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Air pollution: If you live in Los Angeles, it’s part of the skyline; if you live anywhere else it’s probably something you either don’t think about or just accept as part of modern life.
After all, smog doesn’t seem to do much harm, really, aside from hanging there and blocking the view. Unfortunately, air pollution isn’t so innocuous.
Aside from environmental and health effects, it turns out that smog could actually be making us stupider.
How pollution affects performance
A National Bureau of Economic Research study carried out in Israel found that worse pollution on the day of regularly administered high school exams reduced student performance relative to their previous examinations.
In other words, even just a single bad day of pollution affected how well students took the test.
Unfortunately for students, having the bad luck to have several badly polluted testing days over the course of their high school career also had a small but significant effect on whether they earned matriculation certificates — which are a prerequisite for college admission.
It drives home the point that something you might think of as unchangeable — your ability to get into college — is actually subject to influence by any number of factors.
And pollution is one of those factors.
Not convinced?
Another study looking at the effect of fetal exposure to carbon monoxide on primary school test outcomes came up with similar results. Even in the womb, carbon monoxide affects the body’s ability to get oxygen from red blood cells, and the result is lower cognitive performance.
Once they discovered this, the study’s authors tried to estimate the effect that Santiago, Chile’s significant pollution reduction program had on kids in Santiago.
It was about $100 million in increased lifetime earnings per age group, or about $1000 per person, on average. That might not sound like much on an individual basis, but taken together that’s a lot of economic activity that would have otherwise gone up in, well, a puff of smoke. .
Air quality isn’t just an environmental issue
If you thought the impact of carbon monoxide and other forms of pollution are limited to kids, you’d be wrong.
The air we breathe affects adults as well. Even too much carbon dioxide (the stuff you exhale) in an office can affect your cognitive performance; one study found that gradually increasing carbon dioxide levels in a room had a significant impact on several decision-making measures in adults.
Those results are particularly problematic when you take into account that carbon dioxide levels tend to be worse in conference rooms. Even at levels too low to show up on individual performance scores, carbon dioxide starts affecting group decision performance (a great addition to your list of reasons why you hate meetings).
And that’s just carbon dioxide.
Emissions from cars and power plants are affecting us too, it’s just harder to measure the impact in the absence of clear data. Luckily, data from academic studies like these can shine some light onto the subject. And the unfortunate takeaway is that our air could be making us, and our children, stupider.
Whatever your thoughts on environmentalism or buying green, that’s a hard conclusion to ignore. So in the absence of immediate control over pollution levels, try to take what steps you can to make your air a little better — plants in the conference room, hosting meetings outdoors (depending on the smog), or just forgiving your kid for falling asleep in class, again.
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London Mayor Boris Johnson says he will explore plans to introduce car-free Sundays to central parts of the capital as the Government’s scientific advisers are reportedly set to warn air pollution could now be responsible for as many as 60,000 premature deaths in the UK each year.
Boris Johnson confirmed he will consider plans for a vehicle ban on Sundays while attending a similar event during a Far East trip to the Indonesian capital Jakarta.
Mr Johnson said he was “blown away” by the popularity of the scheme that has now run for more than 15 years and bans vehicles from the streets of Jakarta from 6am every Sunday.
The Mayor said he will ask Transport for London to review shelved plans for the introduction of a one-day vehicle ban to encourage the take-up of sustainable methods of transport like cycling and walking.
He said: “I think it would probably take time to bed in and it would take a few years before people got into the swing of coming out into the streets and making use of the space that a car-free Sunday provided.”
His comments follow reports that the Government is to be advised that the actual death toll for air pollution in the UK is 60,000 – more than double the current official figure of 29,000.
The Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants, an official advisory body, is said to warn the existing official count does not factor in the levels of the gas nitrogen dioxide, which is chiefly emitted by diesel engines.
The panel is understood to still be finalising the statistics although any revision of the mortality rate upwards will heap further pressure on policy-makers, who have been accused of dithering and a lack of action on reducing air pollution.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) this month ruled in favour of the basic right to breathe clean air and said the UK Government must do more to protect public health.
The ECJ ruled in favour of pressure group ClientEarth and ordered that the UK must act to clean up illegal levels of air pollution “as soon as possible”. Under current plans the UK will not meet legal limits for nitrogen dioxide until after 2030 – 20 years after the original deadline.
The case will return to the Supreme Court next year for a binding ruling.
Air pollution, largely from diesel vehicle road traffic, may be to blame for as many as 60,000 early deaths in Britain each year, the Government’s scientific advisors are set to warn it.
The Sunday Times newspaper reports that the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants, an official advisory body, will publish a report next year showing that the premature death toll caused by road traffic pollution is around twice as high as originally thought.
The official death toll for air pollution in the UK is currently 29,000, but this does not take into account levels of the gas nitrogen dioxide, which is mainly emitted by diesel engines whose deadly effects are not included in the existing official count.
Though the Committee is still finalising the figures, Frank Kelly, the professor of environmental health at King’s College London who chairs it, told the newspaper that new calculations taking into account nitrogen dioxide levels “would increase air pollution’s contribution to the total death rate from 5%-9% across the UK to 10%-18%”.
“Since more than 60% of the population live in urban areas, where pollution is the highest, and they are breathing polluted air over decades, the additional small risk accumulates to these distressing figures,” he explained.
The government agency Public Health England confirmed last week that NO2 was killing far more people than previously realised.
“When we include NO2 there will be a significant increase in the mortality figures from air pollution,” said Sotiris Vardoulakis, group leader in air pollution at the organisation.
Environmental group Client Earth, which brought the case before the court, said the ruling would “save lives”.
Public concern over air pollution is making its way back on the political agenda, with researchers earlier in the year warning it could be linked to autism and schizophrenia.
The effects of the gas are particularly pronounced in London, where the Greater London Authority already recognises that it prematurely kills 2,600 Londoners each year; one in 12 of the total.
The Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants is an advisory committee of independent scientific experts who advise government departments on all matters concerning effects of air pollutants on health.
The three-wheeled rickshaw lurched through New Delhi’s commuter-clogged streets with an American scientist and several air pollution monitors in the back seat. Car horns blared. A scrappy scooter buzzed by belching black smoke from its tailpipe. One of the monitors spiked.
Joshua Apte has alarming findings for anyone who spends time on or near the roads in this city of 25 million. The numbers are far worse than the ones that have already led the World Health Organization to rank New Delhi as the world’s most polluted city.
Average pollution levels, depending on the pollutant, were up to eight times higher on the road than urban background readings, according to research by Apte and his partners at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi.
“And you have to keep in mind that the concentrations at urban background sites, where these official monitors are, are already very high,” he said. The measures “are actually some of the highest levels in air pollution made inside vehicles anywhere in the world.”
The point is particularly important for New Delhi residents, about half of whom live within 300 meters (330 yards) of a major road. New Delhi, like most cities, places their air monitors far from primary pollution sources like highways or industrial plants so that no single source can affect ambient readings, which are meant to represent an average pollution exposure from all sources.
“Official air quality monitors tend to be located away from roads, on top of buildings, and that’s not where most people spend most of their time,” Apte said as The Associated Press joined him on a pollution-monitoring ride-along. “In fact, most people spend a lot of time in traffic in India. Sometimes one, two, three hours a day.”
Outdoor air pollution kills millions worldwide every year, according to the WHO, including more than 627,000 in India. One of the biggest culprits in fast-growing India is vehicular traffic: Car ownership in the country of 1.2 billion grew from 20 million in 1991 to 140 million in 2011, and is expected to reach 400 million by 2030.
India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken steps to cut down the popularity of cars running on diesel, one of the dirtiest burning fuels, by pegging its cost to world market prices and scrapping a discount that had encouraged diesel consumption.
But experts say that, unless India raises fuel standards to international norms, pollution levels that are already often deemed unhealthy or hazardous will escalate. Unchecked, today’s vehicle trends in India could lead to a three-fold increase in levels of PM 2.5 by 2030 — the tiny particulate matter believed to cause the most damage to human health — according to a study this month by The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, University of California, San Diego and the California Air Resources Board.
Still, few Indian cities have air quality monitors. New Delhi officially has 11, though experts say the readings can be erratic and the reporting opaque. The city reports several key pollutants and this month launched an air quality index, boiling down the ambient readings to a single daily number indicating whether the air is healthy, poor, harmful or hazardous.
Apte, who in January starts as an assistant professor of environmental engineering at the University of Texas, Austin, said that such indices, while perhaps easier for citizens to digest, represent vague urban background readings and can’t help residents understand exactly what risks they face.
What ordinary people really want to know are answers to questions like, “‘Should I be taking a walk outside in this neighborhood right now?’ … ‘Is it safe for my child to be playing cricket on the field here?'” he said.
Apte’s goal was to highlight the huge differences between the urban background readings and ground-level pollution along roads. His approach to gathering his data involved twice-daily rush-hour drives from the city center to a southeast suburb.
He traveled in one of India’s typical open-aired auto-rickshaws, which he outfitted with pollution monitoring equipment to gather second-by-second data. On one-quarter of his visits to Delhi, he developed bronchitis.
For comparison, he also took readings from inside regular cars with the windows rolled up, and from a rooftop monitor that stood for ambient air quality readings — or what the government might record and report to the public.
He found average, rush-hour levels of PM 2.5 were about 50 percent higher than ambient air quality readings, according to his team’s data. The monitor shot up wildly for brief periods when lumbering vehicles emitting black smoke rolled by.
Levels of black carbon, a good indicator of diesel exhaust and poorly tuned vehicle performance, were more than three times higher than the ambient readings. The average level of ultrafine particles, especially tiny forms of PM 2.5, was more than eight times higher — so high that Apte’s equipment broke when he initially tried to measure it. Ultrafine particles have been studied less than other forms of pollution but are believed to be particularly hazardous.
Environmental consultant Ajay Ojha, who works on air quality in the western city of Pune outside of Mumbai, said it will take more work to show policy makers the risks of air pollution and how to address them.
“The problem is nobody owns air pollution. Nobody is individually responsible. So unless the public is demanding action, officials have no reason to even bring it up,” he said. “… More understanding is needed before people will start to get upset.”
Policy makers disagree about which sources of pollution are the most worrying, with car traffic, industries and power plants, trash burning and small businesses like brick kilns all vying for attention.
To Apte, that simply means there are lots of ways to start clearing the air.
“The good news about air pollution in Delhi is that there’s a lot of really low-hanging fruit in terms of sectors that we can choose to target,” he said.
He added that the U.S. and Europe began cleaning their skies only after incomes rose and people began to demand change: “I expect fully that we’ll see the same thing in India.”
via Rickshaw research reveals extreme Delhi pollution – Yahoo News.
National Green Tribunal directs all vehicles older than 15 years be taken off capital’s roads in bid to tackle bad air quality
India’s environment court has slammed the government over the capital’s horrendous air pollution, which it said was “getting worse” every day, and ordered a string of measures to bring it down.
The National Green Tribunal directed all vehicles older than 15 years be taken off New Delhi roads, pollution checks undertaken for all state-run buses and air purifiers installed at the city’s busy markets.
Environmentalists welcomed the decision, saying policymakers were failing to heed the “emergency” facing the city of 17 million people.
“We applaud the tribunal’s urgency on Delhi’s pollution which is reaching toxic levels,” Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.
“But the measures need to go further to deal with issues like the 1,000 new vehicles coming on to the roads each day,” he told AFP.
“The government has a legal obligation to introduce the tribunal’s measures,” he added.
The tribunal hit out at prime minister Narendra Modi’s government for failing to provide to the court any “substantive” action plans to tackle Delhi’s smog-filled air despite requests.
“Nothing substantive has been suggested … for providing and controlling air pollution in Delhi primarily resulting from vehicular pollution and burning of plastics and other materials in (the) open,” the tribunal said in a ruling on Wednesday.
“It is undisputed and in fact unquestionable that the air pollution of (National Capital Territory) NCT, Delhi is getting worse with each passing day,” it said.
The WHO said Delhi had the world’s highest annual average concentration of small airborne particles known as PM2.5, following a study this year of 1,600 cities across the globe.
These extremely fine particles of less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter are linked with increased rates of chronic bronchitis, lung cancer and heart disease as they penetrate deep into the lungs and can pass into the bloodstream.
Delhi authorities have disputed the WHO’s report and bristled at suggestions the capital was worse than Beijing, where thick smog has triggered public health warnings and concerns that are mostly absent in Delhi.
The tribunal, in a case filed by a lawyer and activist, directed authorities to crack down on burning rubbish in the open, construct cycle tracks and bypasses for heavy vehicles.
“It is a constitutional and statutory duty of all the authorities and ministries to provide clean air to the people to breathe,” it said.
The small particles blighting the air of Delhi and other major developing cities around the world are often dust from construction sites, pollution from diesel engines or industrial emissions.
The Indian capital also suffers from atmospheric dust blown in from the deserts of the western state of Rajasthan, as well as pollution from open fires lit by the urban poor to keep warm in winter or to cook food.
via India court slams Delhi’s worsening air pollution | Environment | The Guardian.
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MASK user:
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Hat size:
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The New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles and Shreveport areas would be in violation of lower standards for ground level ozone, the main ingredient of smog, that were proposed Wednesday by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
The new standards, if approved after a 90-day public comment period, would require reductions in ozone-creating air pollutants by local industries and businesses. They could also require restrictions in how gasoline and other fuels are sold to the public, and possibly vehicle inspections and other measures. EPA doesn’t expect to release a final version of the rule until October.
Industry groups and some state officials, including Gov. Bobby Jindal, immediately attacked the proposal as too costly for industry.
“President Obama’s new environmental regulations are reckless and based on a radical leftist ideology that will kill American jobs and increase energy prices,” Jindal said.
Some environmental and health organizations, however, said the proposed standards aren’t low enough.
“Thousands of peer-reviewed medical studies show that breathing ozone pollution is dangerous to human health and the EPA review shows harm is occurring at levels far below what is currently considered ‘safe,'” said American Lung Association President Harold Wimmer.
High levels of ozone are linked to asthma, lung damage and other health problems. EPA is proposing to reduce the 8-hour standard for ground level ozone to between 65 and 70 parts per billion, from the present 75 parts per billion set in 2008 by President George W. Bush administration. EPA on Wednesday also requested public comment on dropping the standard even lower, to 60 ppb.
Baton Rouge was found in violation of the 75 ppb standard, which requires a three-year period of being below the 8-hour average, but was declared to be in compliance with the 2008 ozone standard in December.
If a new standard were set at 70 ppb, parishes out of compliance today would include St. Tammany and St. John the Baptist in the New Orleans area; East Baton Rouge, Livingston, Ascension, Iberville, and Pointe Coupee in the Baton Rouge area; Bossier and Caddo in the Shreveport area; and Lafourche Parish. All those communities exceeded 70 ppb in ozone readings taken from 2011 through 2013.
Parishes that would violate 65 parts per billion (ppb) standard Parishes that would violate 70 ppb standardIf the standard were set at 65 ppb, parishes out of compliance would include Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, St. Charles and St. James in the New Orleans area; West Baton Rouge and Lafayette; and Calcasieu in the Lake Charles area.
What makes ozone harmful
Ground level ozone, often referred to as smog, is created by chemical reactions between oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic compounds. Higher levels are found in the air on sunny days, and ozone can also be transported long distances by wind.
The chemical constituents are found in emissions from industrial facilities, electric utilities, motor vehicle exhausts, gasoline vapors and chemical solvents, such as paint thinner.
Children are at greatest risk to ozone exposure because their lungs are still developing, and they’re likely to be active outdoors.
The proposed rules include a secondary standard of between 65 and 70 ppm for areas where ozone may affect sensitive vegetation and ecosystems.
In a news conference Wednesday, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said the new standard is the result of a five-year review of the existing rules and of new scientific research on ozone health effects, required under the federal Clean Air Act.
EPA’s new analysis indicates dropping the standard to a range of 65 to 70 ppb will especially protect children and the elderly, who are more at risk of breathing problems caused by the pollutants.
She said the analysis predicts the new standard will prevent from 750 to 4,300 premature deaths, 1,400 to 4,300 asthma-related emergency room visits and 180,000 missed work days a year by 2025. For children, the new standards will prevent between 320,000 and 960,000 asthma attacks and from 330,000 to 1 million missed school days a year by 2025, she said.
EPA estimates it will cost $3.9 billion a year to meet a 70 ppb standard in 2025, and $15 billion for a 65 ppb standard. It estimates the health benefits are valued at $6.4 billion to $13 billion a year in 2025 for a 70 ppb standard, or $19 billion to $38 billion in 2025 for a 65 ppb standard.
McCarthy said the cost estimate for complying with the proposed ozone rules factors in results of other new EPA rules restricting air pollution to help reduce emissions of the chemicals that cause ozone, nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide.
Those rules include new “Tier 3” clean vehicle and fuels standards that will lower smog from industry and transportation, and new rules restricting emissions of carbon from electric power plants. Those rules are equally controversial with industry and several are facing court challenges.
McCarthy said that while EPA is requesting comments on a 60 ppb standard for ozone, that’s likely not in the cards at the moment. She said there’s a greater level of uncertainty concerning the scientific backing for the lower standard.
DEQ: Lower standards would affect industry
A lower standard also would trigger stringent review of permits for some industrial facilities, according to the state.
A Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality spokesman, Gregory Langley, said if the standards are set low enough for the New Orleans area to be in non-compliance, new industrial facilities in the region or those undergoing major renovations would have face a “nonattainment new source review,” a more stringent permitting process that would allow smaller amounts of pollutants to be released.
The plants might be able to offset those emissions by improvements at other facilities or through the purchase of credits from other industries that have reduced their emissions.
The area might also fall under “Transportation and General Conformity” restrictions that could result in reductions of federal dollars for road and construction projects, with the aim being to lower emissions from vehicles, Langley said. He said the New Orleans area business community is establishing a Clean Air Coalition to deal with air pollution issues, similar to one that has been in existence in the Baton Rouge area for several decades.
Jefferson Parish’s environmental affairs director, Marnie Winter, said the Greater New Orleans Clean Air Coalition has been meeting regularly since July to discuss anticipated changes in National Ambient Air Quality Standards. The coalition includes the Regional Planning Commission, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, members of the Baton Rouge Clean Air Coalition, the Port of New Orleans, several industries and local governments. Winter said Jefferson Parish, as well as Louisiana Parishes against Coastal Erosion, a coalition of 20 coastal parishes, will submit comments on the proposed rules.
“At this point, it is unclear what types of regulations would be imposed on local governments in order to achieve attainment,” Winter said. “Our initial focus will be on voluntary measures that can be implemented as well as public education.”
In Baton Rouge, local industries already have been under those sorts of restrictions and will continue to do so, Langley said. “The state will work with established and new industrial facilities to meet any and all goals set by EPA,” Langley said.
What remains unclear, however, is the effect on ozone levels of tens of billions of dollars in new industrial projects announced during the past three years, especially in parishes along the Mississippi and Calcasieu rivers.
Those include South Louisiana Methanol’s $1.3 billion plant in St. James Parish, Sasol Ltd.’s $21 billion gas-to-liquids and ethane cracker complex outside Lake Charles and Russian fertilizer giant EuroChem’s plans to build a $1.5 billion production plant in either Iberville or St. John parishes.
EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones said the studies conducted for the proposed EPA ozone rules were based on present emission levels, and only factored in expected reductions for existing facilities based on court-approved consent decrees. Those studies didn’t include the emissions from new plants.
Industry, lung doctors have opposite reactions
The proposed ozone rules were immediately attached by a variety of Louisiana politicians and industry groups, arguing the rules will cost many times more than the EPA estimates, eliminating jobs and hurting consumers.
Jindal said the rules would force companies to limit production, and would cause energy prices to increase. He said Obama “believes the government in Washington knows what’s best and that’s why he wants to force this new job-killing regulation on the American people.”
American Petroleum Institute President and Chief Executive Officer Jack Gerard said the new regulations aren’t necessary, because industry is already moving towards reducing pollutants under the 2008 standards. He said the new rules could cost $270 billion a year, including $53.4 billion in Louisiana from 2017 through 2040.
“Air quality has improved dramatically over the past decades and will continue to improve as EPA and states implement existing standards, which are the most stringent ever,” Gerard said in a news release.
Gerard’s cost estimates are based on a recent study by NERA Economic Consulting that estimates losses based on the 60 ppb standard, and included all parishes, whether or not they now have monitoring for ozone.
McCarthy, the EPA administrator, said the decision on whether to expand monitoring would be left to individual states.
The proposed rule was criticized as not going far enough by the American Lung Association, however, because it would not require the lower, 60 ppb standard. The group said 60 ppb has been recommended by scientists and several health and medical societies.
“The scientific record clearly shows that a standard of 60 ppb would provide the most public health protection. We will continue to push the agency to adopt standards based on the scientific evidence,” Wimmer, the group’s president, said.
He said setting ozone standards that are not low enough gives the public a false sense of safety.
“This means too many Americans have been informed that the air in their community is safe to breathe based on the outdated standard. The science shows that information was wrong. Every parent in America has a right to know the truth about the air their children breathe,” he said.
via Metro New Orleans, Baton Rouge, other areas would violate proposed EPA ozone standards | NOLA.com.
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