Good morning, My
name is Dr. Meg Whitman and I am a primary care physician
in
Davis, CA, and a
member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. I am speaking
today in support of the alternative plan to bring electric trucks to the road faster, to more
quickly address the dangerous polluting trucks on our roads.
We need 100% EV
truck sales by 2036. and to reduce the priority fleets from 50 to 10 trucks for
Class 7 & 8 tractor trailers.
Californians are breathing the most polluted air in the
country. Neighborhoods near warehouses and families living next to
highways get the worst of it. The unfair exposure of these mostly
BIPOC communities to toxic diesel exhaust pollution is a shockingly
clear example of present day environmental
racism.
This board
can swiftly bring polluting trucks into the future and achieve
environmental justice by adopting the ACF Accelerated ZEV
Transition Alternative that requires 100% electric truck sales by
2036.
Why
does air pollution
matter to me, a mother and a primary care physician?
In Nov 2018, I
was 7 months pregnant and practicing primary care in DT sacramento.
One day, the sun never rose and the sky remained dark; it
was full of the the thick black toxic smoke from the CAMP
Fire. Maybe you remember where you were that
day?
Within a few
hours, patients started to pour into the clinic, coughing and
wheezing, desperate for oxygen. Nurses triaged patients in
the hallways and I moved as fast as my heavily pregnant body
allowed; administering nebulizer after nebulizer treatment,
anxiously listening to the lungs of my struggling patients.
And every breath I took, I knew, was being directly transmitted to
my unborn son. Eventually, the smoke overwhelmed our air filtration
system, and it became too dangerous to breathe so we evacuated the
clinic.
A few weeks
later, I was awakened by the first sharp, terrifying contractions
of preterm labor.
That event showed
me that doctors are, to be honest, a bit helpless when it comes to
the severe health harms of air pollution. We have some
tools in our pockets - medications, nebulizers, masks - but the
REAL POWER in protecting patients, by eliminating air
pollution, lies in YOUR hands.
Please,
protect my patients, my children, and you and your children by
accelerating the ACF ZEV rule to 100% by 2036.
and reducing
the priority fleets from 50 to 10 trucks for Class 7 & 8
tractor trailers.
Thank you,
Dr. Meg
Whitman