Exposing Airports' Poison Circles
 
 by Sharon Ruth Skolnick
 Earth Island Journal
Winter 2000-2001. Vol. 15, No. 4.
Printed with permission
 
 If you live within six miles of an airport, you are at heightened risk
 of dying prematurely from environmentally induced cancer. The culprit
 is the pollution spewing from jet aircraft, ground vehicles and airport
 maintenance operations.
 
    The situation is about to get worse. On April 5, President Clinton
 signed into law the Airports Expansion Act (AIR-21), which gave the
 green light to build new airports and add or extend runways at some
 2,000 existing US airports, including more than 500 airfields in major
 metropolitan areas. AIR-21 budgets $40 billion for airports
 construction, expansion and improvements - a 33 percent increase - over
 the next three years.
 
    Jack Saporito, President of the US Citizens Aviation Watch Association
 (CAW) - a coalition of concerned municipalities, environmental and
 grassroots groups, aligned with 27 like-organizations around the world
 - points to studies that have linked airport pollution to cancer,
 asthma, liver damage, lung disease, lymphoma, depression, myeloid
 leukemia and tumors. According to CAW, the impacts of airport pollution
 can effect people "living and working at distances greater than 30
 miles from the facility." Today, 70 percent of US residents live within
 20 miles of a major airport.
 
    Airport critics are frustrated by the lack of official concern. "We
 have the sources, we have the pollutants in great amounts, we have the
 sick and dead people," says Saporito. "We just haven't linked it all
 together yet in an epidemiological study."
 
    But a mounting number of studies clearly suggest that airport
 pollutants have become chemical grim reapers, gradually sickening and
 killing nearby residents. Data from the Washington Health Department
 Census, which compared 1991-95 illness-and-mortality rates for
 residents near the Seattle-Tacoma (Sea-Tac) airport with those of
 Seattle overall, found that infant mortality near the airport was 50
 percent greater, heart disease was 57 percent greater, cancer deaths
 were 36 percent greater (31 percent of those were lung cancer) and
 deaths from all causes were 48 percent greater. Average life expectancy
 for airport neighbors was 70.4 years, compared to Seattle's average of
 76 years. 
 
    In August, a study by Environ International Corp. detected 219
 volatile compounds in the air around Chicago's O'Hare International
 Airport (78 of them at "increased levels") and estimated the resulting
 cancer risk for people living near the airport as five times higher
 than the regional average. As Joe Karaganis, an attorney for concerned
 airport neighbors put it, the Environ study proves that O'Hare "is the
 number-one toxic polluter in the state of Illinois."
 
Cancer in the Air
 
    The American Cancer Society predicts that in the US, one out of
 every two men and one out of every three women will eventually be
 diagnosed with cancer. In July, the New England Journal of
 Medicine reported that environmental factors - mainly
 radiation and chemical pollution - are roughly twice as likely as
 genetic factors to contribute to cancer cases.
 
    Aviation is responsible for emissions of nitrogen oxide, hydrocarbons,
 sulfur dioxide, naphthalene, benzene (a known carcinogen), formaldehyde
 (a suspected carcinogen), and dust particles that harm human health and
 contribute to global warming. 
 
    The poison circle from a single runway can extend six miles from its
 hub and run 20 miles downwind. The cancer rate for people living on the
 perimeter of Chicago's O'Hare airport is 70 percent higher than the
 rate for the average Chicagoan, according to CAW. A University of
 Illinois School of Public Medicine study estimates that pollution from
 O'Hare's seven runways could be affecting the health of five million
 individuals.
 
    Dioxins from spilled jet fuel, di-ethelyne glycol from de-icing
 fluids, leaked engine oil and dissolved jet exhaust particulates
 commonly flood the tarmac and seep into the ground, streams, and creeks
 bordering O'Hare. The run-off ultimately flows into the Des Planes
 River, endangering the health of downstream communities.
 
    A 1993 EPA health risk assessment concluded that aircraft engines are
 responsible for approximately 10.5 percent of the cancer cases within a
 16-square-mile area surrounding Chicago's Midway airport. The National
 Resources Defense Council warns that "the same conclusion might apply
 to people living immediately adjacent to airports all over the
 country." 
 
    The Santa Monica Airport is the oldest community airport in Los
 Angeles County and the busiest single-runway airport in the nation. In
 August 1995, the Los Angeles Unified School District asked the FAA to
 determine the airport's health impacts on the students and staff of
 nearby schools. The study determined that hydrocarbons and carbon
 dioxide far exceeded the National Ambient Air Quality Standard, and
 that maximum cancer risks were 23 times greater than the Federal Clean
 Air Act's "acceptable risk criterion" of one-in-a million.
 
 "Environmental Bombs"
 
    Jet planes pollute much more on the ground than in the air. Up
 to 90 percent of aircraft hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions
 occur when planes idle and taxi. 
 
    In 1998, the Environmental Organization, Copenhagen (EOC, a coalition
 of Danish groups fighting pollution around the Copenhagen airport)
 published a report calling airports "environmental bombs" and noting
 that aviation "seems to be a 'sacred cow,' excluded from all
 legislation to minimize environmental impact and damage. Aviation is
 the only transport form not regulated in any significant way to reduce
 environmental impact." 
 
    The EOC urged severe reductions of hazardous airport emissions as part
 of Denmark's compliance with global-warming-gas reductions under the
 Kyoto Agreement. Among the EOC's recommendations: Outlaw the worst
 aircraft (the older TU 135B is 88 times more polluting than a newer
 B777-300 jet); reduce the number of aircraft awaiting take-off (it is
 common practice for 10-20 aircraft to idle 20-40 minutes at full
 power); improve per-capita fuel efficiency by eliminating first-class
 and business-class seating and forbidding near-empty flights, and; hold
 aviation accountable for its fair share of Kyoto greenhouse gas
 reduction.
 
    In the US, a pollution-reduction study for Sea-Tac estimated that
 taxiing on two engines instead of four would reduce hydrocarbon
 emissions by 80 percent and carbon monoxide emissions by nearly 70
 percent. Emissions could be cut further by towing aircraft to and from
 terminals. Fuel vapor recovery also can reduce aircraft hydrocarbon
 emissions, and fuel modifications can reduce nitrogen oxide particulate
 emissions by 30 percent. 
 
 
 Sacred Cows and Human Sacrifices
 
    The 1990 Clean Air Act requires the EPA to control emissions of
 hazardous air pollutants from major sources "such as factories,
 refineries, and mobile sources." Although airfields are among the
 largest single-source emitters of pollutants, air pollution assessments
 are rarely conducted for US airports. Because of the revenue large
 airports generate, local municipalities have been in no hurry to stem
 the flow of toxins.
 
    As Saporito sees it, the problem is that "there is no health agency
 watching airports. Most emissions are exempt" from reporting and those
 that are regulated are "self-reported and grossly under-reported."
 
     "It's pretty much an unregulated industry," says CAW's Saporito. The
 Federal Aviation Association (FAA), which is supposed to regulate the
 airline industry, also works to promote the industry. (Saporito recalls
 invoking the name of the FAA during a meeting with one major airline
 senior executive. "FAA?" the latter responded dismissively, "We
are the FAA.") 
 
    How many more airport neighbors and airport workers must suffer
 lingering illness - or prematurely take that last flight out - before
 the US acts? 
 

 Supplemental research by Gar Smith.