More than 50 years ago, a group of East Somerville activists staged a faux-funeral, marching through the streets with a casket and a banner demanding that state and federal officials “bury the I-93.” The scrappy band of advocates, known as the East Somerville Committee Action group, was protesting plans to bulldoze through their neighborhood to make room for the proposed interstate highway. They wanted it built underground, so they wouldn’t have to deal with the noise, the pollution, or the disruption of a major new thoroughfare.
When “burying” I-93 proved to be a nonstarter, the East Somerville Committee Action group pushed for other concessions to protect their homes. The government could line the highway with barriers and trees. Maybe they could even just provide air conditioning and double-paned windows so residents could close their homes against the pollution in the hot summer months?
In the half century since that protest, I-93 has become one of the most congested highways in the Commonwealth – yet the government has done almost nothing to protect residents from its pollution. Today, a coalition including CLF and community activists is still fighting to protect the East Somerville neighborhood – where I now live – and other communities harmed by transportation pollution across the state.
“People don’t like being studied forever.”
Shortly after moving to East Somerville, I started seeing posters recruiting participants for an air quality study. The posters included a map with a stark red blotch over the area most affected by the highway’s toxic pollution. In the red zone: the soccer field where local kids organize tournaments, the cafe where my roommates and I split chocolate chip cookies the size of my head, the library that hosts tiny farmers markets on its lawn. Several playgrounds and parks. Many homes. My home.
Researcher Doug Brugge led the study when he worked in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University. It was one of more than 60 papers on air pollution from transportation in the Greater Boston area that Brugge published in collaboration with academic and community partners. In this study, Brugge’s team took the meaningful step of testing potential interventions to actually improve the health of residents who live near highways. As he pointed out, “People don’t like being studied forever.” The researchers offered free air filters to people who lived along I-93 and performed blood tests to measure the effect on their health.
The impacts of air pollution were stark. For people with high blood pressure, proximity to the highway directly translated to spikes in their already elevated blood pressure. The air filters partially blunted the effect, strongly suggesting that the pollution caused the spikes. A similar study conducted primarily in Chinatown found that any exposure to pollution correlated with corresponding increases in blood pressure.
It wasn’t a surprising result. Researchers have found that the “ultra-fine” air pollution that pours off highways can easily get into the blood and lungs. It triggers inflammation, which over time puts people at higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, neurological disorders and respiratory ailments. It’s even been linked to autism diagnoses.
It’s hard to attribute any one malady to air pollution. I can see the close curve of I-93 from almost every window of my East Somerville apartment. Is that why my bout of COVID-19 laid me out for a week? A study found that people living near a highway had worse COVID outcomes, and people in the polluted zone of East Somerville contracted COVID-19 at higher rates. Air pollution doesn’t cause allergies, but it can make them worse. Is that why my mild seasonal allergies blossomed into miserable, year-round congestion?
Of course, I moved to East Somerville as a healthy adult, my respiratory system fully formed and less vulnerable to toxic exhaust streaming off the highway. Transportation pollution hurts children, disabled people, and elderly folks worst of all.
CLF’s Director of Transportation Justice and Infrastructure Paulina Muratore saw the scale of pollution firsthand at a demonstration alongside the I-93. Attendees watched an air pollution monitor spike every time a truck spewing diesel exhaust rumbled past. “This is a problem dramatically impacting real people’s lives and there are tangible solutions,” said Muratore.
“What about the lives of my residents?”
Around when the study posters started cropping up, I attended a protest in my East Somerville neighborhood calling for barriers to block noise and air pollution along I-93. My state representative, Mike Connolly, spoke about how an official in state government told him they were prioritizing repairs to “preserve the life of the steel” of a nearby viaduct. Connolly told him, “You need to take action to preserve the lives of our constituents.”
Representatives Christine Barber and Mike Connolly speak at a highway justice rally.
Five years later, he’s still trying to make that happen. Connolly, State Representative Christine Barber, and State Senator Patricia Jehlen, all representing districts along the I-93 highway, sponsored the Outdoor Air Quality bill in the most recent Massachusetts legislative session. They developed the bill in collaboration with a coalition of environmental justice organizations dedicated to protecting the mostly non-white, lower-income communities that have historically borne a disproportionately higher share of pollution. “While environmental pollution threatens us all, environmental justice populations are especially affected by air quality problems,” said CLF’s Muratore.
The original bill made significant progress, supported by CLF, activists, community members, and experts across the state. The full bill didn’t pass, but some of its key goals have made their way into another major environmental bill that the legislature is currently finalizing.
The bill’s proposed policies would take common-sense, necessary steps toward improving the safety of the air in the most vulnerable communities across the state. That would start with setting up a committee of representatives from relevant groups: scientists, advocates, and, crucially, members of communities impacted by highway air pollution. The Air Quality committee would then identify eight air pollution hotspots across the state, with an emphasis on impacts from transportation, and offer recommendations on potential solutions.
The original bill also called for the state to set up air quality monitoring and gather more data on the severity of the pollution. Then the state government would start actually addressing the problem, including recommending schools, correctional facilities, and other vulnerable spots that could benefit from air filters. The coalition plans to reintroduce these important provisions in a new bill next year.
“They were hurting my friends and neighbors.”
This work is part of a long legacy of organizing against air pollution in Massachusetts. East Somerville Committee Action wasn’t the only group that formed to block dangerous, polluting highways. In the 1960s and 1970s, the government planned a lot of new highway construction – resulting in the crisscrossing system of interstate highways we take for granted today.
Back then, many of those new projects plowed straight through less wealthy communities of color, often for the convenience of wealthier, whiter suburbanites commuting to city jobs. Air pollution flowed through paths carved by racism and classism. The highways divided tight-knit neighborhoods – literally – replacing homes, schools, and parks with an endless stream of cars and hot slabs of asphalt, creating noise and toxic air pollution.
Communities in the Greater Boston area fought back, with varying degrees of success. The I-93 and I-90 highways cut up Chinatown, displacing hundreds of families – but when the city proposed a ramp extending the highway in the 1990s, local activists shut it down to prevent history from repeating itself. In the 1960s and ’70s, Roxbury and Jamaica Plain residents rallied to successfully cancel a highway that would have cut through the neighborhoods. A subway line and parallel greenway that benefited all residents was built instead.
Highways weren’t the only source of transportation pollution and disruption. In 1968, an East Boston group known as the “Maverick Mothers” protested an expansion of Logan Airport that would destroy a park and part of a residential neighborhood. Protestors blocking trucks were met by police, but Fran Riley, one of the lead organizers, told WGBH, “I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t care because they were hurting my friends and neighbors.” The Mavericks slowed the project, convinced the city to establish new routes for the trucks that minimized noise and air pollution near their homes, and galvanized decades of activism. Their efforts led to programs to decrease noise pollution, blocked some airport expansions, and secured funding for local parks. Community-based efforts to protect residents from the impact of pollution from Logan Airport continue today.
“We don’t give up and go home. We are home.”
The state legislature gave up on the full bill this session, but that doesn’t mean we’re giving up the fight. The East Somerville Committee Action group, Maverick Mothers, and many other activists didn’t quit when they faced setbacks. We’ll carry on the legacy of that organizing to make sure our communities have the clean, safe air that they deserve. At CLF, we like to say, “We don’t give up and go home. We are home.” For me, for this issue, that motto is even more true than usual.
One of those parks in Brugge’s study’s “red zone” has a special connection to the highway. The government may not have listened to the East Somerville Committee Action group’s original demands, but in recent years they made one gesture: building and naming a small park in their honor. I walk past “ESCA Park” on my way to the grocery store. Unfortunately, it’s right next to I-93, separated from the highway by only a narrow sidewalk. It’s noisy and sometimes smells awful. I’m looking forward to fixing that.