The long shadow

Families in Elyria-swansea struggle with asthma amid massive I-70 construction

Two eyes, darkened from little sleep, poked out from underneath a blanket. Annabel Rodriguez-santos, 8, lay in her mother’s bed in a room she shares with her mother and older sister at her grandmother’s house in north Denver’s Elyria-swansea neighborhood.

“There are some nights you don’t even sleep because you are just watching over them,” said Nancy Santos, Annabel’s mother. Both of her daughters suffer from asthma.

After her husband was killed in an automobile accident, Santos and her daughters moved from Summit County to Denver to be with family. That’s when the girls started having breathing problems, she said.

The family’s home in Elyria-swansea — located in what one study says is the nation’s most-polluted urban ZIP code — sits near heavy industry in Adams County and, since last August, has been at the heart of the four-year Central 70 Project.

The Colorado Department of Transportation’s $1.2 billion highway expansion will overhaul 10 miles of Interstate 70 between Brighton Boulevard and Chambers Road. Workers will remove a 54-year-old viaduct, add a new express lane in each direction and lower part of the roadway underground.

Santos said she worries about the impact of dust and diesel exhaust from the I-70 construction traffic on the health of her two asthma-stricken daughters.

That’s because, even before work began on I-70, her neighborhood had been no stranger to environmental health concerns.

According to a 2017 report from ATTOM Data Solutions, Elyria-swansea, Globeville and a section of the River North neighborhood — all part of the 80216 ZIP code that makes up much of north Denver — are in the highest “environmental hazard risk” of the more than 8,600 ZIP codes nationwide.

While the asthma rates in Elyria-swansea and Globeville are not the highest in Denver, they are greater than the state average — and have increased in recent years.

In Elyria-swansea, the asthma rate has jumped 41 percent since 2006-2010 to 1,113.12 per 100,000 people in the 2013-2017 time span. Globeville’s asthma rate has increased by 25 percent to 1,238.47 per 100,000 people in that same period, according to data from the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment.

A health-impact assessment conducted by Denver in 2014 found that residents of Elyria-swansea and Globeville experience higher incidences of chronic health conditions — including asthma, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity — than other Denver neighborhoods.

In December, CDOT agreed to contribute $550,000 toward a new health study designed to “provide a greater understanding of public health outcomes” in Globeville and Elyria-swansea — part of a settlement of a lawsuit brought by environmental and neighborhood groups.

“CDOT has nearly two dozen mitigation commitments in place to ensure that air quality remains safe for residents near the construction project,” said Stacia Sellers, spokeswoman for the Central 70 Project. “We know this is a top concern for the community, which makes it ours, too. It’s important that we continue to work with Kiewit Meridiam Partners to make sure we are operating equipment and maintaining work zones in such a way that we are abiding by our commitments and minimizing any impacts as much as possible.”

Constantly cleaning house

The home Santos rents along with her mother is only a few blocks from her sister, cousins and other members of her extended family. There also was another perk about the neighborhood that she liked — the house is only a few blocks from Swansea Elementary, where the girls would go to school.

“I liked the idea of being so close to them while they were in school,” Santos said.

But in time, the girls became too sick to attend Swansea Elementary. They had to start attending a special school at Denver’s National Jewish Health for children with severe breathing issues.

“It is hard,” Santos said. “I have to get the girls up super early to get across town, but they need to be at a school where nurses can keep an eye on them.”

The smell of bleach hung in the air as Annabel lay in bed, resting after a long night of having multiple asthma attacks. Large white tiles, which flow throughout the small home, shined like mirrors after being mopped.

“I try to keep the house super clean,” Santos said. “When the girls get sick, it just makes their asthma worse. It’s one of the only things I know how to do to help them.”

She cleans the house as many as three times per day.

Asthma is a chronic lung disease that, through the swelling of a person’s airways, obstructs the flow of air into and out of the lungs, said Dr. Vamsi Guntur, associate professor of medicine at National Jewish Health.

“Asthma can develop at any time in life,” Guntur said. “We do not know exactly what

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post Annabel Rodriguez-santos, 8, lies in bed following a long night of getting little sleep after suffering an asthma attack. Annabel and her older sister have childhood asthma and attend a special school at National Jewish Hospital for children with severe breathing problems. The family lives in north Denver’s Elyria-swansea neighborhood; their home is only a few blocks from construction on the Central 70 Project, CDOT’S $1.2 billion expansion of I-70.

Annabel Rodriguez-santos, 8, does a nebulizer breathing treatment for her asthma. In the north Denver neighborhood known as Elyria-swansea, where Annabel and her family live, the asthma rate jumped 41 percent since 2006-2010 to 1,113.12 per 100,000 people in the 2013-2017 span.

Yadira Sanchez stands outside Panaderia Sanchez, her family’s restaurant in north Denver. The restaurant is only a few hundred feet from CDOT’S Interstate 70 expansion project. Sanchez and her three children all suffer from asthma.

Nancy Santos prepares a nebulizer for use by Annabel. “I am worried about the construction dust,” Santos says of the Central 70 Project. “I know some people around us got special windows, but since we rent ... I guess no one asked us.”