Now they have the proof that filthy air damages children’s brains.
Columbia University’s ground-breaking study linking airborne toxins to lower IQs among poor New York City kids is a wake-up call to curb pollution, health advocates and elected officials said Tuesday.
“These are things that were suspected and now we have the proof,” said Peggy Shepard, director of the Harlem-based WE ACT for Environmental Justice.
State Assemblyman Marcos Crespo, who represents (D-The Bronx) A state legislator who represents the South Bronx the South Bronx, blamed “decades of poor decision-making,” adding:for the troubling findings. “We need the state and city government to own up to this.”
Crespo said. said Assemblyman Marco Crespo. “We’re trying to reverse decades of poor policy.”
“It is alarming. This is a disaster. This is horrible. These are our kids,” said Assemblyman Marco Crespo.
As first reported in The Post, researchers at Columbia’s Mailman Schools of Public Health found kids who were exposed to the most pollutants and who came from the poorest families scored 6.6 points lower on their overall IQ tests than other kids. Parents in the impacted neighborhoods were alarmed.
“That’s probably what happened to my child! He’s 17 and was diagnosed with autism at 2. He’s in 11th grade, and his math and reading are at a third- or fourth-grade level,”. My son has a learning disability, because of this environment,” said Harlem resident Lisa Wilkes.
Shardae Lyons, 29, who dropped off her 6-year-old son, Semaj Lyons, at PS 43 in the South Bronx, pointed to the nearby congested Major Deegan Expressway, bywhich runs past the school.
“I thought there was a law that you couldn’t have toxic stuff like that so close to a school,” she said.
Mayor de Blasio said his administration is on the case.
The mayor’s OneNYC plan tackles “pollution and poverty head-on” through its by aggressively implementing the 2001 “Clean Heat” law, said de Blasio spokeswoman Amy Spitalnick. The law approved in 2011 that requires apartment buildings toto phase out the worst-polluting fuel oils and take by implementing other anti-pollution stepsinitiatives, she said.
Emily Saul, Sarah Trefethon and Carl Campanile