Part Three: Are industrial sources near schools jeopardizing students' health?

DEARBORN — Southend resident Ranaa Saaidi often worried about her 10-year-old son breathing in toxins at school this summer.

The Southend neighborhood of Dearborn is a predominantly low-income, Arab-American neighborhood classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as an Environmental Justice Community. 

Saaidi's son, who has breathing problems, attended Salina Intermediate School this summer. The school borders Salina Elementary School. A fence separates the schools from industrial sources, including the former steel company Severstal (now owned by AK Steel) that is located across the street. Environmental groups sued Severstal last year, accusing it of being a chronic violator of the Clean Air Act and Michigan Air Pollution Control Act. 

Saaidi said she was one of many parents who complained about windows being left open this summer during school hours at Salina Intermediate School because there was no air conditioning.

She said she was concerned about students getting too hot, but what she found even more troubling was the impact toxic smells and pollutants from factories could potentially have on the children’s academic performance. 

“This area is notorious for air pollution, but they decided it was fine to just leave the windows open when one of the state’s biggest polluters is located right across the street,” Saaidi said.

The impact of air pollution on students who attend schools in Wayne County’s polluted communities is a longtime environmental issue that has prompted studies over the years. 

A 2011 study conducted by researchers from the University of Michigan showed exposure to air pollution from industrial sources near Michigan public schools jeopardizes children’s health and academic success.

Researchers found that schools located in areas with the state’s highest industrial air pollution levels had the lowest attendance rates (an indicator of poor health) as well as the highest proportions of students who failed to meet state educational testing standards. The research team was led by Paul Mohai of the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment and Byoung-Suk Kweon of the U-M Institute for Social Research.

Southend resident Haifa Ali’s 5-year-old daughter, Marya Aladwar, attends Salina Elementary School and has asthma. Ali said she worries about her daughter being outside on the school's playground because air pollution can trigger asthma attacks.  

“Everyone speaks so low of this neighborhood because of the pollution,” Ali said. “Everybody wants to go away. When I wake up sometimes in the morning, I go walking and there is this ammonia smell. You know the ammonia powder, when you open that cap and that smell comes out. All the sudden, I get that smell. Especially in the summer, every day, either in the morning when I go out for a walk or at night. And I get scared and I wonder what kind of diseases and illnesses it will bring upon generations and generations.” 

Eight of Michigan’s 15 most polluted ZIP codes are located in Wayne County. They include the 48120 ZIP code of Dearborn's Southend; the 48217, 48209 and 48211 ZIP codes of Detroit; the 48122 ZIP code of Melvindale; the 48218 ZIP code of River Rouge; the 48229 ZIP code of Ecorse; the 48146 ZIP code of Lincoln Park and the 48192 ZIP code of Wyandotte.

Ali and Saaidi, like other residents who live in these polluted communities, keep their windows closed in the summer to prevent the smell and dust from air pollution from entering. While these are low-income communities, many families are forced to spend a lot of money on air conditioning.

“The bill for air conditioning goes through the roof,” Saaidi said. 

The Sierra Club is one of the nation’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organizations, with more than two million members and supporters. The organization’s Detroit chapter recently distributed literature that raises awareness about serious environmental issues in Wayne County. One of the issues discussed in the literature is the impact air pollution has on students’ academic performance.

The literature was translated into Arabic and distributed at ACCESS, formerly known as the Arab American Community Center for Economic and Social Services, in order to reach Dearborn’s large Arab community.

“On a regular school day, a smokestack from a nearby polluter hovers over Salina Elementary School in Wayne County,” the literature reads. “The county has the highest number of pediatric asthma cases in the state.” 

The literature also includes statistics linking poor academic performance to air pollution. 

Over the last few years, the Dearborn Public School district has met with residents in the Southend once a month to hear concerns. One issue that was brought up was Salina Intermediate School, which was built in the 1920s, not having air conditioning. 

“It cost more to put in air conditioning than to build a new building, so we’re not going to do that, obviously,” said Brian Whiston, superintendent of the Dearborn Public Schools. “But we’re going to air condition as many rooms as we can.” 

The school district is currently working with AK Steel regarding air quality concerns. 

“Some of Salina Intermediate School is air conditioned, but the whole building is not,” Whiston said. “We are going to try and air condition it some more.”

He said there has to be a conversation soon about whether Salina Intermediate School will be relocated, considering the building is nearing its 100-year anniversary. “That is a conversation the community needs to have,” Whiston said.  

The Arab American News (TAAN) visited the School twice to speak with staff members and the school principal, Susan Stanley, about pollution concerns raised by parents and residents (Salina Intermediate School was closed at the time). Stanley wouldn’t comment, saying she didn’t have data to show the air pollution was directly correlated to the health issues residents have. 

In 2005, ACCESS did a study with local universities showing that among Arab Americans the highest reported trigger of asthma attacks by at-risk individuals was air pollution; and that 79 percent of asthma attacks in the community were triggered by air pollution.

In 2002, ACCESS did a study with local universities that used a geographic information system to evaluate the relationships between rates of emergency department admissions for asthma at the neighborhood block group level. The study found that the largest asthma clusters were within 2 km downwind of the industrial areas and the largest polluters in the region.

In 2014 the ACCESS Community Health and Research Center conducted a study about the impact of the environment on asthma rates with Wayne State University Medical School.

According to the Michigan Environmental Council, 1 out of 5 children in southwest Detroit has asthma.

Detroit school nurses handled three to five life-threatening asthma episodes per month during the 2003-2004 academic year, according to the American Lung Association.

TAAN contacted Salina Elementary School nurse Mary Baker, who said records show 14 students at the school have been noted to have asthma.

South Dearborn Environmental Improvement Association (SDEIA) member Mohamed Ahmed said the number is surprisingly low; and that a lot of children might have asthma, but were never diagnosed.

Saaidi’s son uses an inhaler, but she is not certain whether he has asthma. She said some physicians have linked his breathing problems to asthma, while others said it was related to allergies. 

According to the American Lung Association, 18 percent of students in Detroit have physician-diagnosed asthma and an estimated additional 7-10 percent of students have undiagnosed asthma.

Ali said physicians never diagnosed her daughter with asthma; and that she wouldn’t have known the girl suffered from it, until she looked into the matter. 

 “They don’t tell them it is asthma,” Ali said, adding that she had to dig to know what the problem was, even after doctors would prescribe medication.

She said it reached the point where she asked what was wrong with her daughter, because she was always getting sick and not sleeping.  There is an air quality monitor located at Salina Elementary School . 

David Mustonen, a spokesperson for Dearborn Public Schools said there is an air filtration system at Salina Elementary School as well and the maintenance schedule is even more stringent than any other building in the district because of the issues there. 

Severstal used to emit very high amounts of air pollution. These pollutants included but were not limited to fine particulate matter, coarse particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, manganese, lead, carbon monoxide, mercury and volatile organic compounds. Lead exposure has been linked to learning disabilities and short-term memory loss.

“Is Salina school supposed to be there? That is not for me to decide,” Ali said. 

Parents wanted Salina Elementary School built in the Southend so their children wouldn’t have to travel outside their community to go to school. 

“This is what the community asked for,” Whiston said. “They came to the board of education and the board of education said ‘okay if you want your kids to be in your neighborhoods, this is where we’ll build the school.’ So, the school locations were chosen by the parents in the community, not by the school district. So the board of education gave the community what they wanted.”

Absence of nearby healthcare facilities is a problem

The Michigan Department of Community Health has deemed the area of Wayne County impacted by a number of heavy industrial operations the “Epicenter of Asthma Burden”, due to the health problems families face. 

Despite studies that show the high rate of asthma among residents in Wayne County can be linked to the pollution, some of Wayne County’s polluted ZIP codes have no health clinics.

Tyrone Carter, president of the Original United Citizens of Southwest Detroit, has been trying to raise awareness on the urgency to open healthcare facilities in Southwest Detroit, home to the state’s most polluted ZIP code.

“We used to have three hospitals out here… now there is none,” Carter said. “…We used to have clinics out here, now there is none… but it is almost like it is by design that there is nothing out here, and it is not a livable community. We used to have five elementary schools and we are down to one.” 

Rhonda Anderson, environmental justice organizer with the Sierra Club Detroit chapter, said there are more clinics in Dearborn than there are in the 48217 ZIP code of southwest Detroit, River Rouge and Ecorse. She said there isn’t one practicing physician in the 48217 ZIP Code.

“All the residents have to travel outside their areas to go to clinics,” she said.

Southwest Detroit resident Theresa Landrum said the reason there has not been a connection to the pollution and major health issues is because doctors have not been taught how to identify environmentally related diseases; and that funding must be provided for that.

Landrum said that about five years ago a doctor from the Karmanos Cancer Center received a small grant that was used to teach doctors how to identify environmentally related diseases.

“We suspect my brother had cancer,” she said. “but this is what he said, ‘I am not going to the doctor. I am not going to let them test me, because they are not going to relate it to anything.’ He said 'whatever I have, I am going to die with it. And guess what? A lot of people are saying that. The doctor is going to write down if they smoke…they base it on their lifestyle instead of the environment.’”

A few years ago, the Sierra Club’s Detroit chapter had a white cross campaign. Residents who had cancer or lost somebody to cancer put a white cross outside of their homes.

“There were a significant number of residents in this area who were experiencing cancer,” Anderson said. “Not only diagnosed with it at the moment, but someone in that family in that home had passed from cancer.” 

She said the organization was hoping to give a visual to the situation and bring greater awareness to it. A lot of white crosses could be spotted in the 48217 ZIP code of southwest Detroit, Ecorse and River Rouge.

“Give us the clinic, give us the doctors, and give us the grant money to have our people’s health studied,” Landrum said.

This article was originally published in The Arab American News.