Washington's worst air is near ports
From the courtyard in the middle of downtown Seattle's fancy Harbor Steps Apartments, there's little sign of the industrial giant nearby.
The space is an oasis of calm. A yoga studio beckons from one side, a coffee shop from another. Overhead, apartments rent for as much as $5,600 a month.
The huge red cranes at the Port of Seattle aren't even visible from here. But it's what's invisible that's the problem. The air in this part of Seattle, some of it wafting from mammoth cargo ships idling at the port, is some of the unhealthiest in the state and the entire nation.
With only a few exceptions, the most unhealthful air in the state is found in neighborhoods near ports throughout Western Washington, according to a Seattle Times analysis of an Environmental Protection Agency study of cancer-causing air pollution, released publicly Wednesday.
Those areas are home to tens of thousands of people. And the problem could get worse because of growing global commerce and lax government control over the pollution that spews from the big freighters.
In Seattle, the bad air reaches residential parts of West Seattle and much of downtown. More and more people are living downtown, and once-seedy neighborhoods like the area around Pike Place Market are being eyed as sites for million-dollar condominiums.
Even the small Puget Sound city of Anacortes has some of the region's worst air, partly because huge oil tankers motor past and park at nearby refineries.
That means people in those areas are breathing more pollutants linked to lung cancer, asthma and possibly heart disease.
"The people who live around ports are subsidizing the cost of trade through their health and through their lives," said Julie Masters, a senior attorney for the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council, and an expert on port pollution.
Local clean-air regulators say the problem could grow as ports get busier, unless more is done.
"Our next big concern is the ports," said Dennis McLerran, executive director of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, which monitors air quality in King, Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap counties. "The good news is that everyone that we are working with understands that this is a big issue that needs to be dealt with."
Continue reading this story from the Seattle Times:
Where the worst air is
