By Ariana Bista and Maddie Bockus
Growing up in a neighborhood with little green space and at the intersection of two interstate highways, Ada Wu often experienced bouts of intense coughing and wheezing. Like many of her friends in Boston’s Chinatown, she suffered from childhood asthma.
At its worst, she said, nearly every breath felt so labored that she struggled to sleep.
“I would always just have my inhaler ready,” said Wu, 21, a junior at Tufts University.
For years, Chinatown has had the worst air quality and highest levels of vehicle emissions in Massachusetts, according to an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Amid growing concern about the pollution, state and city officials have launched new initiatives, including a Chinatown air-monitoring station in 2024 and a revived Community Clean Air Grant program in 2025.
Health experts say the risks of exposure to the kind of pollution that Wu grew up with are significant — and not just related to asthma. Exposure to ultrafine particles from traffic-related pollution can contribute to respiratory, cardiovascular, and neurological health problems.
“Everyone says ‘air pollution, asthma’… but it’s only a tiny part of the story,” said Doug Brugge, director of the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health studies, which looked at Chinatown pollution. “No one says, ‘Oh, my grandmother had a heart attack — that must have been air pollution.’”
Brugge’s research linked roadway pollution to cardiovascular health risks in Chinatown, Somerville, and Dorchester.
Wu attended Chinatown’s Josiah Quincy Elementary School, just across from Interstate 90. In second grade, she joined a “lunch and learn” program for students with asthma, where she and her classmates ate Goldfish crackers while learning how to address an asthma attack.
Ada Wu, a student at Tufts University, grew up with asthma in Boston’s Chinatown, where Interstates 90 and 93 intersect. MADDIE BOCKUS
“I recognized that there may be a lot of students and children at Josiah Quincy that have asthma, and a good portion of these children do also live within Chinatown,” Wu said.
At Josiah Quincy, most students are Asian American. A 2003 Tufts University study found that 16 percent of their elementary school students had asthma, compared with nearly 6 percent of US children overall, though the researchers noted the comparison was imperfect.
No recent studies have been done at the school, and no studies have directly linked asthma rates to the neighborhood’s air pollution.
Attributing childhood asthma in Chinatown to air pollution is not easy, Brugge said. Air pollution is just one of many contributing factors.
In middle school, Wu began volunteering with the Asian Community Development Corporation. Through the nonprofit’s youth program, she learned how decades of redlining — a discriminatory practice that denied mortgages and financial services to low-income communities of color — shaped Chinatown’s environment.
In the 1950s, the construction of I-90 and I-93 displaced residents, split the neighborhood, and brought significant pollution from increased traffic. Children stopped playing ball in parks, Wu said, because the many fast-paced cars made it too dangerous to chase balls into the street.
Since the highways were built, residents have raised concerns at public meetings and in the media. Some report black soot coating their windows and worry about the safety of eating vegetables grown in home gardens. Others have bought air purifiers in hopes of protecting their children.
Chinatown residents are mostly Asian, and more than a quarter of households live below the poverty line, according to the 2025 Chinatown Heat Action Plan, which ranked the neighborhood as the city’s hottest and urged city officials to add cooling centers, misting tents, and more trees.
With little green space and heavy traffic, the densely populated neighborhood can broil in the summer, exacerbating the impact of pollution.
To address the heat and air pollution, community organizations and city officials supported the installation of an indoor air filtration system at Josiah Quincy Upper School in 2024 and plan to plant dozens of trees and shrubs at the all-concrete Reggie Wong Park.
Trees provide shade that can reduce surface temperatures and block wind, helping push polluted air upward and over the park, said John Durant, an environmental engineer at Tufts University who specializes in air pollution monitoring.
Trees and plants also absorb carbon dioxide and trap particulate matter in their leaves.
For Chinatown residents, addressing air pollution also means responding to a legacy of displacement and building on the grassroots movements that began when the interstates were built. Residents once organized to oppose projects that would increase traffic, including the successful 1996 protest against a proposed off-ramp.
Community organizations such as the Chinatown Community Land Trust and the Asian Community Development Corporation are buying back land in Chinatown and building affordable housing to help residents remain in the neighborhood.
For Lydia Lowe, director of the Chinatown Community Land Trust, such work is essential to improving residents’ health and the neighborhood’s future.
“The central question is, ‘What makes Chinatown Chinatown, and how do we keep it?’” Lowe asked. “If you want to keep that, then there has to be a way to keep the people … and for them to thrive.”
Wu’s own family legacy is etched in vibrant swirls of gold and cyan on an alley wall in Chinatown, bringing light to a dark, narrow corner surrounded by traffic.
The mural, “Where We Belong” by Ponnapa Prakkamakul, a Thai contemporary visual artist and landscape architect, features Wu’s family noodle recipe, traditionally served on birthdays. The artwork honors longtime residents as the neighborhood changes, reminding them they still belong.
In high school, Wu became involved in the Asian Community Development Corporation’s efforts to redesign public spaces for residents of all ages to enjoy.
In 2020, at a virtual community meeting on the redevelopment of another piece of Chinatown land, Wu urged city officials to replace the existing parking lot with affordable housing, green space, or a public library. Sharing her experience with childhood asthma and how common it was among her peers, she argued that traffic from parking lots worsens the neighborhood’s pollution.
Wu outgrew her asthma and now spends most of her time on the leafier Tufts campus in Medford. But she returns often to Chinatown, where her parents and grandparents live. She still attends community events and volunteers when she can.
“One of my personal joys is just talking to community members and hearing what they have to say, hearing the stories, and really passing down the oral legacy,” Wu said.
In Chinatown, signs of pollution are nearly everywhere, and many who live and work there worry about how it might be affecting them.
Earlier this year, Terrence Samuel, a Chinatown parking garage attendant, wiped thick, black soot from car exhaust off emergency equipment during each of his shifts.
“That’s probably a small idea of the stuff that I don’t realize I’m inhaling,” he said.