Oakland Bulk & Oversized Terminal Won’t Cause Asthma: Alex Epstein
ONN – Alex Epstein, the author of “The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels”, was a guest at Zennie62 on YouTube Live. Epstein talked about the Oakland Coal Issue, and the Oakland Bulk & Oversized Terminal (OBOT) planned for West Oakland, as part of the Oakland Global development.
Epstein, who served as a consultant to Insight Terminal Solutions on the Oakland Bulk & Oversized Terminal project a few years ago, said that there was no correlation between coal transport as to be done via the OBOT and incidents of asthma.
“We really don’t know the relationship between emissions and asthma,” he said. Epstein also pointed to fewer trucks on the road in Oakland because of the rail-to-ship terminal design of the Oakland Bulk & Oversized Terminal .
Indeed, the main problem in the conversation about the Oakland Bulk & Oversized Terminal , is the use of data from coal-fired plants in talking about something, the OBOT, that is not a coal-fired plant, or any kind of plant: its a minerals transportation terminal. Moreover, OBOT will employ covered rail cars, not exposed-to-the-air cars.
No one talks about the pollution caused by the large trucks that run through West Oakland. Studies show a true direct connection between truck traffic and asthma.
One 2009 study by The National Institutes Of Heath and called “Air pollution and childhood asthma: recent advances and future directions”, written by Molini M. Patel and Rachel L. Miller, reported that “It is now understood that traffic emissions, especially from diesel trucks and buses, contribute a large proportion to air pollution levels in urban areas. Consequently, current research attention has shifted toward improving exposure assessment and characterizing adverse health effects associated with specific sources and components of airborne traffic-related pollutants.”
The OBOT, as conceived by Oakland’s Phil Tagami, the original developer, is designed to dramatically reduce truck traffic, thus bringing better air conditions to West Oakland.
As a closing note, the developers of the Oakland Bulk & Oversized Terminal believed they were not getting a place where they could tell their story in the mainstream media in the SF Bay Area, so they brought their case to Zennie62Media.
Oakland News Now Note: this post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest version of an experimental Zennie62Media mobile media video-blogging system network – part of a new approach to the production of media. The uploaded video is from a vlogger with the Zennie62 on YouTube Partner Channel, then uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now site and social media pages. The objective is real-time on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. We are constantly working to improve the system network coding and also seek interested content and media technology partners.