José E. Serrano: “in a week-long special series in New York this week, the New York Daily News is documenting what we in the South Bronx…”

“in a week-long special series in New York this week, the New York Daily News is documenting what we in the South Bronx district that I represent have been saying for years: The concentration of waste treatment facilities and their fleets of diesel trucks are killing our children, our families, our older folks with asthma and respiratory illness. One-half million New Yorkers suffer from asthma. Six percent of the population. The worst rate in the country. New York City's asthma hospitalization rate is three times the national average. More than 35,000 residents are treated at city hospitals for severe asthma attacks each year, a 24 percent rise over the last decade. Deaths accountable to asthma are up 50 percent since 1980. 284 died of asthma in 1995. The asthma epidemic hits children the hardest. More than 10 percent of New York City's one million students, 130,000, suffer from asthma. 15,000 are admitted to the hospital each year, which is twice the national average. The hardest hit of all the children are those with families in the Hunts Point area of the South Bronx in my district and East Harlem in the district of my colleague (Mr. Rangel). New York City's asthma admission rates are highest in the Bronx, along with Harlem. Almost 13 percent of Bronx children under the age of 17 were estimated to suffer from asthma several years ago. Children in poor New York City neighborhoods are five times more likely to be hospitalized than their better-off neighbors.”