Air pollution
cmonforton | October 20, 2017The headlines are grabbing people's attention:
CBC News: "Pollution causing more deaths worldwide than war or smoking"; CNN: "Pollution linked to 9 million deaths worldwide in 2015, study says"; BBC: "Pollution linked to one in six deaths"; Associated Press: "Pollution killing more people every year than wars, disaster and hunger, study says"; The Independent: "Pollution is killing millions of people a year and the world is reaching 'crisis point', experts warn."
News outlets are referring to a report released yesterday by The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health. The report’s authors…
lborkowski | October 25, 2016A few of the recent pieces I’ve liked:
Eric Boodman at STAT: Night sweats, bloody cough — and a diagnosis that turned a doctor into an activist
Laura Fink in The San Diego Union-Tribune: Debt of gratitude owed to Trump accusers
Eliza Barclay at Vox: How to confront sexist “locker room talk,” according to science
Jie Jenny Zou at Center for Public Integrity: State cutbacks, recalcitrance hinder Clean Air Act enforcement
Joerg Drewke in Guttmacher Policy Review: “Fungibility”: The Argument at the Center of a 40-Year Campaign to Undermine Reproductive Health and Rights
Lenny Bernstein and Scott…
kkrisberg | July 1, 2016Dr. Jodi Sherman wants to expand the medical profession’s understanding of patient safety far beyond the exam room and hospital bed. For Sherman, the oft-heard medical mantra of “first do no harm” should also push the health care system to do more to reduce its harmful air emissions and their impact on people’s health.
“Traditionally, our duty has been to the patient in front of us,” Sherman told me. “But we have a duty to protect society as well.”
Sherman, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Yale School of Medicine, recently co-authored a new study on harmful air pollutants coming…
kkrisberg | April 4, 2016In debates over air pollution control, it’s always a tug-of-war between the cost to business and the cost to public health. Late last month, a study emerged with new data for the public health column: the cost of the nation’s nearly 16,000 annual preterm births linked to air pollution is more than a whopping $5 billion.
Published in Environmental Health Perspectives, the study estimated the burden of U.S. preterm births and related costs associated with fine particulate matter (PM2.5) — a pollutant from motor vehicles and the burning of fuels such as wood and coal. While preterm birth is a…
kkrisberg | January 28, 2016Each year, the U.S. spends $26.2 billion on costs associated with preterm birth — that’s birth before 37 weeks of pregnancy. Beyond the costs, babies born too early experience immediate and long-term problems, from developmental disabilities to asthma to hearing loss. For years, scientists have been studying possible environmental contributors, with many finding an association between preterm birth and air pollution. Earlier this week, a new study brought even more depth and clarity to this connection.
Published in the journal Environmental Health, the study found that exposure to high levels…
kkrisberg | March 17, 2015In the first study of its kind, researchers have found that improved air quality in southern California had a direct effect on children’s respiratory health. The findings point to the effectiveness of smart public health policy — in other words, even as southern California experienced increases in traffic and commerce, aggressive air pollution policies resulted in cleaner air and healthier kids.
Published earlier this month in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study concluded that air quality improvements in the southern California communities studied were associated with significantly…
kkrisberg | December 17, 2014When compared with gasoline-powered cars, vehicles fueled with electricity from renewable sources could cut air pollution-related deaths by 70 percent, according to a new study, which noted that air pollution is the country’s greatest environmental health threat.
Published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study’s researchers examined the impact of various vehicle energy sources on the concentrations of two types of air pollutants known to affect human health: particulate matter and ground-level ozone. Previous research has found that air pollution causes…
kkrisberg | August 6, 2014Next time you pass a tree, you might want to give it a second thought. Maybe even a hug. One day, that tree might just help save your life.
Let me explain. In a new study published in the Environmental Pollution journal, researchers found that the positive impact that trees have on air quality translates to the prevention of more than 850 deaths each year as well as 670,000 incidences of acute respiratory symptoms. In 2010 alone, the study found that trees and forests in the contiguous United States removed 17.4 million metric tons of air pollution, which had an effect on human health valued…
lborkowski | December 22, 2011Yesterday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced the agency's new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which will reduce emissions of heavy metals and acid gases from coal- and oil-fired power plants. The approximately 1,400 units that EPA expects to be affected by the rule (because they aren't already meeting the standard) will have up to four years to come into compliance. An EPA fact sheet explains, "A range of widely available and economically feasible technologies, practices and compliance strategies are available to power plants to meet the emission limits, including wet and dry…
lborkowski | December 15, 2010The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is running a fascinating in-depth series on air pollution in Western Pennsylvania. While it's got a local focus, I'm sure people from other regions can identify with some of the problems it highlights, like the difficulties in regulating pollution that easily crosses state lines and the frustration of seeing inadequate Clean Air Act enforcement.
The series also delves into issues of epidemiology. In the introductory article, Region at risk: Can higher rates of death be linked to air pollution?, Don Hopey and Devid Templeton explain that the Post-Gazette analyzed…
revere | May 13, 2010BP has this great reputation for being an environmentally friendly and responsible company. I know it because their incessant television ads tell me it's true. The ones that flank the national news stories about their horrendous safety record of explosions and worker deaths or their catastrophic oil spills. Those ads. When something happens they start the noise machine and appear to be the innocent party let down by their lessee.
BP ("British Petroleum") is a British Company operating in the US. A US company operating in Britain is called Innospec. You probably never heard of them because…
revere | April 20, 2010The Icelandic volcanic eruption is still causing havoc in Europe with ripple effects elsewhere as people and planes are grounded for travel in or out of much of northern Europe. Pressure from the traveling public, air carriers and business is mounting to let passenger and cargo planes fly again. What's changed? Not much. There's about as much uncertainty as there was a week ago, just a lot more pushback. The recriminations are already starting: EU and national transport authorities "over reacted." They should have ... done what? At the same time airlines like Air France-KLM are conducting…
revere | January 24, 2010It used to be my job to teach the environmental health survey course for public health students and air pollution was a topic I spent a lot of time on because it interested me and intersected some of my research work. One of the things I taught my students was that some air pollutants were very local -- carbon monoxide (CO) being a good example; levels of CO on one side of the street could vary significantly from those on the other side by virtue of traffic patterns or street canyon effects -- while others were considered regional pollutants. Ozone (O3) was my example of choice. It isn't…
revere | April 14, 2009If you have any of your clothes dry cleaned it's more than likely you are being exposed to a chlorinated solvent called PCE (for perchloroethylene aka perc aka tetrachloroethylene/tetrachloroethene). You may be lucky enough to also get some in your drinking water, too (which means you are also breathing it and absorbing it through your skin) -- because PCE is also one of the most prevalent groundwater contaminants in the US. It has some other nice properties: it causes cancer and birth defects and probably autoimmune disease. And it isn't needed to dry clean clothes. Other than that, no…
revere | March 30, 2009A little over a week ago the Environmental Protection Agency sent the White House its finding that global warming endangers public health and welfare. This doesn't sound like news, and except for a minority of scientists out there it is very, very old news. But in the context of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling it is indeed big news:
The proposal -- which comes in response to a 2007 Supreme Court decision ordering EPA to consider whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act -- could lay the groundwork for nationwide measures to limit such emissions…
revere | March 9, 2009I'm sure it will be years before we have cleaned up all the garbage -- literally and figuratively -- from the Bush administration's Environmental "Protection" Agency. The notoriously conservative DC Appeals Court, in a unanimous decision, did its part recently when it declared the Bush EPA's standards for air particulates “contrary to law and unsupported by adequately reasoned decisionmaking." The language doesn't get much stronger than that. Just a few days before the Supremes refused to hear a challenge to a lower court decision striking down Bush EPA mercury standards from coal-fired power…
revere | November 21, 2008The trouble with National Parks for a city boy like me is too much wilderness. I am only able to stand up on asphalt. So it is comforting to find out the Bush administration is looking out for folks like me, should by some quirk of fate we find ourselves outdoors in a National Park with no Starbucks within blocks. Soon we'll be able to see the soul satisfying outline of a huge coal fired power plant, an oil refinery or some other familiar polluter to make us feel at home. It's just too bad that the EPA's own administrators can't get onboard:
The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing…
revere | November 21, 2008John Dingell (D-MI), longtime Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has done some good things in his time, but overall he's been a net minus. When Henry Waxman (D-CA) toppled him from his perch today my feeling was an uncharitable, Good Riddance. The vote in the Democratic Party caucus was close but not very close: 137 - 122. Dingell has not been representing the people of his District as much as he has been representing the US Automakers. He he got the sobriquet Dirty Air Dingell the old fashioned way: he earned it:
The Energy and Commerce panel is one of the most important House…
revere | November 15, 2008You probably never heard of the EPA Appeals Board, but they have just handed down a ruling that will affect scores of power plants using coal. Affect them how? Not clear at the moment:
The uncertainty resulted when an Environmental Protection Agency appeals panel on Thursday rejected a federal permit for a Utah plant, leaving the issue for the Obama administration to resolve.
The panel said the EPA's Denver office failed to adequately support its decision to issue a permit for the Bonanza plant without requiring controls on carbon dioxide, the leading pollutant linked to global warming.
The…
revere | October 18, 2008Here's some public health man-bites-dog news. George Bush's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did something right:
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday set stringent new standards for airborne lead particles, following the recommendations of its science advisers and cutting the maximum allowable concentrations to a tenth of the previous standard. It was the first change in federal lead standards in three decades.
[snip]
The new standards set the limits for exposure at 0.15 micrograms per cubic meter of air, down from 1.5 micrograms, and well within the outer limit of 0.2…