Young community activists fight for healthier air
When Juan Hernandez moved to West Oakland from Bakersfield, Calif., one year ago, his asthma flared up. He used his inhaler more and more often and, eventually, had to give up his favorite sport: running. “I was huffing and puffing, but I thought, It’s my own personal problem,” says Hernandez, 17. Then, while working on a school assignment, he discovered otherwise. His environmental-law teacher sent Hernandez and his classmates on a “toxic tour” of their neighborhood: they walked around and wrote down what they saw, what they smelled and how they felt. This particular section of West Oakland, which lies in the shadow of a tangled web of four freeways and the Port of Oakland, has the second highest rate of asthma in the city. As Hernandez strode a few blocks from school, he passed a scrap-metal recycling plant and aluminum smelter that “smelled nasty,” he says. It was an “aha” moment: “I said to myself, ‘I’m living in this place that has some of the worst pollution in all of Oakland, and I gotta do something about it’.”
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