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New Website Allows Chicago Residents Near Petcoke Facilities to Sign Up for Text Message Air Quality Alerts – Community Meeting Today to Launch Petcokalerts.org Registration Drive


Petcokealerts.org Launches as Collaboration Between Chi Hack Night and Local Advocacy Group

CHICAGO –(ENEWSPF)—August 20, 2015. The Chicago Coalition to Ban Petcoke is hosting a community meeting to set the record straight regarding the storage and transport of petroleum coke in the Southeast side of Chicago. Petcokealerts.org is a new website which allows residents of Chicago’s Tenth Ward to receive text message updates when windy conditions increase their exposure to petcoke. Petcoke is a fine, powdery byproduct of the oil refining process. Long term exposure to petcoke in the air, like any fine particulate matter, is associated with increased risk of mortality, especially cardiovascular and lung cancer mortality. [1]  KCBX Terminals, a bulk freight facility owned by Koch Industries, Inc., maintains three massive, open-air piles of petcoke in the city’s far Southeast side, exposing thousands of residents, including those in nearby schools and geriatric care facilities, to increased airborne particulate levels, especially in windy conditions.

“We wanted to create a tool to help residents make decisions about protecting themselves when the weather conditions present a hazard,” said Ben Wilhelm from Chi Hack Night, one of the programmers for the site. “We’ve open-sourced the project with the hope that other areas dealing with similar situations can benefit from it or collaborate with us.”

Residents can visit www.petcokealerts.org and input their cell phone number to receive notifications during high wind conditions, defined by the Chicago Department of Public Health as 15 miles per hour. Future plans for the application include direct measurement of air quality in the vicinity of the terminals and a Spanish translation of the site.

This evening the Coalition to Ban Petcoke is hosting a community meeting to set the record straight regarding the storage and transport of petroleum coke in the Southeast side of Chicago. The event will be held at 6:30 p.m. tonight at the Eastside United Methodist Church, 11000 S. Ewing Ave., Chicago.

“86% of voters made it known that they don’t want petcoke storage or transport in the 10th ward. Our right to breathe clean air ends when KCBX’s right to operate here starts.”, said Olga Bautista, one of the leaders from the Chicago Southeast Side Coalition To Ban Petcoke.

ABOUT PETCOKEALERTS.ORG

Petcokealerts.org is a joint venture between the Chicago Southeast Side Coalition to Ban Petcoke and the Chi Hack Night (formerly known as the Open Gov Hack Night), a free weekly event in Chicago to build, share and learn about tools to create, support, and serve the public good. The software is open source, meaning other groups or municipalities are free to copy, adapt, and redeploy it for their own purposes.

  1. Chronic exposure to fine particles and mortality: an extended follow-up of the Harvard Six Cities study from 1974 to 2009.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22456598

Source: www.nationalnursesunited.org

 


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