DOCUMENTARY: Community Engagement Core (CEC) and South Bronx Unite (SBU) Collaborate on Air Pollution Research

The Community Engagement Core (CEC) at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health (as part of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences [NIEHS] Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan) has been collaborating with South Bronx Unite (SBU), an all-volunteer coalition of South Bronx residents, organizations and allies working together to improve and protect the social, environmental, and economic future of the community. Dr. Markus Hilpert, Associate Professor at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, and member of the CEC, has been working with SBU on an air pollution study in the Mott-Haven-Port Morris section of the South Bronx, an area surrounded by highways, fossil fuel power plants, waste transfer stations, diesel-truck facilities, and a large maritime industrial area. The opening of an online grocery delivery warehouse, Fresh Direct, has increased traffic in the already overburdened community. CEC and SBU have been collaborating on assessing traffic-related air pollution in the area as a result. Mychal Johnson and Dr. Melissa Barber of SBU have facilitated collecting citizen science data from the community, through which residents of the area can be empowered through collecting the data themselves in order to have more than emotions and anecdotes to fight an uphill battle.