RCAA ON-LINE LIBRARY
Health
Issues in Brief: Air pollution and noise both create health issues for people living hear airports or under flight corridors. In the cities closest to Sea-Tac, there is an obvious high incidence of adult deafness among long-term residents as compared to other parts of the county. Unusual clusters of rare brain cancers (attributed to toxic chemicals) have been observed close to Sea-Tac. Higher rates of miscarriage, prescriptions for mental health medications, and asthma have been reported in airport communities.
In general, neither the Port of Seattle nor the Federal Aviation Administration wishes to face up to aviation-related health issues. Health is a topic almost ignored in the environmental analysis (less than two pages in the FEIS). The Port has proposed nothing for health studies, nothing for treatment of people made ill by jet-plane exhausts or noise. Such studies as have been done were funded by the State and County health departments, following up on work done by volunteers. General health was shown to be poorer in neighborhoods around Sea-Tac than in the County generally. Similar results were shown in similar work for areas around King County International Airport (Boeing Field).
The proposed third runway would bring noise & air pollution to some areas that receive little or none now, & would increase noise & air pollution in some areas already impacted. How much noise, how much pollution is unknowable, because no-one can accurately predict how much traffic will go in & out of Sea-Tac in the future.
With or without a third runway, a very high level of traffic in the future would inevitably increase the existing health risks. Construction of a new regional airport in an unpopulated area is one straight-forward partial answer to the health risks now associated with Sea-Tac.
See also Air Pollution and Noise.
Documents:
Hansen, Dennis, M.D. and Sanders, Lee A., M.D., Ph.D. The Adverse Health Impacts of Airport Expansion with Particular Reference to Sea-Tac International Airport. August 1992. For RCAA (Basic literature review of health and educational effects of noise & air pollution in airport communities. Appendix: report on 1992 meeting with Port of Seattle on measuring air pollution near Sea-Tac.) [Acrobat Version - 44KB, 22 pages]
National Institutes of Health, Health Information Page. For those interested in health research, this page offers links to many health pages, including the National Library of Medicine.
PubMed. PubMed is the National Library of Medicine's search service to access the 9 million citations in MEDLINE and Pre-MEDLINE (with links to participating on-line journals), and other related databases.
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