What you should know
- New York City train users could be exposed to poor air quality according to a study by New York University’s Groddman School of Medicine.
- The report says that the air some passengers breathe could be compared to particles from forest fires or from building demolition.
- The researchers measured air quality samples at 71 train stations, during morning and afternoon rush hours, in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. Two stations in the Big Apple had the most contamination.
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NEW YORK – New York City train riders could be exposed to poor air quality, according to a study by New York University’s Groddman School of Medicine. And the study says that the train system in the Big Apple exposes users to breathe more pollutants than any other train system in the Northeast of the United States.
The study found that millions of train users would be encountering pollutants that put their health at risk every day. The report says that the air some passengers breathe could be compared to particles from forest fires or from building demolition.
The researchers measured air quality samples at 71 train stations, during morning and afternoon rush hours, in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. The group found concentrations of hazardous metals and organic particles in the 13 underground stations that were part of the study in the Big Apple that ranged between two and seven times that of outdoor air samples.
In New York City, the stations with the highest pollution were the Christopher Street on the F line located on second avenue and the PATH line on Christopher Street, connecting New Jersey and Manhattan, which reached up to 77 times the typical concentration of potentially hazardous substances.
“As users of one of the busiest and seemingly dirtiest subway systems in the country, New Yorkers in particular should be concerned about the toxins they inhale while waiting for trains to arrive,” adds study co-lead author Terry Gordon, PhD, professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine of NYU Grossman.
Air quality was also measured at 58 other stations during peak hours in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington. While no station readings reached the severe levels of pollution seen on New York City’s worst transit lines, subway stations within each of these cities still showed at least twice the concentrations of particulate matter in the air than their respective external samples in the morning and afternoon rush hours.
“Our findings add to evidence that subways expose millions of commuters and public transportation employees to air pollutants at levels known to pose serious health risks over time,” says the study’s lead author. , David Luglio, PhD student at NYU Grossman.
Closer analysis of the air samples showed that iron and organic carbon, a chemical produced by the incomplete decomposition of fossil fuels or decomposing plants and animals, made up three-quarters of the contaminants found in the samples of underground air for all measured subway stations. Although iron is not largely toxic, some forms of organic carbon have been linked to an increased risk of asthma, lung cancer, and heart disease, the study authors say. Gordon notes that more research is needed to assess a potentially higher risk for transit workers who spend much longer periods of time at stations.
Some possible sources that could create the pollutants are the exhaust gases emitted by maintenance locomotives diesel, dust from dead rodent remains and poor ventilation.
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