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LAWRENCE RISK-BASED AIR SCREENING
Impact/Purpose:
Local risk assessment to assist community in creating environmental action plan
Description:
The pediatric asthma rate in the city of Lawrence is the highest in the state of Massachusetts. This project will evaluate whether the cumulative risks due to the air pollution in Lawrence is contributing to the high asthma rates and other respiratory problems. The project will use air toxics emissions data to input into an air dispersion model which will compute the hazardous air pollutants ambient air concentrations for the area studied. These chemical concentrations and their sources will be assessed to determine which are primarily contributing the most to human health risk. The project is a community-based effort with guidance and feedback coming from a partnership of key community stakeholders. An action plan will be develop to address the prioritized list of pollution sources and chemicals and identify community-based measures to address reducing the impact of the most hazardous contributors to public health risk. The Lawrence Grassroots Initiative, the Community Health Network Area 11-Environmental Committee, and EPA New England are the principal partners. $ GPRA Goal, Objective Goal 1- Clean Air Objective 1.2 - By 2010, reduce air toxic emissions by 75 percent from 1993 levels to significantly reduce the risk to Americans of cancer and other serious adverse health effects caused by airborne toxics. Goal 7 - Expansion of Americans= Right to know about their environment Objective 7.1- By 2005, EPA will improve the ability of the American public to participate in the protection of human health and the environment by increasing the quality and quantity of general environmental education, outreach and data availability programs, especially in disproportionally impacted and disadvantaged communities Objective 7.2 - By 2005, EPA will improve the ability of the public to reduce exposure to specific environmental and human health risks by making current, accurate substance-specific information widely and easily accessible. Goal 8 -Sound Science, Improved Understanding of Environmental Risk, and Greater Innovation to Address Environmental Problems Objective 8.2 - Research for Human Health Risk Assessment: By2008, improve the scientific basis to identify, characterize, assess, and manage environmental exposures that pose the greatest health risks to the American public by developing models and methodologies to integrate information about exposures and effects from multiple pathways. Objective 8.5 - By 2005, EPA will increase the number of places using integrated, holistic partnership approaches, such as community-based environmental protection (CBEP), and quantify their tangible and sustainable environmental results in places where EPA is directly involved.