (not filled with women!!!) loaded with pages of nonrecycled paper from an automobile manufacturer touting how environmental they were.
With the help of John Krist, former news desk editor and now CEO of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, we concluded that all the binders sent out nationwide to news organizations ended up cutting down a sizable pine forest, say, in Washington state or Georgia. Fast-forward a couple of decades and we can only hope that big business has learned its lesson and is actually going greener this year when sending out media releases about how eco-friendly they are.
Since the big 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill, the environmental movement has been on a mission to cut down on air and water pollutants, reuse and recycle products and try to make this a better, cleaner world. They have made a dent, but there is still a long way to go. Meanwhile, pollution affects some more than others.
A Yale University study published late last year in Envornmental Health News reported that “the greater the concentration of Hispanics, Asians, African Americans or poor residents in an area, the more likely that potentially dangerous compounds such as vanadium, nitrates and zinc are in the mix of fine particles they breathe.”
Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Fresno are among the metropolitan areas with unhealthful levels of fine particles (due to emissions from power plants, refineries and close proximity to busy roads and highways) and large concentrations of poor minorities, the study found.
Many of the identified particles have been linked to asthma and cancer, a particular concern to Latinos, who are 30 percent more likely to visit a hospital because of asthma compared to non-Hispanic whites, the study reported. Hispanic children are also 40 perent more likely to die from asthma compared to non-Hispanic whites.
As Earth Day 2013 approaches, we owe it to ourselves to research the data on our own so we can make informed decisions in our household, our shopping and at the ballot box. One place to gather that information is by visiting upcoming Earth Day events happening in the region.
Oxnard will hold “Earth Day 2013” on Saturday, April 6 at Plaza Park — http://publicworks.cityofoxnard.org
Ventura will present is “earthday ecofest” on Saturday, April 20 at Promenade Park — http://www.venturaearthday.org
Santa Barbara will hold its “Earth Day Festival” on April 20-21 at Alameda Park — http://www.cecsb.org/
— Frank X. Moraga is editor/publisher of Amigos805. He has served as business editor, director of diversity and general manager of a bilingual publication at the Ventura County Star, and as a reporter in the community editions of the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Daily News.