It was a recent morning in Newark’s Ironbound section and, a block from the Hawkins Street School, more than a dozen trucks lurched through the intersection of Hawkins and Christie streets within a span of 10 minutes, some hauling shipping containers to the nearby Port Newark/Elizabeth Marine Terminal complex.

During the same period, dozens more container trucks whizzed past the intersection on Routes 1 & 9, which cuts through the Ironbound atop an embankment. Flights into Newark Liberty International Airport passed directly overhead every three minutes or so, adding jet fumes to the toxins spewed by the trucks, plus cars, a municipal waste incinerator, recycling plant and other heavy industries.

In the shadow of the bustling Ferry Street commercial district, many of the Ironbound’s largely poor, minority residents feel besieged by polluters who travel through the area — though not to it — sickening them and their children, they say, without sharing the jobs or other economic benefits derived from all those carbon emissions.

Parents, community leaders and medical researchers say asthma is a particularly serious problem in the Ironbound, a hot spot for the chronic respiratory disease within a city whose asthma-related hospitalization rate is already more than double Essex County’s. The situation is similar in Newark’s South Ward.

So a proposal to raise the Bayonne Bridge roadway that could increase the number of trucks driving in and out of the port has struck a raw nerve among parents, community activists, environmental justice advocates and others in the Ironbound and the neighboring South Ward.

Members of the communities are waging a campaign that, despite the time-sensitive project’s promise of thousands of construction and permanent jobs, would slow down its ongoing environmental review process by as much as a year.

Led by the nonprofit Coalition for Healthy Ports, members of the community are also demanding safeguards to ensure the project does not aggravate the area’s already elevated asthma rates and other health problems.

The intersection of Hawkins and Christie Streets in Newark's Ironbound section is a busy one for trucks headed for the nearby port, and for jets bound for Newark Liberty International Airport.

“I know people need jobs. I’m very understanding of that because I live right here, where many people have low income or no income,” said Nancy Minsey, a volunteer with the nonprofit Ironbound Community Corp., who has two sons with asthma. “But I’m talking to you from my perspective as a mother.”

Diesel fumes trigger asthma attacks, and repeated exposure can aggravate symptoms and cause permanent respiratory damage, said Robert Laumbach, a researcher at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey who is leading a study of asthma in the Ironbound funded by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA has criticized a draft environmental assessment of the bridge project prepared by the Coast Guard, the project’s federal permitting agency, for its failure to address the net impact of the project on truck-related emissions in neighborhoods not immediately adjacent to the construction zone.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey wants to raise the roadway to open access to ports in Newark and Elizabeth for bigger ships expected to begin traveling from China to the East Coast following an expansion of the Panama Canal.

Supporters, including Gov. Chris Christie, say the project will preserve port jobs and commerce. The Port Authority says it would increase truck traffic by less than 1 percent, which would be offset by various efforts, including helping truckers replace their aging rigs.

Critics, however, say the replacement program places most of the burden on cash-strapped independent truckers, and called on the Port Authority to set up a $100 million fund for a “green” infrastructure fund.

Speaking only for himself, Laumbach of UMDNJ said he is sure the Ironbound’s asthma problem is linked at least in part to port truck traffic. But he conceded it is hard to say just how much of the blame port trucks deserve, as opposed to the ships, planes, factories, cars and non-port trucks.

“There’s no smoking gun,” Laumbach said. “Or smoking tailpipe.”

Mincey’s sons say port trucks drive right past their apartment along Roanoke Avenue, and it can be difficult to avoid the diesel smoke.

“It feels horrible,” said Rahmele, 13. “Like you’re in a fire in your house, and you’re breathing in the smoke in your house.”

Juan Rolon, president of Port Drivers Federation 18, an association of independent truckers, blamed the Ironbound’s asthma problem on the local incinerator, recycling plant and other industries, as well as planes from nearby Newark Airport, and automobile traffic from the New Jersey Turnpike, Routes 1 & 9 and other roads. Rolon said his own family is living proof of the benign effect of big rigs on respiratory health.

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“My brother has asthma and he drives a truck,” Rolon said. “The trucks don’t cause asthma.”

The chairwoman of Newark’s environmental commission, Kim Gaddy, said she became an activist because her own three children have asthma, which she attributes at least in part to port-related emissions.

Figures from the Office of Minority Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show African-American children are twice as likely as whites to develop asthma. A 2008 study found black children were 3.7 times more likely than whites to be hospitalized for the disease, and an analysis of 2003-05 data found black children were 7.1 times more likely to die from it than whites.

The Kids Count annual survey of children’s health for 2012 found Newark children were 2.2 times more likely to be hospitalized due to asthma than children in Essex County overall in 2012.

White children are by no means immune. Eugene and Natalie Echevarria said their 5-year-old son, Eugene, was born with the disease but hadn’t shown any symptoms for several years, until the family moved to the Ironbound in January from a leafier neighborhood near Branch Brook Park. “More pollution, more trucks coming by,” his mother explained. “He’s starting having attacks again.”

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