SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Community members over the age of 18 who live or work near the Tijuana River Valley are being asked to participate in an online survey studying the effects of raw sewage flowing in from Mexico.
The the problem has persisted for decades and experts like Dr. Paula Granados, of San Diego State University’s College of Public Health, believe it’s time to conduct a comprehensive survey to see how the pollution is affecting people’s health and quality of life.
“It’s an opportunity for everybody in the community to participate and just tell us what they’ve been seeing, smelling, feeling, and what are their perspectives on the air quality, water quality in their environment,” Granados said.
Granados is the lead researcher in this online survey.
“We’re asking questions about respiratory illnesses, gastrointestinal problems, about allergies, sleep, stress, quality of life questions, this is the only way we’re going to find out what’s really happening on the ground,” she said. “Maybe they wake up in the middle of the night getting sick, but they don’t necessarily go to the doctor because they don’t have health insurance, we’re going to track that over time, along with the flows in the river.”
According to Granados, the data will be gathered over a period of one year.
“It’s important people participate because it’s the only way we’re going to find out what people’s true health problems are, and once we get enough surveys and the data downloaded we’re going to start putting out information, probably once a week, describing what people are filling out.”
She says they’ll be able to track trends and what the most reported symptoms are, comparing them to flows in the river and the level of smell.
“We’ll start looking at what does it look like in the summer, what does it look like during the rainy season, is there contamination when the river is flowing, what does it look like when it’s not, but ultimately the idea is that we’re going to be able to take this data and really analyze it and look at where the biggest problems are so we can do interventions.”
Granados told Border Report they hope to have at least 800 residents participate, adding that in a matter of days, they had 400 people sign up.
The survey is available at tjriver.sdsu.edu in both English and Spanish.
“We hope that soon, we can make this survey available to people in Tijuana because they, too, are affected by the pollution in the river, we’re going to learn a lot about what’s happening.”
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