Taylor Thomas was diagnosed with severe asthma at the age of 7.
Growing up in Long Beach, California, she needed inhalers and nebulizers and often had to miss recess.
Still, Thomas said it wasn’t until she was in her early 20s that she learned that living in an area with multiple sources of air pollution, including a freight train yard, had put her at higher risk for illness.
“We get told that this is normal,” said Thomas, co-director of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice in Southern California. “We’re supposed to expect … that our kids will regularly be in the hospital, that they will regularly miss school, that we will have to go to work sick.”
Thomas spoke Wednesday at a meeting in Chicago, where grassroots advocates from across the country called for stricter limits on diesel-exhaust emissions from freight trains.
Also present were some members of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency subcommittee who are looking into the issue, a smattering of local politicians, and Democratic Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García, who delivered the opening remarks.
“We must do more to protect the health of rail workers and (frontline) communities and close the existing loopholes that rail carriers exploit to keep dirty trains on the tracks,” Garcia said.
The “loophole” critics frequently reference is the industry practice of repairing and rebuilding locomotives, rather than purchasing new ones that are subject to very strict emissions standards.
The Association of American Railroads said that “remanufacturing” locomotives by modernizing key parts is a way to make the locomotives more fuel-efficient and reliable.
“EPA regulations govern this process and the certification of these locomotives to ensure they meet the appropriate emissions standards,” Association of American Railroads Assistant Vice President for Communications Jessica Kahanek said in a written statement.
The statement said the railroads have taken numerous steps to increase their sustainability, including introducing highly advanced fuel management systems and installing idling-reduction technologies.
The Wednesday meeting was sponsored by the Moving Forward Network — a national, grassroots-led environmental organization that seeks to reduce pollution from the freight transportation system — as well as several of the network’s affiliates.
Earlier in the day, the EPA held a Chicago-area rail yard tour for members of the EPA subcommittee that’s researching the freight-train emissions issue.
As the nation’s busiest rail hub, Chicago figures prominently in the advocates’ push to update the EPA’s 16-year-old freight locomotive emissions standards.
About 25% of U.S. freight trains pass through the Chicago region, which has 18 intermodal rail yards, where giant containers from across the country — and the world — are transferred between trains and trucks.
That’s good for the economy, advocates said at the meeting, which was held in Pilsen. But people living close to rail yards — or working there — are paying the price in the form of exposure to diesel exhaust.
“We can’t keep allowing our communities to be sacrificed in the name of economic growth,” said José Acosta-Córdova, transportation justice program manager at the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. “Our lives literally depend on reform.”
Exposure to diesel exhaust can lead to asthma and respiratory illnesses and worsen existing heart and lung disease, especially in children and the elderly, according to the EPA.
In addition, the EPA considers diesel exhaust a likely carcinogen. The World Health Organization’s International Agency For Research on Cancer classified diesel exhaust as a carcinogen in 2012.
Diesel locomotive emissions cause about 1,000 premature deaths per year in the United States, according to a 2021 article in the journal Nature Energy.
“That’s an astounding number,” Earthjustice senior attorney Yasmine Agelidis said at the meeting. “One thousand people are passing away earlier than they would otherwise, just because of diesel locomotives.”
Chicago’s intermodal rail yards are of particular concern for advocates. Both trucks and trains emit diesel exhaust, as does some equipment, and trains are reassembled using older, more polluting “switcher” engines.
The switcher engines tend to stay in the rail yard, adding to local pollution.
“The problem is, you have the oldest, dirtiest locomotives in the most vulnerable, most heavily impacted communities — it’s the worst place for them to be,” said Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs at the Respiratory Health Association, a Chicago nonprofit.
A couple of years ago, Urbaszewski said in an earlier interview, he spotted some local switchers that dated from the Korean War era.
The loophole that advocates complain of dates back to a 2008 EPA rule requiring new locomotives to meet strict new Tier 4 emissions standards, starting in 2015.
In theory, that rule was a big step forward. The EPA estimates that a Tier 4 locomotive emits 90% less diesel particulate matter — a key pollutant — than older Tier 2 locomotives.
But instead of buying the new low-emissions trains at the level expected, railroad companies hung on to their old trains, repairing and rebuilding them rather than purchasing new ones.
Only about 7% of long-distance locomotives at the biggest railroads are Tier 4, according to the 2020 National Emissions Inventory.
Activists say the nation needs stronger regulations, including rules phasing in zero-emissions locomotives.
The EPA “needs to be moving with more urgency,” said Moving Forward Network senior campaign manager Molly Greenberg.
“That needs to be happening now,” she said in an interview before the meeting. “People’s lives are on the line, and on top of all of that we actually have the technology to really work toward eliminating the pollution from rail and locomotives.”
The railroad industry said there are no zero-emissions freight locomotives commercially available on the market today.
“The industry continues to pilot emerging technologies such as battery-electric and fuel-cell locomotives that can potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions and criteria pollutants across the state and nationwide,” the statement said. “However, despite billions in investments and an industry-wide push to unlock a zero-emissions solution, a clear technological path has not yet emerged and will require additional testing and development.”
The Moving Forward Network wants the EPA to establish a new Tier 5 zero-emission standard for freight locomotives and require that all new switchers be zero-emissions by 2025. All new long-distance locomotives would be zero-emissions by 2030.
In cases where locomotives are rebuilt, the standards would also be high. Moving Forward Network wants a requirement that 100% of all remanufactured switchers would have to meet the Tier 4 standard by 2025 and 100% of all remanufactured long-distance locomotives would have to meet the Tier 4 standard by 2027.
Among the speakers at the meeting was Larry Hopkins, who works for a rail crew transportation company and lives on the Southwest Side of Chicago.
“I’m bounded by four rail yards within a 2- to 4-mile radius,” said Hopkins, western region vice president of the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America. “These train locomotives are polluting our air. These locomotives are causing major problems in our communities and harming railroad workers and drivers like myself.”
In addition to calling for stronger national emissions standards, speakers called for state and local limits and Congressional action.
The EPA subcommittee studying the potential need for stricter freight train emissions rules is expected to submit a report in August. The EPA then would consider the findings and decide if new emissions rules are warranted.
Thomas told EPA staffers in the audience at the meeting that they were welcome to see more.
“You can come and spend the night with us. You can spend the night in any of our houses,” she said. “You need to experience it. If you don’t live in it, you don’t understand it.”
Freelancer John Lippert contributed.
nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com
