Government agencies are failing to protect the health of children, a group seeking reductions in air pollution in the inner west has claimed.
Star Weekly last week reported children at Maribyrnong were being hospitalised with asthma at almost twice the national rate and more than three times the rate of areas in Melbourne’s east.
Maribyrnong Truck Action group president Samantha McArthur said this highlighted a lack of government commitment to tackle pollution.
“We are shocked by this report and feel absolutely powerless to change this situation,” she said.
Ms McArthur said the Trucks and the Inner West partnership group had failed.
The group was formed in 2013 by the chief executives of VicRoads, the EPA and Maribyrnong council, together with the Department of Health, and instigated truck curfews during school crossing hours on Yarraville’s Somerville Road, and night and weekend curfews on Footscray’s Moore Street in 2014.
“As we wait, we breathe the diesel particulate matter from more than 22,000 trucks using our residential streets as a rat-run to and from the Port of Melbourne every day,” Ms McArthur said.
She added that EPA air quality monitoring had shown Yarraville’s Francis Street had “the dubious honour” of being Australia’s most polluted residential street.
