Philip J. Landrigan MD, an internationally recognized expert on the relation between pollution, disease, and the climate, asks us to fight pollution to protect our health and stop pollution to protect the health of the climate.
The Healthy Air for All program is our answer.
Healthy Air for All does community organization and education that connects pollution to everyone’s health and introduces tools for mitigation— people protecting themselves and their loved ones, especially the children and the elderly.
That will be the springboard for action with a broad coalition demanding change to prevent pollution at the source.
The recording of the MCAN presentation on Pollution, Our Health, and Our Climate on April 7 is available at recording and slides on MCAN's YouTube channel.
Healthy Air for People and Climate
Pollution kills
Dr. Landrigan and his colleagues mapped the connection between pollution levels and deaths from pollution-related disease across the Commonwealth.
North Shore pollution-related deaths in 2019
Peabody has high annual levels of PM2.5 and one of the worst pollution-related health outcomes in the Commonwealth, followed by neighboring cities. These deaths are preventable.
People of the North Shore
Our first project is focused on several communities of the North Shore: Beverly, Salem, Peabody, and Danvers. These are some of the people who live here.
How can we reach the diverse people of the North Shore to communicate the essentials of the public health perspective?
How can we reach busy people?
How can we work together to discover the connection between the source of a toxic substance and the resulting harm and acting to prevent harm?
How do we reach people who aren’t thinking about the climate because they have other urgent concerns?
How do we create a movement to rebuild and strengthen public health and remedy the systemic sources of pollution?
How can we empower people to protect their children from an invisible threat?
Pollution and Health on the North Shore
A clear blue sky may be full of invisible, harmful pollution.
How can we observe levels of tiny, invisible particles, (particulate matter of size 2.5 microns) called PM2.5 so small that they get into the lung and into the blood? 20-40 in width of human hair
Susan and Ron Smoller, co-founders of the MCAN Breathe Clean North Shore Chapter, worked with the Commonwealth, Sharon Cameron, the Director of the Peabody Health Department, and the City of Peabody to install several AQ monitors.
We use Air Quality monitors to measure and track pollution in order to protect ourselves. Relatively low air quality values means low pollution in Peabody on April 1, 2025 at 9:15 am
The area within the circle is centered on the Peabody Peaker, a 55 MW gas and oil peaker power plant and covers environmental justice areas within one mile of the plant.
The environmental justice area is crossed by and surrounded by traffic. To the west are routes 95 and 1, while routes 128 and 114 go through the area, and other roads carry commuter traffic.
Although new state policy should have required an environmental impact study before the plant was built, the Commonwealth failed to require it.
In each of these buildings we use energy to heat and cool and for lighting and communications.
I live within that environmental justice circle, close to Peabody Square and Peabody City Hall.
Sources of Pollution
That area was already being impacted by pollution, mainly from traffic, and Peabody had been polluted by the tannery industry from 1639 until 1970.
Traffic on route 128, one of three major highways in Peabody.
Commuter traffic passes through Peabody Square
There were already two polluting peaker plants in the Waters River Facility of the Peabody Municipal Electric Plant.
Indoor air pollution can be more severe than outdoor pollution. So-called clean natural gas is mostly methane which impacts health as well as the environment.
The health burdens are known
Adrienne Allen, MD, MPH reports that her North Shore patients say, “I am short of breath, I can't walk.”
Kathryn Rodgers, MPH, in a study supported by MCAN, reported that pollution-related disease rates were higher in the environmental justice areas near the site of the Peabody Peaker than the rest of the state.
Sharon Cameron, Director of Public Health for the City of Peabody Health Department, said that the Peabody Peaker could add “...an additional 12 tons per year of small particulates [and almost] 51,000 tons of CO2 .
Stop the Peabody Peaker
A broad coalition came together to join Breathe Clean North Shore and MCAN as we tried to stop the Peabody Peaker to protect immigrants and other environmental justice people from new pollution, and out of concern for the climate.
We used demonstrations, a hunger strike, education, and advocacy. Our coalition included Mass Climate Action Network (MCAN); Breathe Clean North Shore (chapter of MCAN.), Steve Andrada, 350-Mass-North Shore, Berkshire Environmental Action Team, Rosemary Wessel, Judith Black, Domingo Dominguez, No Fracked Gas in Mass, Nathan Phillips, Mireille Bejjani/Community Action Works & Slingshot Action, SAFE, and more.
We failed to effectively mobilize the large immigrant and environmental justice population or get broad community support.
The Peabody Peaker
The Mass Municipal Wholesale Electric Company built the Peabody Peaker —in center with very old factory smokestack at right, viewed from the MGH health center in Danvers. The plant is in the Waters River facility of the Peabody Municipal Light Plant.
Mitigation: Know your air quality
The key to mitigation is to be aware of the air quality. PurpleAir monitor maps and several other maps of air quality monitors are available on the internet. The levels of PM2.5 shown here, from 88-100 PM2.5 in Peabody on October 17, 2022 at 10:35 am are harmful.
“PM2.5 spikes such as [this] are associated with several major short-term health problems in the 24-48 hours following the spike: increased heart attacks, increased episodes of cardiac arrhythmia, and increased episodes of acute asthma in both children and adults.”—Philip J. Landrigan, personal communication
Mitigation: Protection
Mitigation is people protecting themselves and their loved ones, especially the children and the elderly.
The N-95 respirator mask captures PM2.5 particles and protects the wearer
Mitigation: Room air purifiers/filters
An affordable, highly rated, air purifier for small rooms (Photo: Blue Air)
Summary
We can reach out to both the environmental justice and the middle class communities on the North Shore.
We can explain the health benefits of mitigating against harm by pollution.
We need to listen to, motivate, and partner with each group on their own terms.
Each group can then mobilize for mitigation and systemic change.
To build a movement, we build a coalition, we look for areas of shared values and interests. We enable people to protect themselves from pollution and save their health, we partner together to prevent pollution.
We shall protect our health and stop pollution to protect the health of the climate.
Please see articles and resources listed in the menu at CleanPowerCoalition.org .
Healthy Air for All, People and Planet
The recording of the MCAN presentation on Pollution, Our Health, and Our Climate on April 7 is now available at recording and slides on MCAN's YouTube channel.