The World in a Breath of Air

The air in the Andes mountains is crisp but thin. When I went home to visit family, I would stay with my aunt Gloria, whose 4th-story apartment had a beautiful view of those misty mountains.  I felt very close to my aunt; we shared a birthday and many personality quirks.  I’ll never forget when she fell ill with a rare form of lung cancer and had to start using oxygen from a tank.  The doctors were puzzled by her illness because she wasn’t a smoker and didn’t work in an occupation that would have raised her cancer risk.

I remember feeling a pang of heartache as I recalled Tia Gloria braving a two and a half hour journey by bus across the city with me and my sister to visit our grandmother’s grave. The diesel fumes put us both to sleep on the way there and back.  When my aunt died, I couldn’t help but wonder if the pollution we’d choked on that day had caused that cancer. Only later would I realize that the fact that my aunt lived two blocks from a busy freeway congested with diesel traffic could have been what cut her life short.

As a researcher, I want to humanize the numbers that decision-makers use to justify action or neglect.  When I read that 70% of the airborne cancer risk in the state of California comes from diesel pollution, the first image that comes to mind is my memory of my aunt who passed from lung cancer. I find her story in those numbers and this inspires me to continue working with communities affected by diesel pollution in the Bay Area. In my work with the Diesel Collaborative I look for ways to remind those with the power to reduce this pollution that each of those numbers is a human life.

It may sound ironic to fight back tears as you’re crunching numbers, but this is where the power of participatory research lies: The power is in the experiences of those that live the realities behind the numbers. My aunt’s legacy is that of every person that struggles to breathe today and every organization that fights for cleaner air for future generations in West Oakland, Bogota Colombia, and beyond.

©2011, Ditching Dirty Diesel Collaborative.