News Aug 13, 2009 at 4:00 am

Green Portland's Dirty Secret: Its Air

Illustration by Mark Searcy

Comments

1
What were the five other schools besides Chapman that were in the top toxicity percentile?
2
There aren't that many cars on the road in this city (comparatively speaking). So something's amiss.
3
I think in the NW Examiner article about this, it was noted that the DEQ percentage of benzene from cars is highly distorted because they monitor right near the freeway.
A study close to ESCO would likely show much higher portions coming from them near the Chapman school & NW.
MATH: If the rest of the city is at acceptable levels of benzene toxicity and 50% of that comes from cars and Chapman is at 26x that level of benzene and gets the same actual amount of benzene from cars, then only 2 or 3% of the benzene at Chapman comes from cars.
4
Sorting the results by Multnomah County, the top 10 Portland schools are:
1st percentile National Rank
The air is worse at 293 schools across the nation
Spanish-English International School
6941 N Central St Portland, OR

1st percentile National Rank
The air is worse at 293 schools across the nation
Pursuit Of Wellness Education & Recreation School
6941 N Central St Portland, OR

1st percentile National Rank
The air is worse at 293 schools across the nation
Arts, Communication & Technology School
6941 N Central St Portland, OR

1st percentile National Rank
The air is worse at 395 schools across the nation
Clarendon Elementary School
9325 N Van Houten Ave Portland, OR

1st percentile National Rank
The air is worse at 437 schools across the nation
George Middle School
10000 N Burr Portland, OR

2nd percentile National Rank
The air is worse at 1,033 schools across the nation
Abernethy Elementary School
2421 Se Orange Ave Portland, OR

2nd percentile National Rank
The air is worse at 1,113 schools across the nation
Cathedral School
110 Nw 17Th Avenue Portland, OR

2nd percentile National Rank
The air is worse at 1,274 schools across the nation
Class Academy
2730 Nw Vaughn St Portland, OR

2nd percentile National Rank
The air is worse at 1,274 schools across the nation
Chapman Elementary School
1445 Nw 26Th Ave Portland, OR

2nd percentile National Rank
The air is worse at 1,333 schools across the nation
Childpeace Montessori School
1516 Nw Thurman St Portland, OR

5
Sarah--

I find this hard to believe. If USAToday got their numbers from from the EPA, then I think I know what the problem is. Each state is responsible for reporting the level of toxins in their air to the EPA. This means that the method of measurement may vary from state to state. In Oregon, we tend to have fairly clean air, so we measure our air pollution accurately, but other states that have much worse pollution problems will fudge their numbers. For example, in 2005, it was reported that Portland had more pollution than Pittsburgh, PA, the city where the Three Mile Island meltdown happened. It's hard to believe that this is true, and, in fact, it is not. Other places fudge their numbers, and Oregon doesn't. That's why these schools are in the bottom percentiles.

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