1South Bronx Environmental Health Policy Study (SBEHPS)

The overall objective of this South Bronx Environmental Health Policy Study (SBEHPS) was to characterize the nature and causal factors of the ambient air pollution in communities of the South Bronx that experience high concentrations of diesel trucks and waste transfer facilities. Epidemiological, human clinical, and animal toxicological studies have shown that exposure to ambient air pollution is likely to be one of the important outdoor environmental risk factors for asthma and other airway diseases (U.S. EPA PM Criteria Document, 2004). In the Bronx, the rate of asthma hospital admissions for all ages between 1991 and 1996 was twice that of Manhattan and Brooklyn. In addition, most neighborhoods in the Bronx experienced a 110 to 120 percent increase in asthma hospitalizations between 1987 and 1996, as compared to 35 to 50 percent increases in most other neighborhoods in New York City. Although the origin of asthma is unquestionably multi-factorial, with important genetic, immunologic, and environmental components, the marked geographic and temporal variations strongly suggest that environmental factors make a significant contribution to the pathogenesis and expression of asthma, underscoring the need for an evaluation of this factor in urban communities like the South Bronx. To learn more about these conditions, New York University initiated a community-based feasibility and planning study that would begin to examine the current environmental conditions, specifically as the