The subway systems typically shuttle millions of people around the US cities, with New York’s MTA, the country’s largest, conveying 5.5 million people around New York every day in 2019. “People should be highly alarmed by these high levels,” Gordon said.
But the station wasn’t the only one with elevated airborne toxins, with Broadway in Boston, Second Avenue in New York City and 30th Street in Philadelphia among the most polluted stops in the US north-east. The researchers calculated that someone making a typical commute to and from Christopher Street was increasing their risk of an adverse cardiovascular event by 10%. My colleague went down there and his airways were feeling tight after an hour or so.” “It was the worst pollution ever measured in a subway station, higher than some of the worst days in Beijing or Delhi,” said Gordon, who said he was so amazed by the readings on his instruments he had to ask colleagues to conduct repeated tests to ensure the figures were correct. This is a pollution level more commonly found near a large wildfire or during a building demolition, the researchers said. “New Yorkers in particular should be concerned about the toxins they are inhaling,” said the study co-author Terry Gordon, a professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, with the research finding that concentrations of hazardous metals and organic particles were anywhere from two to seven times higher than outdoor air samples in the city.Ĭhristopher Street, a Manhattan station that helps connect New York and New Jersey, had an incredible particle pollution level of 1,499 micrograms per cubic meter, about 77 times higher than the above-ground pollution.
Philadelphia was, comparatively, the cleanest system but still breached the limit beyond which serious health hazards are risked. New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) system had 251 micrograms per cubic meter, followed by Washington DC with 145 micrograms per cubic meter. The levels of these tiny specks of pollution, called PM2.5, were well above nationally determined safe daily levels of 35 micrograms per cubic meter in each of the cities.
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