North Texas Clean Air Plan - Midlothian, TX

According to a recent Cook Children's Hospital Study regarding asthma, local 110,867 kids are living with the illness, providing new evidence of the impact from "the perfect storm" of industrial pollution. (Source: DFW News Plume).

That's 18.1 percent with asthma.

The regional study of child asthma shows its worse directly downwind of Midlothian, Texas cement plants.

"The image (beside this story) is taken directly from a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) computer recreation showing typical southeast ozone seasonal winds pushing the plumes from the Midlothian cement plants diagonally northwest through Tarrant County," states the Downwinders At Risk newsletter. "Not only did the study map child asthma in north Texas, it also found that the region suffered a child asthma rate that was three times the state average and well above the federal average as well."

Downwinders was founded on the idea that you can't release as much poison as the cement plants do and not have a large public health impact, but there have been very few actual surveys of human health to provide rigorous evidence of that impact, according to a mass email sent out by the group.

Another image is taken directly from a recent presentation on the Cook Children's Hospital Study reporting on the status of children's health in the facility's service region.

"The Cook Children's Study Slide is a 'health effects map' that matches the 'kiln plume map' exactly," says an article in the above mentioned publication. "Cook Children's study is the most comprehensive look at children's health ever attempted in the western part of the DFW region."

Moreover, Cook Children's is a venerable institution in Fort Worth and Tarrant County, research shows.

More information on the study can be found at CCHAPS.org.

Both of the images mentioned above were part of Downwinders' new presentation "The Big Push: Breaking Up the Perfect Storm of Industrial Air Pollution That Keeps DFW Air Unsafe and Illegal."

"Before the same wind pushes Midlothian cement plant pollution into Tarrant County, it pushes Central Texas coal plant pollution to Midlothian and then pushes it all directly into the air pollution caused by Barnett Shale gas development," states the newsletter.

The most recent showing of "The Big Push" held May 11 talked about the fact that some time in May the state by way of the TCEQ, would officially release the readings of last summer's ozone monitors to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and confirmed that DFW violated the old federal 85 parts per billion ozone standard.

"It is our understanding that TCEQ will try to argue that a new plan isn't necessary or it may try to get an extension of time from the EPA for submitting a new one," according to the newsletter article. "We like to think that Downwinders is one of the most effective citizens' groups in the state because we're pretty good at the art of 'disproportional impact.'"