The Fight for Clean Air In the South Bronx
In the Mott Haven-Port Morris sections of the South Bronx, ~1 in 5 children are diagnosed with asthma.
The South Bronx experiences levels of particulate matter that are often double the EPA's recommended limits.
This assault on our air is an assault on our lives.
It is pervasive and rooted in decades of systemic inequities.
See The Real-Time Air Quality Data
Through 2025, we have deployed 57 air quality monitors throughout the South Bronx and New York City.
This way, we can understand what’s in our air and use the data to demand the healthy environment we deserve.
We Are Encircled by Highways and Bridges
Mott Haven and Port Morris are surrounded on all sides by major highways and bridges that funnel traffic and pollution, through our neighborhoods every day.
The Major Deegan, Bruckner Expressway, and Triboro Bridge connect regional and interstate traffic straight through the South Bronx. These are major routes for diesel trucks.
The Third Avenue and Willis Avenue Bridges bring even more vehicles directly onto our local streets.
For residents, this means constant exposure to exhaust, noise, and particulate matter. For children walking to school, it means breathing in toxic air before they even begin their day.
The design of our transportation network reflects decades of racist city planning that treated our neighborhoods as throughways, not communities. We live with our neighborhoods carved apart by infrastructure choices of the 20th century.
For traffic pollution, proximity matters
Living adjacent to truck traffic is a major public health concern in the South Bronx. For years, experts have warned that children who attend school within 500 feet of a major road have a greater chance of suffering from serious health conditions–everything from asthma, heart disease, increased cancer risk and decreased ability to focus and learn in school.
New York lawmakers recently passed a bill making it illegal to site a new school within 500 feet of a major roadway. But in the South Bronx, five schools where nearly 2,000 students learn and play are already there.
Our Waterfront is Lined With Truck-Heavy, Polluting Industries
It’s not just the highways. While other parts of New York enjoy parks and greenways along the water, our waterfront is dominated by industry: waste transfer stations, warehouses, fuel depots, and “peaker” power plants that run on fossil fuels.
Each of these sites draws in heavy diesel truck traffic, which worsens the air quality and clogs our narrow neighborhood streets.
The trucks that serve these industries idle outside schools, drive past playgrounds, and emit particulate matter known to trigger asthma and heart disease.
Instead of clean water, cool breezes, and safe recreation spaces, our waterfront serves up pollution and noise.
Zoning and permitting decisions have prioritized private industrial profit over public health.
The result is a waterfront that works against the people who live here and reinforces the cycle of environmental racism that defines life in the South Bronx.
An estimated 20% of all cases of childhood asthma in the region are attributable to pollution, but in communities like the South Bronx with the most traffic-related air pollution, that figure is more than 30%.
The lack of tree cover and green space in the community also makes the South Bronx hotter than other parts of the city, and extreme heat can worsen air pollution and trigger asthma attacks.
We Are The Sacrifice Zone
These overlapping burdens make the South Bronx a sacrifice zone, a place where the health of residents has been traded for the convenience and profit of others.
This assault on our air, combined with a legacy of disinvestment in our community, means the residents of Mott Haven and Port Morris face barriers to accessing resources like affordable housing, transportation, education, and open green space.
Our Clean Air Program Fights to Change This
Clean air is not a luxury. It's a right. No matter where you were born. No matter where you live.
Here’s how we’re fighting for the change the people of the South Bronx deserve.
Air Quality Monitoring
Through 2025, we have deployed 57 air quality monitors throughout the South Bronx and other parts of New York City.
Why? If we don’t advocate for ourselves, with the data to show for it, then nobody will.
In 2012, when FreshDirect, along with its 1000 daily diesel truck trips, moved to the South Bronx waterfront (with State and City tax breaks to add insult to injury), we sued.
Not one more truck, we demanded.
In court, Fresh Direct used an environmental review on our area from the 90s, decades out of date.
One of the lessons that came out of this is that if we have data that we own, then we can tell the true story of our air quality.
That’s why we now use our air quality monitors to advocate for clear air in the South Bronx.
Indoor Air Purifier Program
We demand root-cause solutions to the poor air quality that damages our health.
However, we also need immediate relief. Every day without this relief means more of our children diagnosed with asthma, more emergency room visits, more missed days of school, and more early deaths.
We have teamed up with Children’s Health Fund to provide residents with low-cost, do-it-yourself indoor air purifiers that can immediately address the issue of poor air in our homes and schools. Through 2025, we have given away 58 indoor air purifiers.
Green Space and Land Reclamation
Trees, parks, and gardens are often thought of as “nice to haves.” But they’re essential. They’re critical infrastructure for community health.
Green spaces absorb pollution, cool our neighborhoods during extreme heat, and give residents a place to gather, play, and rest.
Just as we have too much polluting infrastructure, we don’t have enough of what heals us.
In the South Bronx, access to green space is among the lowest in the entire city. Our community board ranks 45th out of 59th.
We’re reclaiming land that has long been denied to us and turning it into spaces that heal.
Clean Air for The Long Haul
Just as we organize on a hyper-local level, we also work in solidarity with organizations throughout the city, state, and the world that are a part of the fight for environmental justice.
That’s why we’re a part of the Clean Air for the Long Haul Coalition.
This is a citywide coalition of groups that work together to fight for policies that help clean our air.
Congestion Pricing
When the MTA launched congestion pricing, the environmental community in New York City celebrated. However, the MTA’s own environmental assessment predicted that it would increase truck traffic in the South Bronx.
See our 2024 public statement against congestion pricing.
We fear that the program unfairly burdens our community, which already has some of the worst air quality and most diesel truck traffic in the city.
We are watching the data to see how the policy has impacted our neighborhood, and are steadfastly opposed to anything that adds even one more truck to our streets.