More on Toll Roads

Texas needs your help to reduce the number of toll roads. Many of us concerned about the TranTexas Corridor, NAFTA, and all this toll road business recently received a newsletter from the good folks at Texas TURF (Texas Uniting for Reform and Freedom). If you are interested also, here are a few things you can do:

1) Join Texas TURF and help spread the word and volunteer your services and some money by visiting http://texasturf.org/alerts/?p=subscribe

2) Go to their website at http://texasturf.org and read how instead of toll roads taxing users doubly, it actually taxes us triply, and as yet with no representation. Wasn’t there a “tea party” and a war fought over something like this once??

3) Read the following that was lifted from Texas TURF’s last alert and send the Sunset Commission a letter either saying you think the idea expressed below is a terrific idea or the one that you propose is even better: “ ACTION ITEM: DISSOLVE TXDOT, REPLACE WITH ELECTED COMMISSIONER! TxDOT is up for sunset review in 2009. That means TxDOT as it exists today will cease without the Legislature voting to extend it. We think it's past time to dissolve TxDOT as we know it and replace the 5 UN-elected appointees on the Transportation Commission with a SINGLE, ELECTED COMMISSIONER who answers to the PEOPLE of Texas! TxDOT has also become a defacto taxing entity through toll taxation which is taxation without representation. How fitting that December 16 is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party! The biggest share of the funding fault lies with Congress and the Texas Legislature who continues to divert nearly half of our gas taxes to non-highway uses. Submit your comments about your dissatisfaction with TxDOT and suggestions on how to fix it to the Sunset Commission by December 17! sunset@sunset.state.tx.us Include your name and address or they may not count your comments!”

4) You can send an email to J. Brown of the TxDOT stating: “No FREEway should be removed from the FREE state highway system and relinquished to any governmental or private entity given authority to levy a toll tax to drive on what's already paid for!" Please send it by DECEMBER 20, 2007, 5 PM! Submit email to: jbrown1@dot.state.tx.us. Include your name and address or they may not count your comments! Have everyone you know in Texas eligible to vote send these also if you are as angry about all this as some of us are. Thanking you in advance!

PS: Just a little something to perhaps spur you on a bit: “IMPACT ON CHILDREN! Recent studies report the significant negative impacts caused by increased ambient air pollution from vehicular emissions to the health of people living in close proximity to a major road like this one.[conversion of a 4 lane hwy to a 6 lane toll road (Ann)] These impacts include increased incidents of lung and heart disease. Children, in particular, are at great risk of suffering substantial, irreversible, long-term lung damage by living and playing in such close proximity (see recent 13 year USC School of Medicine Study published in January 2007 describing permanent lung damage to children growing up within 1500 feet of a major road).” I’ll find the actual journal article and put it on the website for you.

Here is the abstract of the only one that seems to fit but it isn’t from USC. 1: Chemosphere. 2007 Jan;66(7):1375-81. Epub 2006 Aug 9. Genotoxicity of organic extracts of urban airborne particulate matter: an assessment within a personal exposure study. Abou Chakra OR, Joyeux M, Nerrière E, Strub MP, Zmirou-Navier D. INSERM ERI-11 et Université Henri Poincaré-Nancy 1, Faculté de médecine, 9 avenue de la Forêt de Haye, 54505 Vandoeuvre lès Nancy, France. Airborne particulate matter, PM(10) and PM(2.5), are associated with a range of health effects including lung cancer. Their complex organic fraction contains genotoxic and carcinogenic compounds such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and their derivatives. This study evaluates the genotoxicity of the PM(10)and PM(2.5) organic extracts that were sampled in the framework of a personal exposure study in three French metropolitan areas (Paris, Rouen and Strasbourg), using the comet assay, performed on HeLa S3 cells. In each city, 60-90 non-smoking volunteers composed of two groups of equal size (adults and children)carried the personal Harvard Chempass multi-pollutant sampler during 48h along two different seasons ('hot' and 'cold'). Volunteers were selected so as to live (home and work/school) in 3 different urban sectors contrasted in terms of air pollution within each city (one highly exposed to traffic emissions, one influenced by local industrial sources, and a background urban environment). Genotoxic effects are stronger for PM(2.5) extracts than for PM(10), and greater in winter than in summer. Fine particles collected by subjects living within the traffic proximity sector present the strongest genotoxic responses, especially in the Paris metropolitan area. This work confirms the genotoxic potency of particulate matter (PM(10) and PM(2.5)) organic extracts to which urban populations are exposed. PMID: 16901531 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]