Letter to the editor: Cutting down trees for new development carries a heavy health cost | News

An infill job at 555 Middlefield Street is one particular of numerous projects exactly where trees alongside highways are being taken off to make way for new advancement. Courtesy metropolis of Mountain Check out.

Developers are taking away all-natural freeway vegetation barriers situated in between our households and freeways and expressways. Experienced evergreen trees with interlocking canopies and undergrowth are recognized to be effective air pollution limitations in opposition to toxic and carcinogenic gaseous and particulate automobile emissions by the procedures of absorption and filtration by the leaf stomata.

Primarily based on scientific exploration by the U.S. Environmental Security Company, we now know that the removal of these pollution limitations brings about greater publicity to these airborne contaminants for people today residing near these highways. 1000’s of home owners, their people, and kids will be uncovered to these poisonous substances 24/7 for 20 to 30 several years. Development growth of infants and little ones are specially at danger to the health and fitness impacts.

By their choices and actions, metropolis officials and housing developers are creating a considerable risk to general public wellbeing, welfare, and the atmosphere. In some circumstances, the tradeoff is the amplified rental revenue and earnings for corporate builders and their shareholders from 10 to 20 additional dwelling models vs . the prolonged-term menace to general public wellbeing for countless numbers of inhabitants residing near highways and expressways. This is a genuinely unacceptable tradeoff.

Daniel Shane

Cypress Issue Travel, Mountain Check out

By Percy