The Duwamish Valley Clean Air Program
The Duwamish Valley Clean Air Program (DVCAP) was created as a direct response to community concerns when it was found that - among other disproportionate health impacts - the Duwamish Valley has the highest rates of childhood asthma hospitalizations in the County (see more below).
With community and partners, these four strategies were created to reduce air pollution and air toxics is the Duwamish Valley for a thriving community and environment.
Our program brings together a wide range of private, public, and government partners with shared interest in improving air quality and reducing the impact of industry and transportation in the Duwamish Valley. Bringing these agencies and organizations together allows us to communicate easily and transparently, compare programs, and most importantly, work together to solve problems and limit redundancy.
Through this program, we engage the community, government, agencies, scientists, health workers, etc., to meaningfully work together to identify individual ways to promote better health outcomes and root-cause, policy-level solutions.
For more information on our efforts or to get involved, email mia@drcc.org
Learn more about our program here!
Thank you to Matthias and Mateo — two Duwamish Valley Youth Corps alumni — for creating this highly informative video that captures the goals of our program so clearly!
The Clean Air Program at work in the Duwamish Valley
See the ELCP Team installing air monitors, the DV Youth Corps and DIRT Corps creating a rain garden, KCIACC discussing airport pollution, community meetings to discuss air quality concerns, box-fan filter distribution, boat tours to see Seattle’s only river and its industries (Seattle Iron & Metals), the ELCP team in Washington, D.C. lobbying, a Clean Air Program Partner Meeting, and a Community Clean Air Meeting!
Our goal: Air quality that advances health equity
Residents of the Duwamish Valley are disproportionately exposed to air pollution from industries, ports, trucks, automobiles, highways, airports, railroads, and more.
The Cumulative Health Impact Analysis (CHIA) published by DRCC / TAG and Just Health Action found that Beacon Hill, Georgetown, and South Park (ZIP code 98108) rank higher in air pollution levels and poorer health outcomes compared to other neighborhoods in Seattle.
Data on the South Park and Georgetown neighborhoods also show that life expectancy is 8 years shorter than the Seattle average, and 13 years less than wealthier neighborhood of Laurelhurst in North Seattle. Additionally, the most vulnerable populations in Seattle — like children, the elderly, and foreign-born residents — live in the Duwamish Valley.
Environmental exposures identified in the CHIA include the highest concentration of diesel and benzene particles in the air in the entire city. In addition, the Duwamish Valley contains the most polluted waste sites and the Toxic Emissions Inventory sites included in Seattle neighborhoods. CHIA found that Duwamish neighborhoods are affected by diesel particulates, increasing the likelihood that residents will develop asthma. Data tells us that children in South Park and Georgetown are hospitalized more frequently due to asthma conditions.
Photo by Paul Joseph Brown / Ecosystemphoto.com
The Clean Air Program and our partners
The power of YOU and the Clean Air Program: The Ash Grove Permit Modification
In December of 2024, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (PSCAA) issued a Draft Notice of Construction and Air Operating Permit for the Ash Grove Cement Company. This permit would have allow Ash Grove to burn more tires to heat their kilns and would expose Duwamish Valley residents to dangerous levels of health-harming air pollution.
Immediately, DRCC and the community rallied, worrying that their health was not being prioritized. Burning tires releases particulate matter and hazardous air pollutants, including heavy metals like arsenic, cadmium, dioxins, furans, and mercury. Unfortunately, PSCAA not conduct any tests to prove that these dangerous air pollutants would not increase or if the best available control technology would be used to control for increases.
During the public comment period, over 500+ community members and 30 local businesses and organizations signed on to our letter that demanded PSCAA to reject the change and that the health of Duwamish Valley community members be prioritized. The community also hosted a protest outside of the agency headquarters in downtown Seattle in late November 2025.
Unfortunately, our collective advocacy and protest did not persuade the agency from moving forward and finalizing the permit change, allowing for more tires to be used in December of 2025. As a result, DRCC & Front and Centered, represented by Earthjustice, filed an appeal to protect community health in January 2026.
Instead of proactively working to protect our health, PSCAA narrowly conceited that they could not be sure that air toxics would not increase. Therefore, as a result of community pressure, they required Ash Grove to complete a brief test using an increased tire-firing rate and test for hazardous air pollutants.
In June 2026, Ash Grove completed their test and submitted the results. The results showed an increase of cadmium, which is a Class-1 carcinogen, linked to lung and prostate cancer. Additionally, cadmium bioaccumulates in the kidneys and bones, causing kidney damage and bone demineralization. These results proved the community right and our “clean air agency” wrong.
Inequity spotlight: Transportation Emissions in the Duwamish Valley
“The findings of this TRUE report have confirmed what we already suspected, that our communities are overburdened by excess pollution coming from drayage trucks operating in the Duwamish Valley. It’s imperative we use this data to make informed policy decisions, particularly on the dangers of idling, and prevent unnecessary illness, especially among our children.”
In 2026, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), in collaboration with DRCC, published a study looking at the behaviors and impact of drayage trucks — which are heavy-duty, diesel freight trucks typically used to transport shipping containers to and from ports — on air quality. It addresses, for the first time, the gap in spatial analysis of drayage truck emissions and their impact on communities in the Duwamish Valley, an area already affected by multiple health inequities.
The study found that the majority of Seattle’s drayage truck operations are concentrated in the Duwamish Valley, disproportionately exposing communities of color to high levels of NOx.
In neighborhoods such as Georgetown and South Park, idling of these vehicles contributes as much as 55% of total NOx emissions (compared to 32% city-wide). Prolonged exposure to NOx contributes to cardiovascular disease, rates of disability, and asthma, and, ultimately, reduced life expectancies for many people. In these emission hotspots, overall premature mortality rates were 50% higher than in areas with no idling emissions.
The DAISY Project
The Duwamish Air Improvement Study for Youth (DAISY) Project is a five-year grant from the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to help reduce symptoms of asthma in children who live in the Seattle neighborhoods of South Park and Georgetown.
The grant will fund a local community-based air quality monitoring network to measure pollutants from cars and truck traffic and will provide low-cost air filters to families with children with asthma in South Park and Georgetown to help clean the air in their homes. Improvements in air quality in the homes of participating families and changes in asthma symptoms in their children will be measured to determine the effectiveness of the air filter intervention. The project will also fund a local Community Advocacy Team which will help guide the placement of air monitors and determine how best to use the study results to improve air quality and children’s health through policy changes and local actions.
We are monitoring for PM2.5, PM10, and NO2, which are small particles in the air that hurt respiratory health.
If you interested in looking at air monitoring data from the DAISY Project, you can sign in here with the username “Community” and the password “DRCCClarity2024!”
If you have any questions, please email joseph@drcc.org
Dots represent the DAISY air monitors in South Park (as of July, 2024)
Dots represent the DAISY air monitors in Georgetown (as of July, 2024)
May was Asthma Awareness Month!
As we observed Asthma Awareness Month, in collaboration with Amigos de Seattle radio, we shared about about community-driven efforts to improve air quality and health outcomes in the Duwamish Valley. Some of what we discussed included DRCC’s Duwamish Air Improvement Study for Youth (DAISY Project), which works with local families who have children with asthma on healthy interventions to reduce symptoms, and updates on the No Added Pollution: Stop Ash Grove campaign.
May 6, 2026: A conversation with Paulina López, Executive Director of DRCC!
Air toxics in the Duwamish Valley: The MOSS Study
In 2019, the U.S. Forest Service partnered with the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps (DVYC) to collect tree moss samples to use as bio indicators of air pollution in communities of the Duwamish Valley. Supporting partners included the DIRT Corps, Just Health Action, Street Sound Ecology, City of Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment, Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment, and the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health.
Trained local youth from Duwamish Valley Youth Corps collected 80 samples from moss on trees in a grid covering South Park and Georgetown in 2019. Scientists collected an additional 20 samples to compare to the samples collected by the Youth Corps. All samples were analyzed for 25 heavy metals (also referred to as “air toxics”) and other elements in a US Forest Service laboratory.
The main findings from the project were:
The samples collected by the youth were consistent with the samples collected by the scientists, demonstrating that trained youth could collect reliable scientific samples;
Levels of Arsenic, Chromium, Cobalt, and Lead in moss sampled in the Duwamish Valley were higher than similar studies of moss in Seattle area parks and in residential areas of Portland, Oregon – Arsenic, and Chromium were generally twice as high as in Portland;
Metal concentrations found in the samples were highest in the industrial areas of South Park and Georgetown, especially along the Duwamish River, and lower in the residential areas.
The follow-up: PSCAA Air Toxics Study in the Duwamish Valley
“In 2020, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (Agency) a Community Scale Air Toxics Grant to characterize the impacts of air toxics in communities in and around Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. The air toxics study includes updating baseline potential cancer risk values, looking at trends, and spatial analyses. The award also funded a community directed portion to follow up on community concerns about metals in the Duwamish Valley.”
“Our study’s main finding was that overall cancer risk from air toxics continues to be […] diesel particulate matter, with around 85% of the risk across all sites. The other 15% is split between estimated hexavalent chromium (~6%), wood smoke (~4%), and other compounds.”