MOTHERS AGAINST AIRPORT POLLUTION
Contact: Kate Moran, (847) 437-1243
For immediate release:      September 27, 2001

Mothers Respond to President Bush

Chicago—Mothers Against Airport Pollution agrees that the federal government
and the air transportation industry need to make air travel safer.  But as
we now see, we have built our economy around the least sustainable form of
transportation – transportation by air.  Let’s not make the same mistake
twice.

We need to immediately develop a nationwide, world-class, high-speed rail
system in order to modernize our whole transportation system.  If better
rail service had been in place in the U.S. at the time of the September 11
tragedies, the economy would have continued to function at a much stronger
level than it has been.  MAAP also encourages the use of teleconferencing in
lieu of business travel and other viable alternatives.

Jet aircraft emit huge amounts of toxins for miles around the airports that
endanger our health and that of our children.  The relatively few thousand
commercial jet planes operating are responsible for using a highly
disproportionate amount of the world’s oil supply.

Over ninety (90) percent of those toxic jet engine emissions are emitted at
or near the airports, creating severe local impacts.  Studies show that
airport and aircraft air emissions contaminate an area greater than 20 miles
away from a small airport, yet seventy (70) percent of the U.S. populace
lives within twenty miles of a major airport.

Let's work together to find real solutions to these problems, not to
continue
the same mistakes of the past.

It is now time to support our economy while also protecting our safety,
health and environment, not by massively building up aviation, but by
immediately beginning to build a nationwide, world-class, high-speed rail
system.

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