Silent Poison: Air Pollution at Reggie Wong Park
By Eliza Billingham
Cars rush past basketball players as traffic merges onto Interstate 93 or turns off the Massachusetts Turnpike. Recreational athletes at Reggie Wong Memorial Park are hemmed in by the two highways. A few hundred meters north on Atlantic Avenue, hundreds of diesel trains go through South Station every day. Ultra-fine particles from combustion engines percolate through the air at the park, which is the only outdoor space in Chinatown for basketball, volleyball and skateboarding.
Chinatown residents are routinely exposed to poor air quality from vehicular traffic. People of color are more likely to live next to major traffic pollution; two-thirds of the people in Chinatown are non-white and more than a quarter struggle with English language competency.
People come to Reggie Wong Memorial Park in Chinatown for friendly recreation as well as the annual 9-man volleyball tournament. Recently, local skaters brought ramps and obstacles to skate on. This attracts even more people to the area.
“It has a nice lowkey vibe, which is great,” said Olivia Dutta, a local student who skates at the park once or twice a month.
Dr. Douglas Brugge, now at University of Connecticut, spent over two decades in Boston studying fine and ultrafine particles from traffic pollution. Reggie Wong Park has been a point of interest in his research.
“It’s not an optimal location for outdoor activity,” he said over Zoom. Even more dangerous, he said, is that “people are doing physical activity so people are breathing in more of the particles.”
Air pollution doesn’t just affect respiratory health. Ultra-fine particles affect both the heart and blood system, according to Brugge. “They can cause strokes and heart attacks, which are leading causes of illness and death,” he said. Plus, Brugge said there is “emerging concern about neurological effects, effects on mental health, depression, other things along those lines as well.”
“That kind of particulate pollution is up there with smoking, diet, high blood pressure, other established health risks,” Brugge said. “But if you ask someone on the street what are the top five public health problems in the world, most of them are not going to include air pollution on their lists.”
Air pollution is often invisible, which makes people less likely to think about it. Paul Katsiaunis is a student at Tufts Medical school who has asthma.
Air pollution, Katsiaunis said, “isn’t really something that has come to mind enough. I can’t imagine the air quality where we play is particularly great. I really want it to be as clean as possible.”
There is nowhere else in Chinatown for the park to be. When Boston built the interstates through Chinatown in the late 1950s, the community was squeezed into denser areas. Now, Chinatown has the least green space of any Boston neighborhood. It didn’t benefit much from the city’s major Greenway initiative. The project created a chain of parks above ground while putting a major traffic artery below. But the parks end at the Chinatown gate.
A sound barrier wall might protect Reggie Wong Memorial Park from particles blown in from the surrounding roads. A hedge of trees would probably be more attractive, but they would have to be about 35-40 feet tall with dense foliage from base to top, according to Brugge. So far, no serious effort has been made to build any buffer between the sport courts and the highways.
Although the air at the park is polluted, “I don’t want the message to be, ‘Oh, you should stay in your house and not get physical activity,” Brugge said. “Physical activity is an incredibly beneficial thing.”
Reggie Wong Park is “a really good amenity for the Chinatown community,” said Katsiaunis, after his pick-up basketball game. “Anything that can promote people getting outside and playing basketball instead of being at home on TikTok is really important. So I’m glad this park exists.”
