| The environmental justice movement has focused attention on the quality of the urban environment, especially as it affects low-income and people of color. An increase in asthma and other respiratory illnesses has generated interest in monitoring air quality. In 1999, the State’s Department of Environmental Protection placed one of five fine particulate (PM-2.5) monitors for the Boston area in Roxbury to study the impact of vehicular emissions on the health of residents.
Roxbury residents also have demanded the use of clean fuels in public transport fleets in areas that depend heavily on buses. The MBTA placed into service 358 new clean-fuel buses in 2003-2004, and another 175 are scheduled to be deployed in 2005.
Environmental burdens in Roxbury include high levels of toxic diesel emissions from buses and trucks. The MBTA’s Bartlett bus depot, located near Dudley Square in Roxbury, was closed in 2004. High rates of childhood lead poisoning and fewer acres of public open space per capita than would be anticipated by the neighborhood’s high concentration of children and youth also characterize this urban neighborhood.
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