8 July 4–10, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents President Dr. Sherif Zaafran said in a statement. “This rule may not answer the concerns and questions that arise in every single situation. The reality is that the Board can only act where it has the authority to provide rules within the confines of the law.” In other words, the courts pointed to the board, and now the board is pointing to the state lawmakers who passed S.B. 8 in the first place. (One specific condition was named in the Texas Supreme Court ruling: that water breaking prematurely would be an acceptable reason for an abortion to be performed.) Officials are tossing around the responsibility of clarifying reproductive legislation like a hot potato, but for medical professionals, the stakes are incredibly high. Not only does the guidance claim to outline what a doctor should and shouldn’t do, but it offers investigators a rubric for determining when an illegal abortion has taken place. Doctors who are found to have performed an abortion illegally can face fines on top of criminal and civil prosecution. “The penalties here are loss of their license and lifetime in prison. [Doctors are] being told to risk everything in service of patient care and being provided no guidance, no assistance and no support from any official in the state of Texas,” Molly Duane, senior attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the Observer. “It’s shocking that, for a state that claims to be pro-life, they would care so little about patients and physicians.” While “pathetic,” the new guidelines were amended from a draft discussed back in March that was greatly criticized for introducing a system of “extremely burdensome documentation” required of doctors and for encouraging physicians to move patients to a different facility, if possible, to avoid performing a necessary abortion. The Abortion Ban’s Impact in Texas Coincidentally, Friday’s “disappointing” ruling came just days before the two-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion granted in Roe v. Wade. While reproductive rights advocates across the country are analyzing the effect of the ruling on their respective states, Duane said it “almost isn’t even a relevant data point for Texas” because S.B. 8 went into effect prior to the ruling. The effect of Texas’ abortion ban is explored in a new investigation, published by JAMA Pediatrics, which found that hundreds of babies died as a direct result of the statewide law. The spike in infant deaths was likely caused by birth defects or genetic problems, the study found, resulting from pregnancies that typically would have been terminated prior to the Heartbeat Bill. Researchers studied “unexpected increases in infant and neonatal death” only in Texas in the year following S.B. 8’s passage, but officials expect similar spikes will be seen in other states that implemented abortion bans following the Dobbs decision. “What we have in the state of Texas is going on three years of experience living under abortion bans, and what we know is women are suffering,” Duane said. “Babies are dying and no one in any position of power in Texas seems at all interested in addressing the public health crisis that they created themselves.” ▼ POLLUTION ILL WIND HIGH LEVELS OF AIR POLLUTANTS IN WEST DALLAS ARE MAKING RESIDENTS SICK, STUDY FINDS. BY EMMA RUBY B orn and raised in West Dallas, Linda Bates knows what it means to be sick. She, her family members and her neighbors have experienced a litany of health issues over her lifetime, ranging from cancers to cognitive disabilities to respiratory diseases. Splitting headaches are the norm. In some cases, her loved ones’ illnesses have been fatal. So she was not shocked to see the results of a survey tracking air quality in the industry-heavy Singleton corridor, nor was she shocked to see the lengthy list of ailments that can result from long-term exposure to air pollutants. “I drank the water. I inhaled the smoke,” Bates said in a community meeting held to discuss the survey’s results. “We are dying. We are dying.” The survey was conducted by Texas A&M University researchers, community members and Downwinders at Risk, a local environmental advocacy group, to study the impact of a GAF shingle factory on public health. A similar study by the same groups was done in the Joppa neighborhood in southeast Dallas last year. The results in West Dallas, which is bordered by highways, railroad tracks and the GAF factory, were even worse than what was found in Joppa. Thirty-eight percent of the corridor’s 227 households responded to the survey. Thirty-four percent stated at least one member of the home had been diagnosed with asthma. In Joppa, 18% of residents experienced asthma. Across DFW, the average rate of asthma diagnosis is 7%. Like Bates, 84% of the residents surveyed believe the air in West Dallas is “making them and/or their family sick.” Caleb Roberts, executive director of Downwinders at Risk, said the levels of pollution being released by GAF factories in west and southeast Dallas is harming communities of color. Air pollution is measured by levels of particulate matter, which float around as either size 10 or size 2.5 particles. The smaller size, 2.5, was measured in this study. The minute particles are caused by combustion and are small enough to get through facial masks and into the bloodstream. “It basically then has access to every organ,” Roberts said, later adding that “an allowable level does not equal a safe level.” In addition to the door-to-door survey, in which residents reported on their health, Texas A&M researchers installed an air monitor tracker next to the West Dallas GAF factory and tracked data through SharedAirDFW.com. The monitor was tracked for six months starting in February 2023, and researchers saw significant spikes in particulate matter in the summer months. Over six months, the monitor registered 35 days that the PM 2.5 levels were above the Environmental Protection Agency standard. When comparing the data to the exposure recommendation made by the World Health Organization, the West Dallas monitor exceeded healthy levels 107 times. “This neighborhood is breathing in toxic air,” Texas A&M Toxicology Professor Natalie Johnson said. “Every day that the levels of PM 2.5 are over the EPA daily air quality standard, there is an increased risk for adverse health effects … This is urgent.” The levels of PM 2.5 recorded in the Singleton corridor put the neighborhood in the bottom 3% in the country for exposure, researchers said, and are leading to overwhelming levels of cancer diagnoses and respiratory illnesses in the community. GAF has agreed to relocate its factory, but says it needs until 2029 to fully pull out of the West Dallas community. Janie Cisneros, a leader of the neighborhood group Singleton United, which has protested GAF’s ongoing production, says that is too long to wait for healthy air. The company has filed with the city for a rezoning determination in exchange for its proposed 2029 closing date. Cisneros told community members the zoning hearing could be an opportunity for the neighborhood to speak out against the factory and present the data from their study to the city council. GAF did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment. “We know we’re being harmed,” Cisneros said. “This isn’t just us complaining … This is our families.” ▼ WEATHER GETTING BACK TO NORMAL HOW DALLAS BOUNCES BACK FROM A MAJOR STORM. BY EMMA RUBY O ne month after a massive spring storm swept through Dallas, the lights are back on but signs of destruction remain. Power outages affected more than a half million residents, and restoration took, in some cases, nearly a week. Some neighborhoods are still lined with piles of dead brush, limbs and trees, and it could be another month before city sanitation services are able to complete a first sweep through all neighborhoods, city collection plans show. It makes us wonder: How long, exactly, should storm recovery take in a major city? The damage caused by the hurricane- force winds and baseball-sized hail of the May 28 storm was “unusual,” Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins said in a news conference after the storm. It was so bad, in fact, that weeks later, officials with the Biden administration declared residents of Dallas and Kaufman counties eligible for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Individual Assistance program. Funding from the program can help residents cover the cost of temporary housing, home repairs and property losses that resulted from a severe storm. While the program allowed residents to take their recovery into their own hands, some services, such as power restoration, flood mitigation and clearing away the debris of the hundreds of trees that were uprooted, are happening at the city’s pace. In parts of East Dallas, power restoration took so long that District 9 City Council member Paula Blackmon filed a memorandum requesting an “urgent investigation” from Oncor. Blackmon said restoration delays, difficulties accessing accurate information and strained communication channels between Oncor and residents left her concerned in the days following the storm. The memo asks the power company to assess what went wrong in East Dallas and to present data from the storm in a community meeting. “We started hearing that a lot of D9 was hit, and it was taking a while to get back online. Now I’m asking to go deeper to Getty Images A new study states West Dallas residents are exposed to significantly higher levels of air pollution than other people living in Dallas County. Unfair Park from p6
