Imperial Valley Asthma Coalition
The Air We Share:
Asthma Challenges in Imperial County, along the U.S./Mexico Border
[3/29/05 by Jeni L. Miller et al]
Lines of cars and trucks stretch along either side of the international gate. Athletic young men clamber over the iron fence in the middle of the day, only to climb back when they see that Border Patrol has spotted them. Waiters and shop clerks default to Spanish, and a nice dinner out could mean popping across to Mexico just for the evening. Even the names of the border's companion towns speak to the interwoven lives and destinies here: Calexico, in the U.S., nestles right up against its Mexican neighbor, Mexicali. “You can't talk about one [country] without talking about the other here. The towns are connected,” remarks Imperial Valley Asthma Coalition (IVAC) member Juanita Salas, assistant for Congressman Bob Filner. Talking about the challenges of trying to fight asthma in the Border Region, she adds, "We share the same air."
The outdoor air these towns and the rest of Imperial County breathe tends toward the hot, dry, and dusty. According to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the region’s air also tends toward "severe non-attainment" levels when measured for particulate matter. Air pollutants hover over this sea level county, caught between the Chocolate Mountains, the desert, and the Salton Sea. Pacific Ocean air currents that tend to keep coastal towns breathing easier just don't reach here. Instead, you get a desert wind that whips up the dry soil, putting a brown haze over the landscape. Add to that pollens and pesticides, and smoke from the “slash and burn” practices of local farming, car and truck exhaust from both sides of the border, and emissions from Mexicali's power plant and numerous maquiladoras (factories), and you have a airborne cocktail of environmental asthma triggers for the young lungs of the Border Region’s children.
"I saw six kids with asthma, and then the next year there were 12, and then 18. The numbers just keep increasing," worries Rockwood Elementary's warm-hearted principal, Fernando Caloca. A soft-spoken man, Caloca has students running up to him giving him big hugs as he strolls through the school, before he shoos them to their classes. When presented with the opportunity to learn more about asthma, and to have his school assessed by IVAC, he jumped at the chance. "He's been very receptive," says Karla Matus, IVAC Program Director, who approached Principal Caloca and principals at several other schools about implementing the USEPA IAQ Tools for Schools Program.
Founded with the start of the statewide CAFA Initiative, IVAC brings together a powerful lineup of members to a county with little in the way of existing advocacy groups. The coalition is still in its infancy. IVAC member Lori Copan of the California Department of Health Services Environmental Health Investigations Branch, who will be doing a study of cross border health issues in the coming months, exclaims, "We can't forget this county! It's often much easier to work in the Bay Area or in the Sacramento or Los Angeles area where it's geographically more convenient to make connections, build partnerships and conduct research." But with children's asthma hospitalization rates among the highest in California--over two and a half times the statewide rate1--the need for asthma advocacy in Imperial County is indeed great.
When asked what the biggest triggers are for his students' asthma, Principal Caloca replies, "It's mostly agriculture. When the alfalfa blooms, and the cantaloupe blooms, the students deal with a lot of pollen."
Lucy Hernandez, IVAC's Program Facilitator, concurs that agriculture is "definitely one of the issues around here."
Matus, however, disagrees, stating there are many sources of environmental asthma triggers. "I don't really say agriculture. There are a lot of factors, the power plants across the border. You have to be careful when you talk about agriculture."
IVAC member Sombra Chaney, Asthma Community Health Worker under Proposition 10, is similarly cautious about pointing fingers. "It's hard to say exactly what it is--agriculture, the factories across the border, the dust from the desert. The first thing I would do is find out."
These aren't just the finer points of disagreement among asthma advocates, but the subject of a Supreme Court case surrounding the area's "severe non-attainment" designation. How much do pollutants from across the border figure in the particulate matter measured in Imperial County? Would Imperial County (Saltan Sea Air Basin) be within ambient air quality standards if not for its proximity to Mexicali's traffic, power plants, and maquiladoras? Or, does its own agricultural practices, such as “slash and burn,” or traffic on dirt roads, play the major role? If the latter, then farming will have to change practices and clean up their industry, which could dramatically affect the local economy. But if the pollutants come primarily from Mexico, then cleaner air becomes a bi-national issue, something the feds have to address by working with the Mexican government. Imperial County and the Sierra Club have faced off in court to determine the answer.
Within this air quality minefield, IVAC takes its initial stab at raising asthma awareness with events like health fairs, and at helping schools do what they can to reduce the impact of asthma, such as by using Tools for Schools. With representatives of the Bi-national Task Force, the Department of Health, the area's congressional representatives, and others on board the coalition, IVAC may be well positioned to extend their arena of concern, to tackle even the bigger, harder asthma issues facing this needy region.
Footnotes:
1 Age-adjusted asthma hospitalization rates in Imperial County for children ages 0-14 are over 2.5 times the statewide rate, and 5th highest among 40 Senate Districts, based on 1995-97 and 1998-2000 state agency data, respectively. For more details including data sources and methodology, please see text and Tables 2-4 and 7 the CAFA California Asthma Advocacy Data Book (http://www.calasthma.org/about_cafa/advocacy_databook/) and CAFA’s asthma hospitalization rate data projects (http://www.calasthma.org/about_cafa/hospitalization_rate_data/).
These CAFA website pages describe how to download data maps and tables for free or how to receive a free copy of the project on CD-Rom from CAFA.
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