Duwamish River Pollution and Poor Neighborhoods

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Is-Seattle-creating-ghettos-of-povery-and-2179942.php

Looking at data from the years 1990-2000 in Seattle, the American Journal of Public Health found that there was an increased stratification between rich and poor neighborhoods in relation to income inequality, property values, and pollution. Neighborhoods such as Ballard which previously were more industrial have become richer and more popular places to live, and thus the pollution sources have been moved to poorer, already toxin affected neighborhoods such as South Park and Georgetown, which are situated along the Duwamish River.

The Duwamish river and the communities surrounding it have a history of receiving an unequal share of pollution runoff from businesses such as Boeing and the Port of Seattle, among other factory operations located on the river. Residents of these neighborhoods already experience inequalities in health, such as increased asthma, diabetes, and colorectal cancer. Babies born to parents living on the Duwamish are more likely die as infants and also have a shorter life expectancy than the rest of King County. These health injustices are not getting better, but only beginning to be addressed by public health agencies. There exists a great deal of data detailing the environmental contamination which has been literally dumped in and around Duwamish river for years. The Duwamish is listed on the Superfund list, which is a record of the most toxic environmental areas in the United States. Yet, there is still work to be done to fully asses the extent of the damage, who is responsible, and how to clean it up.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Should-Duwamish-cleanup-also-focus-on-improving-1306234.php#page-1

The pollution of the Duwamish not only affects those in close proximity to the river itself. The toxins in the river affect the salmon and other sea life in the river. When those sea foods are eaten by those who have traditionally depended on the Duwamish for their food supply, such as the Native American inhabitants of the Seattle area, they ingest harmful chemicals. The Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition states that "PCBs are found in nearly all salmon in the river," and that the pollutants concentrated in the fish and shellfish can also be spread to other wildlife such as birds, which further distributes the toxins in the surrounding environment to other predators.

http://www.duwamishcleanup.org/index.html

The Cleanup Coalition has plans to clean up the river while supplying quality living-wage jobs, but there is much organization to be done.

-Brandon Alborg