City's Plan To Fix BQE Would Expose Residents To Toxins: Report

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — The city's plan to replace the Brooklyn Queens Expressway could expose residents to what the city's Health Department calls the most harmful urban air pollutant, possibly affecting their health for years to come, the Brooklyn Eagle reports.

Expert Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, recently told the Eagle that the 153,000 trucks and cars that travel on the BQE each day produce high levels of airborne particles known as PM 2.5.

The pollutants, less than 2.5 microns in diameter, are small enough "to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, worsening lung and heart disease," the story reports.

Right now, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade partially protects residents from the pollution. But, the city's preferred plant build a six-lane highway where the Promenade now is during reconstruction would move the toxins to street and garden level.

Garrett pointed out some of the health risks associated with the pollutants in an open letter to Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, the Eagle said. The research includes an average of two years cut off life expectancies of children who grow up breathing in the toxins and 8.9 million deaths from air pollution exposure world wide in 2015, primarily from PM 2.5 emissions.

Read the full report by the Brooklyn Eagle here.

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