Reduced vehicle emissions have saved thousands of lives

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

Since 2008, the number of deaths caused by air pollution have been reduced by thousands in the United States as a result of decreasing vehicle emissions, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The improvements are the result of federal air pollution regulations and technological innovations by car manufacturers.

However, although emissions caused by large trucks have been significantly reduced, passenger light-duty vehicles such as pickup trucks or SUVs continue to contribute to air pollution in metropolitan areas.

“Recent reductions in vehicle emissions have yielded major health benefits, even though only small progress has been made on reducing their climate impact,” said study first author Ernani Choma, a research fellow in Harvard T.H. Chan School’s Department of Environmental Health. “Our results indicate that to achieve further public health and climate gains, even more stringent policies will be required.”

By using recent national emissions data, Choma and his colleagues modeled four scenarios for emissions in 2017: the actual emissions and three alternative scenarios in which the level of emissions was the same as in 2014, 2011, and 2008. 

The researchers found that deaths attributable to air pollution associated with vehicle emissions dropped from 27,700 in 2008 to 19,800 in 2017. If vehicles were still emitting at 2008 levels, they would have caused 48,200 deaths in 2017 (a 74 percent increase from 2008 to 2017).

Although there was a significant progress in reducing emissions from heavy-duty trucks, less progress was done with passenger light-duty vehicles such as cars, SUVs, or pickup trucks. According to the scientists, emissions from these vehicles caused two-thirds of public health burden from transportation-related air pollution in 2017.

“If the trends of increased population density with an aging population, and a shift to larger passenger vehicles continue, emissions, especially in urban areas, will continue to become more harmful and it will be harder to achieve further public health gains by small incremental improvements in new vehicles,” said study senior author John Spengler, a professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation at Harvard.

“Our study findings strengthen the case for policies at the municipal level that encourage electric vehicles while discouraging conventional gasoline vehicles and for making our cities more accessible for non-motorized transportation such as biking or walking.”

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Reduced vehicle emissions have saved thousands of lives • Earth.com
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Chronic exposure to air pollution may increase risks for ICU admission or death among COVID-19 patients, study finds

Posted on December 10, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

Hospitalized COVID-19 patients who had been chronically exposed in their neighborhoods to higher particulate matter — such as smoke, soot, and dirt — had increased risks for admission to the intensive care unit (ICU) and death compared to those without such exposure, Mount Sinai-led researchers reported in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicineon December 8.

The finding adds to our understanding about environmental factors that increase the risks of COVID-19. The researchers noted that chronic air pollution exposure can alter the pulmonary immune system, may increase systemic inflammation, and can be associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome. COVID-19 infections and deaths have also disproportionately occurred among Black, Latinx, and Indigenous populations, as well as among individuals with risk factors based on sex, age, and existing comorbid diseases such as diabetes and obesity.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the forefront the critical role of the environment on health disparities. These data suggest that long-term exposure to air pollution, even at concentrations below U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulatory standards, is associated with higher COVID-19 morbidity and mortality amongst hospitalized patients,” said corresponding author Alison Lee, MD, MS, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine), and Pediatrics, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Critically, air pollution is a modifiable risk factor. Policies to reduce air pollution must be considered a necessary public health measure, especially in communities that are disproportionately susceptible to air pollution’s deleterious effects.”

A team of researchers conducted a retrospective analysis of more than 6,500 COVID-19 patients admitted to seven New York City hospitals with ethnically diverse patient populations — including Mount Sinai Morningside, Mount Sinai Queens, NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst, and NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens — amid the first peak of the pandemic from March to August 2020. The researchers estimated exposure levels to pollutants including particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, and black carbon at the residential addresses of the patients at the time of admission. The team then assessed patient outcomes including mortality, ICU admission, and intubation. They found that chronic exposure to particulate matter, even at levels below current regulatory thresholds, was associated with an 11 percent higher risk of mortality and 13 percent higher risk of admission to the ICU. Exploratory analyses suggested that younger people of color may be particularly susceptible.

The study was developed through participation in the COVID-19 Unit for Research at Elmhurst (CURE-19) partnership, an initiative by Mount Sinai’s Arnhold Institute for Global Health and NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst and Queens to research the global pandemic and root causes of health disparities in New York City.

“There is a lot we still don’t know about coronavirus, and that is why initiatives like the CURE-19 partnership are of utmost importance in the fight against this pandemic and our continued recovery,” said co-author Stanley Pierre, MD, MPA, NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens Patient Safety Coordinator and Director of the Clinical Centers of Excellence Development Program. “Being able to better understand what and how environmental factors play a role in New Yorkers’ health and COVID-19-associated risks not only allow us to better treat patients in the long-term, but also give us the opportunity to advocate for broader changes that can help prevent serious illness in the future.”

In addition to researchers from CURE-19, experts from Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley contributed to the study. It was supported by grants from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (R01MD013310), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (P30ES023515, P30ES009089), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD058486), and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (K23HL135349).

Chronic exposure to air pollution may increase risks for ICU admission or death among COVID-19 patients, study finds — ScienceDaily
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Does air pollution reduce the benefits of physical activity on the brain?

Posted on December 9, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

A new study shows that people who do vigorous physical activities, like jogging or playing competitive sports, in areas with higher air pollution may show less benefit from that exercise when it comes to certain markers of brain disease. The markers examined in the study included white matter hyperintensities, which indicate injury to the brain’s white matter, and gray matter volume. Larger gray matter volumes and smaller white matter hyperintensity volumes are markers of overall better brain health. The research is published in the December 8, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

“Vigorous exercise may increase exposure to air pollution and prior studies have shown adverse effects of air pollution on the brain,” said study author Melissa Furlong, PhD, of the University of Arizona in Tucson. “We did show that physical activity is associated with improved markers of brain health in areas with lower air pollution. However, some beneficial effects essentially disappeared for vigorous physical activity in areas with the highest levels of air pollution. That’s not to say people should avoid exercise. Overall, the effect of air pollution on brain health was modest — roughly equivalent to half the effect of one year of aging, while the effects of vigorous activity on brain health were much larger — approximately equivalent to being three years younger.”

The study looked at 8,600 people with an average age of 56 from the UK Biobank, a large biomedical database. People’s exposure to pollution, including nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter, which are particles of liquids or solids suspended in the air, was estimated with land use regression. A land use regression study models air pollution levels based on air monitors and land use characteristics like traffic, agriculture and industrial sources of air pollution.

Participants’ air pollution exposures were categorized into four equal groups, from lowest air pollution to highest.

Each person’s physical activity was measured for one week with a movement-detecting device they wore called an accelerometer. Then researchers characterized their physical activity patterns depending on how much vigorous physical activity they got, ranging from none to 30 minutes or more per week.

People who got the greatest amounts of vigorous physical activity each week, on average, had 800 cm3 gray matter volume, compared to an average of 790 cm3 gray matter volume in people who did not get any vigorous exercise. Researchers showed that air pollution exposures did not alter the effects of physical activity on gray matter volume. However, researchers did find air pollution exposures altered the effects of vigorous physical activity when looking at white matter hyperintensities. After adjusting for age, sex and other covariates, researchers found that vigorous physical activity reduced white matter hyperintensities in areas of low air pollution, but these benefits were not found among those in high air pollution areas.

“More research is needed, but if our findings are replicated, public policy could be used to address people’s exposure to air pollution during exercise,” Furlong said. “For example, since a significant amount of air pollution comes from traffic, promoting running or bicycling along paths far from heavy traffic may be more beneficial.”

A limitation of the study is that it used air pollution values from one year only, and levels may vary from year to year.

The study was supported by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Arizona Department of Health Services, and the McKnight Brain Research Foundation. The study used data made available by the UK Biobank.

Does air pollution reduce the benefits of physical activity on the brain? — ScienceDaily
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EU urban population exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution

Posted on December 8, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

The majority of Europe’s population living in urban areas is exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution, said the European Environment Agency on Tuesday. Over 90 percent of urban population is exposed to high levels of fine particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and ozone above those recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). The European Commission has launched a revision of EU air quality standards to align them to WHO recommendations.

EU urban population exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution
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Long-term exposure to air pollution linked to metabolic-associated fatty liver disease

Posted on December 7, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

Metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is a growing global health challenge and poses a substantial economic burden. A large-scale epidemiologic study in China has identified links between long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and MAFLD. These links are exacerbated by unhealthy lifestyles and the presence of central obesity, report scientists in the Journal of Hepatology, the official journal of the European Association for the Study of the Liver, published by Elsevier.

The incidence of MAFLD has increased steadily since the 1980s, currently affecting a quarter of the global population and a majority of patients with adult-onset diabetes and poses a substantial global burden. In Asia, MAFLD increased to 40% between 2012 and 2017. Formerly known as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), it may progress to end-stage liver diseases such as cirrhosis and liver cancer, liver transplantation and liver-related death.

Accumulating animal studies have shown that breathing air pollutants may increase the risk of MAFLD. For instance, fine particulate matter exposure may trigger a nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)-like phenotype, impair hepatic glucose metabolism, and promote hepatic fibrogenesis.

“The MAFLD epidemic corresponds to environmental and lifestyle changes that have occurred alongside rapid industrialization worldwide, especially in many Asian countries. A growing number of studies have suggested that ambient air pollution, which is the biggest environmental problem caused by industrialization, may increase the risk of metabolic disorders such as insulin resistance and dyslipidemia, and related diseases such as type 2 diabetes mellitus and metabolic syndrome. However, epidemiologic evidence for the association was limited, so we conducted this research to improve our understanding of the effects of air pollution on human health and also to help reduce the burden of MAFLD.” – Xing Zhao, PhD, Lead Investigator, West China School of Public Health and West China Fourth Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Investigators conducted an epidemiologic study on the potential role of ambient air pollution in the risk of MAFLD in approximately 90,000 adults in China based on the baseline survey of the China Multi-Ethnic Cohort (CMEC), a prospective cohort that enrolled nearly 100,000 participants in southwest China from 2018 to 2019. The CMEC collected participant information including sociodemographics, lifestyle habits, and health-related history through verbal interviews performed by trained staff and subsequently assessed anthropometrics, biosamples (blood, urine, and saliva), and imaging data.

Researchers found that long-term exposure to ambient air pollution may increase the odds of MAFLD, especially in individuals who are male, smokers, and alcohol drinkers, and those who consume a high fat diet. Unhealthy lifestyle behaviors and an excess accumulation of fat in the abdominal area may exacerbate the harmful effects.

“Our findings add to the growing evidence of ambient pollution’s damaging effects on metabolic function and related organs,” commented Dr. Zhao and his co-investigators. “However, physical activity did not seem to modify the associations between air pollution and MAFLD. We suggest that future studies explore whether the timing, intensity, and form of physical activity can mitigate the harmful effects of air pollution.

The investigators propose that air pollution should be recognized as a modifiable risk factor for MAFLD. Populations at high risk should be aware of the air quality in the areas where they live and plan their activities to minimize their exposures to air pollution.

In an accompanying editorial, Massimo Colombo, MD, San Raffaele Hospital, Liver Center, Milan, Italy, and Robert Barouki, MD, PhD, University of Paris, Inserm Unit T3S, Paris, France, noted that the assessment of the major determinants of mortality worldwide by WHO showed that global pollution topped the list, ranking higher than smoking, alcohol consumption, and major infectious diseases, and that air pollution, the most critical component of global pollution, is likely to be responsible for millions of deaths per year worldwide.

“A better characterization of the liver exposome is expected to improve prevention and precautionary counseling,” commented Dr. Colombo and Dr. Barouki. “Indeed, whereas physical activity together with a healthy diet stand as a primary pillar in the fight against metabolic syndrome associated morbidities, including MAFLD, the findings that ambient pollution could exacerbate MAFLD risk might offer new clues to refining the counseling of these patients, for instance by restricting exposure of risk populations to open air settings at high level of pollution, as is recommended for patients suffering from severe asthma. It also constitutes an additional incentive for decision makers to speed up the efforts to conform with the WHO guidelines and limits on air pollution, as many cities in Europe and worldwide are still well above those limits.”

Long-term exposure to air pollution linked to metabolic-associated fatty liver disease
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Air pollution body to crack down on black carbon

Posted on December 6, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

The convention on air pollution is due to issue voluntary measures this week to curb black carbon emissions.

The convention on air pollution will be meeting from 6 to 8 December in Geneva, where it will adopt guidelines on how to reduce emissions from agricultural waste burning, including black carbon – a gas that is 680 times more heat trapping than CO2.

Since October 2019, 25 of the 51 pan-European parties to the air convention that have signed the amended Gothenburg Protocol– including Switzerland, the EU, the US and Canada – are legally required to reduce their fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions.

The measures, which are voluntary, are part of a growing shift of attention towards the need to bring down greenhouse gas emissions other than carbon dioxide in order to keep the world from warming up. Last week, the International Maritime Organization also agreed on non-binding measures to reduce black carbon emissions from the shipping industry in the Arctic.

What is black carbon and why does it need attention?

Black carbon, or soot, are tiny dark particles that rise from chimneys, wildfires and fossil fuel burning. As they go up in the atmosphere, they mix with water droplets and other elements, degrading air quality but also absorbing sunlight.

As a powerful heat trapping gas, studies suggest black carbon could also possibly be the second main driver of climate change right after CO2. Black carbon only stays a few weeks in the atmosphere, unlike CO2 which accumulates and remains in the air for decades, making the argument that slashing black carbon emissions would be a quick and easy fix to limit the rise in temperatures.

Agricultural waste burning and wildfires are the largest source of black carbon, making up roughly a third of emissions. However, practices such as open crop burning or forestry residue burning have long been viewed as a harmless and cheap way for farmers to clear land.

“In terms of CO2 emissions, agricultural residue burning was long considered essentially ‘carbon neutral’, because it was assumed the same amount of carbon lost to fire would be fixed by the subsequent year’s crop,” the report points out.

“As understanding of soil carbon cycles has grown, however, it has become clear to the vast majority of researchers that, due to loss of humus, soil structure and the soil itself, more carbon is lost from the soil annually than can be replaced by any subsequent crop.”

The deterioration of the soil can also have negative economic effects by causing nutrient loss and soil productivity, not to mention the impact on biodiversity, according to the document.

Among the issued guidelines, the air quality regulating body recommends that countries use fire-free alternatives, such as conservation agriculture, and chopping and spreading of the excess harvest residue or repurposing it off-field. These can in turn help build up climate resilience.

Air pollution body to crack down on black carbon – Geneva Solutions
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Air quality panel for Delhi issues new orders; edu institutions to be shut

Posted on December 3, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

In a new set of directions to prevent further deterioration of air quality in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR), the Centre’s air quality panel on Friday ordered shutting of educational institutions, allowing only online mode of education.

In a new set of directions to prevent further deterioration of air quality in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR), the Centre’s air quality panel on Friday ordered shutting of educational institutions, allowing only online mode of education.

The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) also directed that industrial operations and processes in NCR, not running on Piped Natural Gas or other cleaner fuels, shall be allowed to operate only up to eight hours a day from Monday to Friday and shall not be allowed to run on weekends.

“All schools, colleges and educational institutions in the NCR shall remain closed, allowing only online mode of education, except for the purpose of conduct of examinations and laboratory practical,” the commission said.

It also said its earlier directions on industries shall continue. According to these directions, all industries in NCR, still using unapproved fuels, shall be closed by the respective governments with immediate effect. Also the NCR states and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) shall enforce a strict ban on use of diesel generators, except for emergency services.

In its new directions, the commission also stopped the entry of trucks in Delhi, except the electric ones and those running on Compressed Natural Gas, besides trucks carrying essential commodities.

The commission directed that the chief secretaries of the respective states and the Delhi government shall ensure implementation of these directions.

“Strict enforcement of these directions as also the directions/orders issued by the commission from time to time since its inception shall be ensured by the respective agencies and implementation, compliance of the same shall be monitored by the chief secretaries of the respective state/GNCTD,” the commission’s order stated.

“In view of the compelling need to prevent further deterioration of environment and towards improvement of air quality in Delhi and NCR, the commission, in exercise of its powers conferred upon it (by)… the Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas Act 2021, directs that these measures shall be implemented with strict force with immediate effect, until further orders,” it read.

The CAQM, an executive body set up by the Ministry of Environment earlier this year to oversee measures to curb air pollution in the NCR, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, also constituted task forces for each of these states to implement, enforce, monitor and report compliance status of its orders. 

Air quality panel for Delhi issues new orders; edu institutions to be shut | Education – Hindustan Times

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As LA traffic slowed amid the pandemic, researchers gained new insight into air pollution

Posted on December 1, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

As coronavirus cases popped up across California in March 2020, the previously impossible happened in Los Angeles County: The region’s normally bumper-to-bumper traffic slowed by roughly 24%. Lucky drivers were now, suddenly, able to make it from Burbank to Santa Monica at rush hour on the 101 and 405 in less than 50 minutes.

A team of scientists led by CU Boulder are using the once-in-a-lifetime event to answer an unusual question: How much do vehicles in a city like Los Angeles add to the ammonia emissions that can hang in the air and sicken residents?

The group’s findings, published Nov. 23 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, may spell bad news for a region that loves its cars. Ammonia is a common pollutant that can react to form small particles in the air that are a major cause of respiratory and cardiovascular disease, especially in densely populated areas. The researchers show that city vehicles may spew a lot more of these molecules than state and federal agencies have believed.

The study is the first to explore how vehicles churn out ammonia across an entire urban center using satellites in space.

“The tricky question has always been: How do we separate out ammonia concentrations owing to traffic from the ammonia emitted from sources like agriculture?” said Daven Henze, a co-author of the new study and professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at CU Boulder. “Then the COVID lockdown suddenly provided us with a natural experiment.”

In other words, the pandemic gave the researchers an accidental before and after picture—with a smoggy, car-filled Los Angeles on one side and a clearer, relatively empty urban area on the other.

Henze and his colleagues took advantage of that situation by drawing on satellite images to track the ammonia concentrations in the air above Los Angeles before and during the lockdown of March 2020. The team discovered that cars may churn out as much as 95% of this harmful pollutant throughout the city at any one time.

“Our estimates for vehicle ammonia emissions are higher than federal and state inventories by a factor of two to five,” said Hansen Cao, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at CU Boulder.

Hidden chemical danger

The research sheds light on what may be an underappreciated pollutant: Molecules of ammonia, the odor you detect when you pass a smelly farm.

Henze explained that scientists have long known that agricultural operations, from corn fields to chicken farms, churn out huge amounts of this chemical. Once in the air, ammonia can mix with nitrogen oxides to form what researchers call “fine particulate matter.”

“Those emissions come from, to put it politely, the downstream processes,” Henze said. “The feedlots, poultry and swine manure—they all give off a lot of ammonia.”

There’s another source of that pollution, too: Your car’s tailpipe. Estimates suggest that ammonia emissions from vehicles can lead to roughly 15,000 premature deaths across the United States every year. Recent research has also hinted that those numbers may miss the real toll of urban pollution. 

Ammonia hotspots

Henze and his colleagues tapped data from two satellites, the United States’ Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership and Europe’s Sentinel-5 Precursor to further explore the ammonia question.

In early March 2020, the team spotted two clear hotspots for ammonia in the Los Angeles region—one above downtown L.A. and one just north of Riverside, California, a hub for livestock and agriculture. By the end of the month, the hotspot over downtown had all but disappeared as traffic petered out.

“I think we were almost surprised that we could see the downtown hotspot and the impact of the pandemic,” Henze said. “We weren’t just taking measurements at one road. We were looking at the entire urban area from space.”

That ultimate bird’s eye view paid off. The team calculated that vehicles produce at least 60% of the ammonia emissions in urban Los Angeles. Estimates from state and national regulators, in contrast, had pegged those numbers at less than 25%. Next, Cao said she and her colleagues want to apply the same techniques to explore the effects of the pandemic on the air above other cities.

The results could underscore the importance of regulating cars and their engines so that they churn out less of this dangerous pollutant, she said. 

“Vehicles can be the dominant sources of ammonia emissions over urban areas,” she said. “If we’re underestimating those emissions, then previous estimates of premature deaths owing to ammonia emissions might also be underestimated.”

As LA traffic slowed amid the pandemic, resea | EurekAlert!
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