Air quality improving around Dudley Station

ROXBURY. Ten years ago, MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas said you could see buses coming through Dudley Station “belching that blue smoke” and wreaking havoc on the environment.

Today, with buses running on cleaner fuel, he said air quality has improved around the T’s busiest station — which serves 16 bus routes and more than 2,300 buses each weekday. This is good news for city health officials, who have found people living in Dorchester and Roxbury often suffer from high rates of asthma. 

Though they can’t directly attribute the change to the T’s cleaner buses, state environmental officials, who have been testing air quality nearby, are seeing positive results.

“The numbers we’re working with, based on yearly average, you can see the trend is down over the last seven years,” said Joseph Ferson, spokesman for the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.