An important category of the perceived public health impacts of freight emissions is premature death. The regional leadership described both personal experiences and the experiences of community members who have died connected with diesel exhaust and environmental pollution in their communities. Kim Gaddy shared her personal experience with asthma and how pollution has impacted her family directly: “I have a brother-in-law and a cousin who died of asthmatic attacks who lived in the South Ward in Newark, New Jersey. I attribute that to the cumulative impacts of pollution, that we suffer from over a lifetime, just because of the zip code and the neighborhoods we live in which are heavily impacted by diesel exhaust and other pollution.”

A social determinant that was pointed to numerous times as impacting health is the normalization of pollution and environmentally poor conditions. Kim Gaddy about this in the following statement, “When you are so accustomed to smelling and or seeing trucks and having trouble breathing in and out, you think that that’s just the norm. So, you think that’s a sense

of normalcy, and that this is something that I will always have to deal with. But that’s not the case! Pollution shouldn’t be the norm for our communities.”

Kim Gaddy discussed how shifting to zero-emission technology will create substantial benefits for children’s health and their ability to freely play outdoors in neighborhood parks: “Children who are recreating at nearby parks, won’t be coughing when trucks drive by or be harmed by trucks emitting toxic diesel exhaust. I think individuals will begin to have faith that people believe their lives are valuable, and they’re just not disposable, and that your life doesn’t matter. With zero-emission technologies, we will see that our lives do matter.”

The following table provides current overall measures for premature death, low birthweight, income inequality, and air pollution (particulate matter) for Essex County, where the city of Newark is located, and for the state of New Jersey. According to the data, Essex County’s measures are higher than New Jersey in all categories with the exception of air pollution (9.9) in comparison to the state of New Jersey (10.9).

The tool, developed with funding through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, allows users to categorize individual residential buildings by construction year (pre-1950, 1951-1978 and post-1978), which align with the decreasing probability of lead paint exposure.

The tool will be a helpful resource to New Jersey municipal officials tasked with implementing a recently enacted New Jersey law requiring lead paint inspection on certain New Jersey residential rental property, including upon tenant turnover, and establishes a lead-based paint hazard education program.