By: Carolina Peña, Project Manager for EcoMadres, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: February 23, 2023
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2015-0072
To: Environmental Protection Agency
My name is Carolina Peña. I am the Project Manager of the Latino community outreach program of Moms Clean Air Force, EcoMadres. I am Bolivian and living in Alexandria, Virginia.
For decades, fossil fuel pollution has destroyed the most marginalized neighborhoods. We have a duty to protect these communities, paying attention to their environmental and human health conditions and ensuring that they are not subjected to a disproportionately high level of environmental risk by enacting stricter soot standards that will prioritize environmental justice.
This is why I am calling on EPA to set a more health protective standard for soot of 8 micrograms per cubic meter for the annual standard and 25 micrograms per cubic meter for the daily standard.
In the United States, more than 40% of the US population—or 137 million people—are living in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution, according to the American Lung Association's 2022 “State of the Air” report. And 63 million people in our country are exposed to unhealthy spikes in daily soot pollution.
Exposure to soot is causing health effects such as premature death, heart disease, decreased lung function, difficulty breathing, diabetes, cancer, among many other serious health effects.
Black, Brown, and Indigenous people face higher levels of exposure to the fine particle “soot” pollution because sources of this deadly pollutant are more likely located in and around their communities from traffic, power plant smokestacks, construction equipment and other sources.
People of color are six times more likely to visit the emergency room for air pollution-triggered asthma than white people. Thirty-nine percent of the Latino population lives within 30 miles of a power plant—the distance within which the maximum effects of fine particle soot from the smokestack plume are expected to occur. For many, the situation is worsened by a lack of health insurance and by language barriers.
Latino children represent one in six children in the United States and are at increased risk for asthma attacks that keep them out of school, as the incidence of asthma in Latino families reaches epidemic proportions, according to a study by the National Institutes of Health.
Behind these statistics, there are real people. They are our children, mothers, fathers, neighbors. This is a public health necessity, that is why my colleagues, and I are strongly advocating that EPA set the strongest possible standards for soot to protect the health of our families and communities. We all deserve breathing clean air.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.