Detroit’s industrial past and present mean people around the city don’t have clean air to breathe. This story is part of Exhausted in Detroit, a series copublished with Outlier Media examining our air quality problem and what can be done. See the full series here.
Picture a 21-ton tractor-trailer driving east on I-96 in Detroit. It pulls off at Exit 185 at Schaefer Highway, takes two right turns, and arrives in the Plymouth-Hubbell neighborhood.
As its engine roars, the wind carries microscopic particles of diesel exhaust — soot, plus toxic gases like formaldehyde, nitrogen oxides and more — past the swingset at Mallett Playground and into the surrounding neighborhood of about 2 square miles.
One minute and 40 seconds later, another truck follows, trailed by another puff of exhaust. Within 24 hours, about 900 trucks will come and go on their way to a hulking new warehouse complex.
That scene, which the city approved in 2021, could become a reality within months as construction crews finish work on the warehouses.
But Cynthia Lowe, secretary of the Pride Area Community Council, a nearby block club, isn’t ready to worry about truck traffic that hasn’t even shown up yet. Even with the threat of diesel exhaust — which worsens asthma and is linked to cancer and heart disease — the new warehouse seems better, perhaps, than what was there before.
Lowe spent years pushing the city to do something about federal air quality violations at what was the abandoned headquarters of the American Motors Corp. and is now the warehouse complex. A pile of industrial waste on the site was “so high you could ski,” she said.
Nothing happened until NorthPoint Development LLC, a Missouri-based developer, got a tax incentive from the city worth about $22 million, cleaned up the eyesore, and built something in its place.
Lowe considered this a much-needed win for the neighborhood, which has a shuttered school and is dotted with vacant homes. She was ready to declare victory when activists began warning that the new warehouse would effectively swap one source of dangerous pollution for another.
More could be done to protect Detroiters who live near major trucking destinations like the new warehouse, the activists say. None of it is happening.
Trucks, construction equipment and cars — known jointly as mobile sources — are now the largest source of particulate air pollution in the Detroit area, and diesel exhaust is a major reason why.
“You can’t win for losing in this city,” Lowe said. She remains unconvinced that the warehouse poses an environmental hazard, and she certainly won’t sound any alarms until she sees the trucks for herself. “Why can’t they wait and see?”
Mixed feelings, clear health impacts
Train tracks and highways crisscross the neighborhood around the new warehouse. For every front yard neatly tended by a 30-year resident, it seems there’s a boarded-up house, small manufacturer or used car lot.
Longtime residents of Plymouth-Hubbell have lived alongside industry for decades, and tracking pollution in their neighborhood can feel like an endless game of whack-a-mole. Asked about truck traffic at a new warehouse, several residents said they are more concerned about dust from a new, nearby concrete facility.
The vacant American Motor Corp. plant stood for years as a 1.5 million-square-foot symbol of a roller-coaster century for the neighborhood. During World War II, the factory built helicopters and airplane propellers. After 2009, when Chrysler moved out, it was a goldmine for metal scrappers and a notorious dumping site.
In 2014, the facility’s new owner was jailed for violating federal air quality rules after he ordered crews to cut into asbestos-insulated pipes and dismantle large air conditioners full of toxic refrigerant without taking safety precautions. The court seized the property, which eventually ended up in the city’s hands.
No wonder residents are worried about pollution, even if they’re grateful to see the site cleaned up.
“I like the development. I like the jobs,” said Mary Herring, who has lived in her home a block from the site for about 30 years. “As long as we stay safe, I’m good with it.”
None of it — not the potential jobs, the industrial history or the developer’s cleanup efforts — changes the health risks of living with the exhaust of 868 diesel trucks on average per day.
That’s a lot of diesel engines, far more than the 200 per day estimated to travel to the Amazon warehouse on the former Michigan State Fairgrounds — and more than enough to make some residents worry.
“I can’t inhale all of that,” said Harvey Ramsey, a retiree and resident of decades. “I wish they’d built a senior citizen center or a quality grocery store over there.”
The projected number of trucks, which comes from an environmental analysis paid for by the developer, is so high that Cynthia Lowe doubts it can be true.
“That (number) is extensive,” she said. “I just doubt that there could be that many. The neighborhood can’t handle that many trucks.”
There is still a lot of wiggle room in the number of trucks that end up going through the neighborhood. The number now, around 900, is an estimated daily average, but not a maximum. If the number is right — and if the city does nothing to protect residents — some in this 96% Black neighborhood might finally call it quits. Industrial pollution in Midwestern cities is one factor fueling a New Great Migration of Black Americans to southern states.
Herring said she isn’t going anywhere. A widow, she and her husband bought their home for $12,000, and property assessment records suggest its value has not kept up with inflation.
“I’m not gonna move,” she said. “I couldn’t. I live here. I’ll probably die right here.”
Diesel: A looming challenge for more Detroit neighborhoods
City leaders have worked hard to rebuild Detroit’s industrial sector, arguing that new warehouses and factories will reinvigorate the tax base and provide jobs. In the city’s industrial heyday, those economic benefits might have been widespread, but the smokestack pollution wasn’t. It was concentrated in low-income neighborhoods.
Today, those smokestacks are increasingly being replaced by semis atop the list of neighborhood health hazards.
Cars have gotten cleaner, and coal-burning power plants are shutting down. But Detroit is home to the busiest U.S.-Canada border crossing for truck traffic.
Residents who live near trucking hubs in Southwest Detroit have complained for years about the health effects of heavy truck traffic on residential streets. Diesel exhaust is linked to respiratory illnesses, heart disease and cancer and is expected to cause nearly 9,000 deaths and impose $97.9 billion in health care costs nationally this year.
The traffic shows no signs of slowing down. The opening of the new Gordie Howe International Bridge, likely to happen in 2025, is expected to bring a sharp increase in truck traffic above the 10,000 that now pass through the area every day. New warehouses dot the city, mirroring national growth in that industry in areas with cheap land and low-wage labor forces.
Just ask the neighbors of the new Stellantis plant, the first assembly line to open in the city in decades, who’ve dealt with air quality problems and a flood of semis.
“If you’re within about 200 to 500 yards (of a lot of trucks), that’s where you have” the most extensive health effects of diesel pollution, said Stuart Batterman, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan and an air quality expert.
Plenty of solutions but little action
As the neighborhood health effects of diesel exhaust become clearer, the city is failing to adapt, said Wendy Caldwell-Liddell, a community organizer who criticized the city’s deal with NorthPoint.
“It’s like 1,000 little smokestacks,” she said. “Instead of having one large one, you now have 1,000 little ones traversing your community.”
Caldwell-Liddell doesn’t oppose the warehouse project entirely. Working with activist group Detroit People’s Platform, she argued instead that the developer should pay for air filters in neighboring houses.
NorthPoint didn’t agree, and it wasn’t required to. The project’s $72 million budget fell just under the $75 million threshold at which developers are required to negotiate community benefits agreements with residents.
“Everybody passes the buck on mobile emissions,” such as truck exhaust, said Andrew Bashi, an attorney for the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center who works on air quality issues. “It’s no one’s responsibility. There’s no restraint on this.”
There are few rules to keep big rigs away from homes. State and federal officials say they don’t regulate truck emissions at the neighborhood level. When a new industrial facility requests a permit to pollute, trucks are taken into account, but truck traffic alone typically isn’t enough to initiate that process.
A Detroit ordinance to limit neighborhood truck traffic has been on hold for years despite resident complaints. The city does require developers to submit traffic impact studies for facilities that will draw more than 200 vehicles per day and to mitigate traffic disruptions by installing right turn lanes, signage or other signals. Air pollution impacts are included in some but not all traffic studies.
The city signed off on the warehouse plan, including the estimated average of 868 trucks per day. John Roach, a city spokesperson, said the city would be responsive to complaints about the traffic.
“If, after the facility becomes operational, we receive complaints that trucks are using roads other than the ones that are designed for truck traffic, or that truck volumes are exceedingly high, the city will conduct traffic studies to determine whether steps need to be taken to address those concerns,” he said. He added that the city plans to hire a “freight planner” whose job would be to balance freight traffic with neighborhood quality of life concerns.
NorthPoint told City Council that warehouse tenants would be instructed to route trucks from the highway via Fullerton Avenue and Schaefer Highway, reducing their contact with residential zones. The developer also says it will erect a fence and tree wall around a truck parking area, try to prevent truck traffic on Plymouth Road and improve the nearby Mallett Playground.
None of those promises are legally binding. NorthPoint didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Batterman said that limiting warehouse access to trucks with updated, cleaner fuel systems would make a substantial difference. That too would be up to the warehouse operator. The trucking industry has opposed efforts to reduce emissions from trucks.
The Environmental Protection Agency recently tightened emissions rules for new trucks, which start to kick in for 2027 model years.
Meanwhile, neighboring Dearborn recently prohibited trucks from a key neighborhood street near several factories. Mayor Abdullah Hammoud and his siblings were born in the city and developed asthma from a young age, and he said that he wants to show that local leaders can reduce air pollution.
“We at the municipal level have to be on the offensive against truck traffic,” he said.
Eventually, the problem could be solved by a shift to electric trucks and buses, which don’t emit exhaust. Don’t hold your breath though. It’s far from certain that the U.S. will be able to shift to a fully electric truck fleet by 2050.