PEORIA -- In respose to a new study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the environmental group Peoria Families Against Toxic Waste has issued the following statement:
Peoria Families Against Toxic Waste (PFATW) hopes that Peoria’s terrible Health Outcomes rank, 71st among 101 Illinois counties in the nationwide Community Health Assessment (CHA) released today (http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/illinois/peoria) by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will spur quick action to make Peoria a much healthier place to live.
We
find it inexcusable that despite being ranked #1 in the state for
Clinical Care, the aforementioned Health Outcomes ranking (which
combines morbidity and mortality rates), as well as the county’s
rankings for Health Behaviors, Social and Economic Factors, and
Physical Environment, all find Peoria near the bottom of the health
barrel.
The county’s Health Behaviors (including Smoking, Drinking,
STDs and Teen Births) is ranked at a horrible 86th out of
101 Illinois counties.
Peoria County is ranked a lowly 69th
for Social and Economic Factors (including Children in Poverty and
Inadequate Social Support). And we rank near the bottom again, at
77th, in Physical Environment (including Air Pollution and
Access to Healthy Foods).
This combination of unhealthy behaviors, socioeconomic factors, and environmental issues has pulled Peoria County’s overall healthiness rating down to 48th of all 101 Illinois counties – we rank above 50th only by virtue of our top ranking in Clinical Care availability. It is worth noting that aside from the Health Factors and Clinical Care rankings of 48 and 1, the county’s highest ranking is 60th in Morbidity.
Although
the CHA study considered a very limited range of air pollution
metrics, PFATW believes that reducing all aspects of pollution in the
environment—air, land and water—should be a key part of the
solution to improve local health and quality of life.
Peoria
is the oldest community in the state, with a long history of heavy
manufacturing and related industry. There are several large
manufacturing plants in the immediate Peoria area, which individually
comply with emissions regulations – but no study has been done to
look at the aggregate effects on our air.
This legacy, coupled with
the five nearby coal-fired power plants, and one of the Midwest’s
only hazardous waste landfills, creates unique challenges. Increasing
traffic, and decisions such as adding Chicago’s old, polluting
buses to the CityLink fleet, have put Peoria at risk of being out of
compliance with ozone and other air pollution regulations.
The
American Lung Association recently gave Peoria’s air a failing
grade in 2009 (http://www.stateoftheair.org/2009/states/illinois/),
and USA Today’s 2008 “Smokestack Effect” report pinpointed
Peoria schools as potentially having unhealthy concentrations of
hazardous air pollution
(http://content.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/smokestack/index)
– 20 local area schools could have air pollution levels comparable
to that of an elementary school that was closed in 2008 in Addyston,
OH because of the severe health risks.
The latest National Air Toxics
Assessment also shows Peoria County at elevated risk for respiratory
factors (http://www.epa.gov/nata2002/).
Most
residents know that Peoria is struggling to contain the untreated
sewage running into the river from an aging combined sewer overflow
system. But how many of us are aware that the “Wasting Our
Waterways” report, based on total toxic discharges from industrial
sources, ranked the Illinois River as 11th among the top 50 dirtiest
rivers in the entire country – just one spot outside the Top 10
Dirtiest in the US
(http://www.environmentillinois.org/reports/clean-water/clean-water-program-reports/wasting-our-waters-toxic-industrial-pollution-and-the-unfulfilled-promise-of-the-clean-water-act).
Upriver, cleanup of the former New Jersey Zinc/Mobil Chemical site in DePue remains stalled, allowing cadmium, lead and other heavy metals to wash from Lake DePue into the river with each heavy rain.
Despite
having the one of the highest rates of childhood lead exposure in the
country, the struggle to fund and complete lead abatement continues.
And while the county denied Peoria Disposal Company’s hazardous
waste landfill expansion request in 2006, as of January 2010,
hazardous waste continues to roll in from points as far afield as
Minnesota
(http://www.startribune.com/83721842.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUss).
A quick review of Peoria’s air, land, and waster Toxic Release
Inventory shows a range of persistent pollution problems
(http://www.epa.gov/cgi-bin/broker?view=STCO&trilib=TRIQ0&state=17&SFS=YES&year=2008&_service=oiaa&_program=xp_tri.sasmacr.tristart.macro).
As
the health community struggles with ways to reconcile Peoria’s
top-ranked access to medical care with its poor rankings in both
health outcomes and health factors overall, PFATW hopes that
environmental factors will be part of the discussion.
We believe
that the combined legacy of environmental exposures is a challenge
that must be addressed in order to make all Peorians as healthy as
possible. We encourage the Health Department to look further into
specific ways pollution may be contributing to Peoria’s health
problems.
We hope that important actions such as permanently closing the hazardous waste landfill, ramping up lead abatement, banning respiratory-stress-inducing idling by local city and school buses, cleaning up the DePue site, and fixing the sewers will all be part of the agenda for change.
The
City/County Health Department released their own statement today,
(http://www.peoriacounty.org/display.php?dept=PCCHD&page=index),
expressing their commitment to improving the county’s health, and
has scheduled a briefing for public officials and community health
stakeholders to discuss the findings, which will be held at 5:00 pm
on March 1st in Room LL100 of the Peoria City/County Health
Department.
PFATW is grateful for the partner we all have in the City/County Health Department, which is a key piece of the top ranking we received for Clinical Care. We hope that our top-notch local health care facilities will join with the Health Department, and local citizen groups like PFATW, in our mutual efforts towards improving the overall health of our county and its residents.
Peoria Families Against Toxic Waste(309) 339-9733
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