Welcome! Air pollution is a big issue for Newark and it has been for a long time. Using this map you can learn more about air quality, see which areas are at high risk, and the number of people affected.
Newark, the fourth largest city in New Jersey, is 26.2 square miles in size and is located in the northeastern part of the State. Newark makes up the southeast part of Essex County, bordered to the north by the Passaic river and to the east by the Newark Bay.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau, the total population was 277,140 people, making it the most populous municipality in New Jersey.
Newark has had a long history of environmental problems, starting as early as the 1800's. The New York Times has had articles reporting environmental problems such as industries dumping pollutants into the Passaic River, illegal waste storage, and gasoline storage tanks exploding.
Air quality is very difficult to measure because its sources are spread out and atmospheric and regional factors influence air patterns.
The EPA created the Air Quality Index (AQI) to measure daily air quality. AQI is used to measure how clean the air is and what associated health effects may be of concern.
AQI measures six major pollutatns regulated by the Clean Air Act (CAA):AQI is rated from 0 to 500, below 100 is generally thought of as satisfactory. Above 100 rating is considered to be unhealthy, at first for certain sensitive groups, then for everyone as the rating increases.
Facilities are permitted under the Clean Air Act in order to regulated the amount and type of pollutants entering the atmosphere.
Explore the facilities in Newark permitted by the CAA below.
Nonpoint source pollution is from several different sources such as busy transportation routes.
Explore the different nonpoint sources below:
Areas that are closer to pollution sources are at higher risk. Severe risk is where 4 or more high risk areas overlap as well as many elevated risk areas.
Explore the map to see areas of higher risk and the number of people at risk in each census block group.
Many studies have been done connecting proximity to point and nonpoint sources of pollution and degradation in air quality causing negative health effects. Increases in cardiopulmonary mortality, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, prevalence of allergies, asthma, and eczema have all been associated with living in close proximity to major roads.
There are certain groups of people that are at higher risk than others to the negative effects of poor air quality. Children who live near sources of pollution for long periods of time are more likely to have asthma and allergies to pollen. The EPA has identified sensitive groups as older adults in their mid-60's.
Air quality risk was analyzed using proximity to 5 factors: major roads, truck routes, rail lines, Newark airport, and facilities that have violated their CAA permitted.
Major roads were selected from the NJDOT roads shapefile and clipped to Newark boundaries. Interstate Highways, US Highways, and State Highways were identified as the major roadways in Newark. Truck routes were selected using the F-An Ordinance Amending Section 23:4-1 describing the truck routes for trucks over 4 tons and selected from the NJDOT shapefile. Rail line data was downloaded and used from the NJOIT with all of the rail lines going through Newark and clipped to the area. The boundaries of Newark Airport were exported from the Land Use layer.
Facilities permitted by the CAA were obtained from the EPA’s compliance status database. Data was downloaded with lat/lon points and used to convert to points in ArcGIS. They CAA permits were selected from the data. For the risk analysis only facilities with major permits and at least one quarter in the last 12 that they were in violation of their permit were used. For the map, all of the CAA permitted facilities are used.
Next a buffer was set on the point source of 1 mile and set as a high risk area. A second buffer was set on the point sources of 1.5 miles and labeled elevated risk. These buffers were dissolved together to create one, point source risk layer. The nonpoint sources were buffered first to 500 feet and set as the high risk area and then to 1000 feet and set as the elevated risk area. Each set of nonpoint source high risk buffer and elevated risk buffer was dissolved (e.g. the truck route 500 ft buffer and the 1000 ft buffer were dissolved, then the major roads 500 ft and 1000 ft buffer were dissolved, etc.). The buffer distances for nonpoint and point sources were chosen based on an estimate of several literature reviews. Next, each pollution source was converted to a raster. The rasters were reclassified as follows:
Using the raster calculator, the five layers were added together producing a with values from 0, indicating no risk data, to 8 indicating four layers with high risk overlapped in that area. The raster was covered back to a polygon and clipped to the area of Newark. Finally, the values were a risk rating as follows:
Census block data was used to calculate the population at risk. Since the census block and risk layers do not perfectly match the census blocks were selected by those that have their centroid in the risk layer. These census blocks were used to identify the population at greatest risk of air pollution.
Enforcement and Compliance Data: United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2014. Available: Here
Lower Hudson, Hackensack-Passaic 2012 Land Use/Land Cover, Trenton, NJ: NJDEP, 2012. Available: Here
Sandy Hook - Staten Island 2012 Land Use/Land Cover, Trenton, NJ: NJDEP, 2012. Available: Here
Census Blocks (2010) in New Jersey, Edition 20140523, Washington, D.C.: US Census Bureau, NJDEP, 2010. Available: Here
NJ TRANSIT Rail, Light Rail, and Subway Currently Operated Right-of-Way lines, with connecting PATH and PATCO Rail, 2016, Trenton, NJ: NJOIT, OGIS, 2016. Available: Here
NJDOT New Jersey Roads, Trenton, NJ: NJDOT, 2016. Available: Here