This blog takes a deep dive into the vast array of impacts that air pollution has on human health, exploring how poor air quality affects nearly every area of the human body — from head to toe. Research shows that air pollution is a major environmental risk factor for a slew of diseases, from Alzheimer’s disease to lung cancer to osteoporosis, and can significantly lower lifespan and quality of life. Air pollution accounts for extensive damages to public health, as well as vast economic losses due to healthcare costs and lost school and workdays. While air pollution exposure can impact everyone, its damage is not distributed equally. Children, elderly individuals, those with pre-existing conditions, and those living in low socioeconomic neighborhoods or environmental justice communities bear a disproportionate burden of its impacts — emphasizing the need to protect vulnerable populations by taking better care of our air quality.
Tag Archives: Air Pollution
Sacramento Investment Without Displacement Town Hall June 2
Join Sacramento Investment Without Displacement and its members for a discussion about the next steps in the community outreach efforts around Aggie Square and other developments in Sacramento. June 2 @ 6pm on Zoom.
How to Join
You can watch the meeting live on Facebook or by visiting this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86462756538.
Photo by EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA from Pexels
2020 TAQCC Accomplishments
What is TAQCC? At ECOS, we have a working committee dedicated to Transportation, Air Quality, and Climate Change; to abbreviate: TAQCC.
The committee had a busy year in 2020! Click here to view a summary of their accomplishments!
Interested in learning more about this committee? Click here!
Check Before You Make a Fire!
This Holiday Season, Please Remember to Check Before You Burn
With the cold and frosty winter weather upon us, residents across the Sacramento Region might be thinking about using their fireplace to help keep warm. This holiday season, the Sac Metro Air District asks you to please remember to Check Before You Burn, to make sure wood burning is legal.
From November 1 through the end of February, the District will restrict or prohibit the use of all fireplaces, wood stoves, inserts, fire pits, and chimineas when fine particle pollution (PM2.5) is forecast to be high. The law applies to residents and businesses in Sacramento County and the cities of Citrus Heights, Elk Grove, Folsom, Galt, Isleton, Rancho Cordova, and Sacramento. Remember, if you observe burning on a day when particulate matter air pollution is forecast to be high, and burning is prohibited, you can anonymously file a complaint here. First time violations will result in either a $50 fine, or the option to take and pass a wood smoke awareness exam. Fines for subsequent violations are higher.
Letter to UC Regents re Aggie Square
October 10, 2020
Sacramento Investment Without Displacement, of which ECOS is a member, sent a letter to UC Regents regarding our concerns about Aggie Square.
Below is an excerpt from the letter.
We are writing this letter to appeal to you and the Board of Regents to request that UC Davis and its developer Wexford Science and Technology commit to signing a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) with our broad coalition. We believe that this project could bring great possibility and promise for the future of Oak Park and other nearby neighborhoods, the City of Sacramento and UC Davis Medical Center, if the benefits are shared widely and equity and inclusion are embraced as core values.
Before this project’s Environmental Impact Report is approved, it is a moral imperative that the UC system consider our community coalition and the impacted community we represent. The leaders of our coalition are requesting a meaningful conversation with UC Davis and its developer to address inequities and unintended consequences of this project.
The Oak park community is mostly made up of people of color, low-income people and immigrants who have carried a heavy burden for generations in the history of the development of this region. Unfortunately, deep poverty, violence, inadequate affordable and safe housing, employment discrimination and the many subtle actions of hate have deeply wounded countless promising young and old souls alike. Residents have a list of concerns about how the build-out and operation of Aggie Square will impact their neighborhoods.
Community Seeks Aggie Square Partnership
By Genoa Barrow | September 28, 2020 | The Sacramento Observer
Aggie Square is described as a “game changing partnership” that will bring innovative opportunities to the area surrounding the UC Davis Medical Center on Stockton Boulevard. Local residents say they don’t want to be losers when the project, which will include the building of spaces for research facilities, academic programs, offices, retail and mixed-use space,and housing, kicks into gear.
Kim Williams, of Sacramento Building Healthy Communities says the Aggie Square project should benefit everyone in the surrounding area, not just a certain part of the population.
The Sacramento Building Healthy Communities: Community Development Action Team and Sacramento Investment Without Displacement (SacIWD) held a press conference at the Fruitridge Community Collaborative last week, demanding a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) in the UC Davis Aggie Square project to ensure issues of affordable housing, jobs, healthcare access, and other issues are addressed in any major projects brought to the community.
SacIWD is a coalition of community organizations and neighborhood associations. Coalition members have been working together for almost two years and say the proposed Aggie Square project at UC Davis Medical Center “has the potential to improve and protect residents’ health, provide residents with access to good union jobs that pay a living wage, improve the quality of our neighborhoods, and reduce existing inequities.” Members want to make sure area residents in the 95817, 95820 and 95824 zip codes aren’t summarily boxed out, and priced out, by the Aggie Square project.
Community involvement topped a list of concerns.
“While neighborhoods surrounding Aggie Square will be altered by the many thousands of new workers and students at Aggie Square, with a recent estimate as high as 25,000, and the flow of billions of dollars, the traditional avenues of resident involvement will be weakened, and those communities already on the fringes are likely to be further silenced,” reads a statement from the group.
Concerns also include local hiring, affordable housing access, access to primary care for Medi-Cal beneficiaries, project labor, and local business protections and support.
“This is about building with our community,” HUB Director Kim Williams said.
