Guest Editorial: Ships, Trucks, and Trains: Effects of Goods Movement on Environmental Health

Globalization is changing the world in ways that we may not yet fully comprehend. For the United States, the enactment of new free trade agreements, the downsizing of our manufacturing base, and consumer demand for inexpensive products are all affecting both jobs and the environment, especially in those regions with ports and transportation corridors designed to distribute imported goods. The changing dynamics of trade prompted a journalist to remark last month that the United States " is becoming nothing more than a distribution economy, importing, moving and selling consumer goods " (Romans 2006). As this shift in the world and U.S. economies occurs, little attention has been placed on its environmental impacts, especially the health impacts of air pollution from international trade and " goods movement. " As the Focus article describes in this issue of EHP (Sharma 2006), the volume of imports from Asian countries into the United States has skyrocketed. The distribution of these goods from their entry ports to the rest of the United States involves diesel-powered vehicles and equipment every step of the way, creating significant exposures and health impacts in communities along the distribution routes that are just beginning to be assessed. For example, a $9.97 doll is made in Asia by low-wage workers under conditions that may subject them to a myriad of unregulated hazards. This doll is packed with 10,000 others into a container and loaded onto a marine vessel holding 4,000 other containers carrying dolls, shoes, and electronics. Fueled by low-quality bunker fuel, the ship leaves one of the world's largest ports in Asia, chugs across the Pacific, discharging nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, particulates, and other pollutants into the earth's environment. Arriving at the Southern California ports of Los Angeles or Long Beach (where 40% of all U.S. imports arrive), the container is unloaded by long-shore workers, who breathe exhaust from the idling ship as well as emissions from a row of idling trucks with drivers waiting for their loads. The next leg of the trip is via truck to a rail yard, situated less than one-quarter of a mile from schools and homes, where the container is placed on a freight train, pulled by a diesel locomotive. Alternatively, the doll may be placed on a big-rig truck and sent for repackaging to a mega-warehouse 50 miles from the ports, an area that was formerly all dairy lands that has now given …