If You Think You Don’t Need to Worry…
Last August, the Ruidoso/Lincoln County Association of Realtors (RLCAR) published a thought provoking and comprehensive letter about the deleterious and toxic fugitive emissions from a Concrete Batch Plant which inexplicably failed to be included on this website. (Mea Culpa!) This post is intended to correct that mistake.
A copy of the letter is provided in PDF format and you can read it by clicking HERE. We are not engaging in fear mongering based on unsupported claims, theories, and rumors. These problems have been identified in numerous studies by prominent health officials and organizations. However, most studies and corrective actions have focused on Occupational Exposure to Respirable Silica Dust, which isn’t our issue.
Non-Occupational exposure is what we in the vicinity of the proposed Concrete Batch Plant will experience and there are scant few studies about this topic, a fact which is acknowledged in this report. Silicosis, the lung disease resulting from long term inhalation of respirable crystalline silica dust, is inoperable and fatal.
To be fair, every time the dust from White Sands National Monument comes to visit, everyone in the region is exposed to increased levels of respirable crystalline silica because it is a component of desert sand, but those exposures are infrequent and short lived. The proposed concrete batching plant, however, is expected to operate constantly as much as 18 hours per day, every day, for 9 months of the year. These numbers are taken from the Air Quality Permit Application submitted by Roper to NMED.
I live in the Alto Lakes or Outlaw subdivision. I won’t be exposed. Right?
You probably will.
Here are some facts:
Every residence in those subdivisions is within 3 (Three) miles of the proposed plant location.
US EPA calculations for 5 Micrometer* airborne particles travel distance:
WIND SPEED DISTANCE
6 mph 4.5 miles
12 mph 9 miles
25 mph 18 miles
*Emitted particles sizes range from 2.5 to 10 micrometers.
The good news is the anti-COVID 19 masks are very effective against these particle sizes which are many orders of magnitude larger than the virus.
That means by wearing a mask 18 hours per day during peak plant operation you can protect yourself from contracting Silicosis or the other respiratory afflictions which result from exposure to fugitive emissions from such an operation.
OR
You can help keep the batching plant from being constructed at all by contributing to our Legal Fund to oppose the plant. To do that, click on one of the links on the right of the page. We thank you and your lungs will thank you.