In the Shadow of San Diego.

• Author: Lydersen, Kari
• Position: Environmental health hazards

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Maria Martinez and her husband and three sons live in a colorful stucco home in a subsidized housing development called the Mercado a few blocks from San Diego Bay. Martinez works as a "promotora," one of the grassroots health promoters that many Latin American families depend on for advice. Her home exudes health and cheer: a bowl piled with fruit sits on the bright tablecloth, parakeets chatter from sparkling clean cages, the sea breeze blows through gauzy curtains on open windows.

But as much as she strives for a healthy ambience in her home, as soon as she steps outside Martinez and her neighbors are confronted with an onslaught of environmental health hazards.

Their Barrio Logan neighborhood, a historic immigrant enclave, is right next to the West Coast's largest shipyard, the Port of San Diego, and various related industries.

Diesel emissions from the ships and the constant parade of trucks and trains that serve the port pose a serious health risk to surrounding communities, with numerous studies linking diesel exhaust to increased incidence of cancer, lung disease, heart disease, asthma, and other ailments. Martinez's thirteen-year-old son has asthma that requires an inhaler and makes it hard for him to participate in gym class. She worries her five- and ten-year-old sons could also develop asthma.

Across the street from the Mercado is a warehouse where about thirty trucks a day--many from Dole--come to load and unload. Concentrated diesel emissions and loud grinding noises emanate from the idling trucks. Parents are terrified their children will be hit by the big rigs that squeeze precariously through the narrow street all day. Nearby residents can't sleep with their windows open because of the noise, which means stifling hot rooms in the summer.

On surrounding blocks are storefront operations for chrome plating, welding, and other industrial tasks related to the shipyards. These industries are also known to release toxic emissions, with studies revealing elevated levels of nickel, molybdenum, tin, and antimony in the air.

"We're under attack by air, by land, and by sea," says Maria Moya, an organizer with the Environmental Health Coalition, which works on both sides of the border.

The sediment around the Navy base and two adjacent shipyards--the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company and BAE Systems San Diego Ship Repair--was found to be among the most contaminated of bays and estuaries nationwide in a 1996...