There are growing concerns over whether recent supply chain issues will impact holiday gift giving. But the bottleneck at many ports has marked a far more dangerous problem. As container ships and trucks sit idling, waiting to offload Black Friday purchases, toxic fumes fill the air. Recent investigations detail the toxic traffic jam and the threat it poses to the environment and our health.,
Los Angeles air pollution owing to supply chain bottlenecks
Los Angeles and surrounding areas already had an issue with smog and an issue with air pollution. But now you have container ships that are sitting there making the problem worse.
It’s really important because these neighborhoods near parks and warehouses are paying the hidden cost of e-commerce and holiday shopping. This year we have seen the wait time that container ships are idling off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, pretty much double on average. So they are waiting for about 17 days, on average, near the shore, running auxiliary engines.
The pollution doesn’t stay offshore, it drifts inland. And people breathe it in, and it has an effect on people’s daily lives and health. the communities in the area, bearing the brunt. I want you to explain just how this is impacting communities that are not obviously out at sea, the communities on land, how this pollution is being funneled into certain communities, and who lives there.
It is important to understand that this is an issue that touches all of us.
If you have anything in your home that was made in china, or somewhere in Asia, there’s a good likelihood that it passed through these ports, because this is one of the busiest — it is actually the busiest port in the western hemisphere. Supply chain bottle necks are of growing concern as they create air pollution.
The pollution comes from the emissions of ships. The California Air Resources Board estimates that the daily emissions of particle pollution alone is equivalent to the tailpipe emissions of about 100,000 trucks. You also have nitrogen oxides that have increased significantly, and that creates smog.
Communities affected by air pollution around Los Angeles
What happens then is that pollution gets trapped in the topography that surrounds the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Long Beach is a bustling city.
The west side of Long Beach has a big Filipino community and a big Pacific islander community. Long Beach is also home to a thriving Cambodia town, which is a refugee community. There are also strong Mexican and black communities in Long Beach and neighborhoods nearby.
The pollution then moves further inland trapped within the bowl of the topography. That area used to be known for oranges and some agriculture. Now, it is mostly warehouses.
Warehouses are the most common commercial building in the US; more common than office buildings, and it has to do a lot with the shift and in e- commerce. Once goods are offloaded from the ships, they are sent to inland distribution centers, concentrations of warehouses where they are sorted and sent to the rest of the country.
These warehouses are literally in people’s backyards, and so, it is interesting because you have the ship emissions that blow inland, and get trapped in both of these bowls. In addition you also have emissions that are traveling via truck. So you have the site and smog coming from these trucks and neighbors are getting a concentration.
As is often the case it is members of the minority communities that are hit harder than other areas. The Biden administration announced its plan to keep the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach open, 24/7. The President said that it didn’t even occur to him that pollution could be an issue.
The people in these communities are suffering. The topography is important but that is not the only factor. You also have the proximity of these trucks as well. So, when you have operations going 24/7, that means that the amount of time that these trucks are spewing pollutants is increasing.
So, there was alarm from the medical community and from residents. Now that the ports are open 24/7 in an attempt to ease the supply chain crisis and help out a lot of Americans, once again, certain communities are paying the price with their air quality and health.
Many people probably expect noise pollution to be the biggest issue but air quality is of huge concern. The recent COP26 summit addressed many issues concerning climate change and global warming. The problems of the supply chain bottlenecks are just one example of how air pollution and air quality are affected by the choices we make.
Read more: What was in the COP26 agreement. Powerful or disappointing?
