Jun 12, 2007 5:44 pm US/Eastern
Going Green: Young People Measure Air Pollution
by Cindy Hsu
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
A lot of kids go away to summer camps in the country to enjoy the fresh air, but there's a group of teenagers in Brooklyn who aren't giving up the idea of having fresh air in their neighborhood of Sunset Park.
Young people from the Latino community group UPROSE are taking to the streets with handheld pollution detectors. For six months they'll walk through the neighborhood past the Gowanus Expressway and the nearby power plant to gather readings on everything from carbon monoxide to nitrogen dioxide.
The same thing is going on in three other cities throughout the country.
The pollution levels will be fed to the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, which will come up with an interactive report using Google maps. That's when the young folks of UPROSE will share the information with the community and together come up with solutions.
Oscar Perez grew up in Sunset Park and remembers all the activities he couldn't enjoy due to asthma. He's spending the summer testing the air quality hoping to help clear the air for other kids in the neighborhood. Perez is 22-years-old and joined UPROSE when he was 14. He says, "it's a win-win situation, you give back to your community, you get something better for yourself, you get better health, better air quality and a better life."
Perez and other young people with the group have also fought for greenways and against more power plants in their neighborhood. They're changing the look of the neighborhood by going door to door getting permission to plant trees along the street.
Rico Bautista who's been with UPROSE since he was 10, says, "Nobody really believes they can make a difference when it comes to things like global warming, but you really can it just takes everyone to get involved."
He says while it may sound cheesy, they're changing the world bit by bit starting in their neighborhood. To learn more about UPROSE check out their website at www.http://www.uprose.org/.
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