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Nicholas and Ilene suffer from asthma exacerbated by bad air in the San Joaquin Valley where the EPA has delayed clean up of the country's worst air.

EPA Gives Polluters More Time to Clean Up, While Asthma Victims Continue to Suffer

Being Hispanic and living in the San Joaquin Valley in California can be dangerous to your health.

In fact, simply breathing in this area, one of the country's richest agricultural regions, is as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and for Hispanics, who live in the midst of some of the worst pollution, those cigarettes have no filters.

Lisa Martínez knows very well the punishment breathing the country's most polluted air can be for a person's lungs. Her two children, Nicholas, 17, and Ilene, 9, both have asthma, an illness which, in the Valley, is already considered an epidemic.

"I am fortunate because my family lives in a less polluted area near Fresno," says Martínez. "But when Nicholas visits his uncle, who lives in the barrio, close to the farm fields which are full of pesticides, he gets very sick and has even required hospitalization."

Intense agricultural activity with massive pesticide use, heavy traffic and pollution from oil wells has turned the Valley into a cauldron of toxic gases, especially in the summer, when temperatures frequently exceed 100º. From the middle of the Valley the mountains on either side are barely visible because of the brownish cloud that covers everything, even though the Valley's maximum width is just 65 miles.

This cauldron is especially toxic for the Hispanic community, who make up 41% of the Valley's population.1

"The barrio," Martínez explains, "is close to the highway, and the trucks pick up pesticide dust, and make everything worse, especially for Nicholas and other kids like him."

In 2003, half of the patients treated for asthma by the emergency room at the Community Medical Center of Fresno were Hispanic. And the number of deaths related to air pollution for Hispanics is double that of Anglos.2 According to Kevin Hamilton, director of the Asthma Program at the Community Health Center in Fresno, among Hispanics, 20 percent of children and 12 percent of adults have asthma; whereas among Anglos, 11 percent of children and 7 percent of adults have it.

And even though the American Lung Association's "State of the Air: 2004" report gave San Joaquin valley a "D" grade for smog, the Bush administration is extending the deadline for air cleanup in the valley. The administration is allowing the local air district to put off meeting the national smog standard from 2006 to 2010 and allowing it to avoid monetary sanctions.3

The Bush administration is also allowing the San Joaquin Valley even more time to meet a newer, stronger Clinton administration health standard.4 Meanwhile, the pollution contributes to the deaths of 1,300 people annually in the valley, according to state figures.5 While the Bush administration weakens the laws, Nicholas and Ilene, as well as hundreds of thousands of Hispanic children with asthma, can hardly breathe.

For more information contact:

Sierra Club
Kevin Hall
559.227.6421
hallmos@aol.com

Latino Issues Forum
Rey León
559.241.6572
rleon@lif.org

Community Health Center
Kevin Hamilton
559.459.1585
khamilton@communitymedical.org

1. 2000 US Census, available at http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06077.html.
2. Personal Interview, Kevin Hamilton, Community Health Center, May, 2004.
3. Federal Register, Volume 69, Page 20550, April 16, 2004.
4. Federal Register, Volume 69, Page 23951, April 30, 2004.
5. Based on "Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act, 1990-2010," Appendix D at 90: Tables D-23 and D-24, Nov. 1999, available at: http://www.epa.gov/oar/sect812/copy99.html.