Air quality plummets as wildfire smoke hits Alaska’s most populous cities

Posted on July 10, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Smoke and soot from central Alaska wildfires have afflicted the subarctic city of Fairbanks with some of the world’s worst air pollution in recent days, forcing many residents indoors and prompting one hospital to set up a “clean air shelter.”

Fine particulate matter carried by smoke into the Fairbanks North Star Borough over the past two weeks has been measured at concentrations as high as more than double the minimum level deemed hazardous to human health, borough air quality manager Nick Czarnecki said.

The hazardous threshold was exceeded again on Tuesday in the Fairbanks suburb of North Pole, the borough reported.

The problem is mostly linked to two fires burning since June 21 on either side of the Fairbanks borough – Alaska’s second-most populous metropolitan area, totalling some 97,000 residents.

The Shovel Creek and Nugget fires, both sparked by lightning strikes, have scorched nearly 20,000 acres (8,094 hectares) of timber and brush combined, fire authorities said.

Farther north, the massive Hess Creek blaze, also sparked by lightning, has raged across nearly 173,000 acres (70,000 hectares) of remote timber and grasslands, making it the largest U.S. wildfire so far this year, according to fire command spokeswoman Sarah Wheeler.

Thick smoke drifting into Fairbanks has prompted air quality alerts warning that outdoor exertion is dangerous to health and urging the elderly, the very young and individuals with respiratory problems to limit their exposure by staying indoors.

That restriction has proved difficult for some because few homes in Fairbanks, a city just 200 miles (322 km) south of the Arctic Circle by road, are equipped with air conditioning, and a heat wave in the region has driven temperatures into the 80s and 90s Fahrenheit.

Fairbanks Memorial Hospital has opened a round-the-clock clean-air room where members of the public can find respite from the pollution. A Fairbanks auto shop was also giving away breathing masks to help residents cope.

“All the HEPA filters and everything are sold out in town, and the smoke is terrible,” Pearson Auto employee Michelle Pippin said.

A similar but somewhat less dire predicament faced residents of Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage, about 350 miles (560 km) to the south, where smoke from a major fire raging for the past month in the neighbouring Kenai National Wildlife Refuge has caused unhealthy air.

The Swan Lake blaze has charred nearly 97,000 acres (39,200 hectares) of the Kenai Peninsula since it was triggered by lightning on June 5.

Anchorage has also baked in unusually high temperatures, with three of its hottest days on record posted during the past week, including the city’s first-ever 90-degree Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) reading on July Fourth.

The record heat has only added to the general misery index in Alaska, where the National Interagency Fire Center reports about 40 large wildfires have burned more than 810,000 acres (32,780 hectares) across the state.

Wildfires have consumed more than 1 million acres (404,685 hectares) in all so far this year, but that pales in comparison with the record 6.5 million acres (2.6 million hectares) that went up in flames across Alaska in 2004.

via Air quality plummets as wildfire smoke hits Alaska’s most populous cities – Reuters

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Air pollution ages your lungs and increases your risk of COPD, study says

Posted on July 9, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Air pollution does a lot more damage to our lungs than scientists realized, according to a new study in Monday’s European Respiratory Journal. Researchers found it ages lungs more quickly and putting us at higher risk of COPD.Your lung function declines as a part of natural aging, but this study found that exposure to particulate matter pollution ages your lungs even faster — and the more pollution you’re exposed to, the quicker your lungs age.

The study found that for each additional 5 micrograms per cubic meter of particle pollution a person was exposed to on average annually, the lungs showed an equivalent of two years of aging, and a real reduction in lung function.

 

Particle pollution is the mix of solid and liquid droplets in the air, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. It can come in the form of dirt, dust, soot or smoke. It comes from coal- and natural gas-fired plants, cars, agriculture, unpaved roads and construction sites.

For people living with air that has more than 10 micrograms per cubic meter of particle pollution, the situation was much worse. Among that group in the most polluted areas, the number of COPD cases was four times higher than if a person lived with smokers, and half that of people who had been smokers. COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, is a term used to describe lung diseases that block airflow and make it difficult to breathe. It’s the third leading cause of death in the world. Although many with COPD smoked at one point in their lives, it can also be genetic, and it can be caused by a person’s environment.

Researchers came to their conclusions using data from the UK Biobank. It surveyed more than 300,000 people and participants were given tests to determine their actual lung function. The study went on between 2006 and 2010. The researchers then conducted multiple tests to see how long-term exposure to higher levels of air pollution was linked to the changes in how people could breath. They factored for people’s occupations that may expose them to pollution and to people’s exposure to cigarette smoke.

They think air pollution has this impact because it causes inflammation in the lungs, which narrows airways and makes it harder to breathe. Air pollution also increases the risk of heart disease, strokes and lung cancer.

The test results were even worse for people living in low-income households.

“Air pollution had approximately twice the impact on lung function decline and three times the increased COPD risk on lower-income participants compared to higher-income participants who had the same air pollution exposure,” said study author Anna Hansell, a professor of environmental epidemiology in the Centre for Environmental Health and Sustainability at the University of Leicester. She thinks this pollution may impact this population because it faces several obstacles that harm their health, including poorer housing conditions, worse diets and more limited access to health care. Much more research is needed, she said.

The number of COPD cases is expected to increase dramatically in the next 10 years, and the rising levels of pollution, made worse by the climate crisis, will likely play a large role in that.

 

In the United States, earlier studies have shown that an increasing number of Americans, 141.1 million — 4 in 10 — live in counties that have air with unhealthy levels of particle pollution or ozone.

President Donald Trump made a pledge in his 2017 State of the Union address to “promote clean air and water,” but his administration has reversed or proposed rollbacks to major air pollution protections, emissions standards and drilling and extraction regulations.

via Air pollution ages your lungs and increases your risk of COPD, study says – CNN

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Air pollution in Birmingham ‘shortens lives of children by half a year’

Posted on July 8, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

City one of five required by government to set up a clean air zone to tackle nitrogen dioxide and PM2.5s

Primary school children who grow up in Birmingham could lose half a year of their lives due to illegal levels of air pollution in the city, a new report warns.

The study examines levels of nitrogen dioxide and particulate pollution (PM2.5) in the city and calculates that an eight-year-old child could die up to seven months early if exposed over their lifetimes to toxic air. The loss of life expectancy is worse in Birmingham than some other major cities in the UK including Manchester, researchers found.

Birmingham is one of five cities required by the government to set up a clean air zone to reduce toxic air, as part of plans to tackle the illegal levels of pollution in 38 out of 43 areas of the country.

But in Birmingham and Leeds the start date of January next year has been postponed because of government delays in providing vehicle-checking software.

On Monday research commissioned by UK100 – a network of local leaders across the country – for the first time examines the burden air pollution places on mortality in major cities.

The report, carried out by Kings College London, said the health cost of the city’s toxic air was £470m every year.

The study examined NO2 and PM2.5, two of the leading causes of poor health from air pollution, in the city’s 10 constituencies. It found that air pollution had the greatest impact in the most deprived areas, and that men are more likely to be affected than women. In Erdington, up to 91 deaths are attributable annually to air pollution, compared with up to 59 in Edgbaston and 57 in Hall Green.

More than half of children in Birmingham live in the top 10% of the most deprived areas of the country, and about 8,000 children in the city are growing up in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the UK, according to a report by the Children’s Society.

Waseem Zaffar, cabinet member for transport and environment on the city council, said the results were shocking.

“They demonstrate the sheer scale of the major public health crisis we are dealing with in Birmingham today,” he said.

“One life cut short by poor air quality is one too many, so this is exactly why the city is taking forward measures such as the clean air zone and why we continue to work with other cities across the country to tackle this problem together, but we also need strong leadership on this issue at a national government level.”

Sue Huyton, coordinator of the Clean Air Parent’s network, said action was needed now.

“It’s awful that children living in the UK are breathing air that may shorten their lives. As a parent, you want to do everything you can for your children, but when it comes to air pollution you can feel helpless – that’s why those in power must step up.

“We need the government and Birmingham city council to take ambitious action to tackle the toxic air in this city, and we need them to do it now.”

Air pollution has been identified by Public Health England as the largest environmental risk to public health in the UK. Evidence shows that it can cause or worsen a range of lung and heart conditions including asthma, chronic bronchitis, chronic heart disease and stroke. Research suggests air pollution caused by NO2 and PM2.5 could cause 36,000 deaths per year.

Polly Billington, director of UK100, said the report should be a wake-up call to policy makers.

“We need to tackle this invisible killer which is cutting the lives of children and causing health misery for thousands of adults. By working together, local councils and central government can put in place ambitious and inclusive clean air zones to tackle the most polluting sources of dirty air and let us breathe freely.”

The government has been forced by the courts to improve its plans to clean up the air, after losing legal action taken by environmental lawyers Client Earth.

A government spokesperson said: “We are aware of concerns over delays and are carrying out work to develop key components of the system to support the Charging Clean Air Zones for January 2020.”

via Air pollution in Birmingham ‘shortens lives of children by half a year’ | Environment | The Guardian

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Madrid pollution levels soar within just one day of scrapping traffic restriction scheme

Posted on July 4, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Just a day after traffic restrictions were scrapped by the new mayor, air pollution returned to levels recorded in the days before Madrid Central was introduced.
Environmentalists warned that pollution levels had risen above the legal limit of 40 micrograms per cubic meter on Monday and soared to 70 – a level not reached since Madrid introduced its traffic restrictions last November.

On Monday morning, July 1st,  Madrid’s new mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, from the right-wing Popular Party fulfilled his promise to ditch fines for driving in the capital’s low-emissions zones and scrap Madrid Central, an initiative that was introduced to improve air quality.

Martínez-Almeida described the reversal as a temporary measure put in place while he and his team decides what to do about Madrid Central. He said they were working to “fight for sustainable mobility and against pollution, while guaranteeing citizen mobility and avoid, as much as possible, the losses suffered by retailers.”

The new mayor’s decision to suspend fines came despite the action of several ecological groups over the past weeks, including a march of 60 thousand people on Saturday.

But the mayor, who has failed to answer the activists’ requests for a meeting to discuss the issue, poked fun at protestors, saying he envies “how much free time they have to carry out these sorts of actions”.

In spite of this, ecologists continue to deliver hard evidence on the environmental benefits of the city’s low-emission zones, with Juan Bárcena, spokesperson of the group Ecologistas en Acción, pointing out that levels of pollution have reached their legal limit – 40 micrograms per cubic meter – which is something that hasn’t happened in the last quarter.

via Madrid pollution levels soar within just one day of scrapping traffic restriction scheme – The Local

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Air pollution means pregnant women can’t breathe easy

Posted on July 3, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Pregnant women receive a lot of instructions to ensure the healthiest possible baby: what to eat and drink, what to avoid, which vitamins to take, which activities to avoid and more.

But what about breathing?

Researchers have long been concerned about air pollution’s effects on pregnancy, with possible consequences ranging from premature births and low birth weight to elevated blood pressure later in the child’s life.

“We have just scratched the surface on this research,” said Dr. Beate Ritz, professor of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

Ritz, who is president of the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology, has conducted studies since the 1990s linking air pollution levels in Southern California to mothers delivering babies before full term at below-average birth weight.

“When we started, some people said the fetus doesn’t breathe air, so how would it be affected?” she said. “It has become clear that whatever is happening to the mother is happening to the baby, and what happens in pregnancy can affect the rest of its life.”

Recent studies in the United States and elsewhere have shown correlations between particulate matter in the air and high blood pressure in mothers and babies, gestational diabetes (an increase in blood sugar that affects pregnant women), and high blood pressure in children who were exposed to pollution in the womb.

The possible dangers for babies who develop in a polluted environment extend to an increased risk of autism, asthma and the ultimate risk: miscarriage.

“It’s very hard to measure, because some women might lose the fetus so early they didn’t even know they were pregnant,” Ritz said. “But once you damage a fetus enough, it doesn’t survive.”

Pollution “seems to particularly affect vulnerable populations, such as those who are elderly or predisposed to disease,” said Dr. Sanjay Rajagopalan, chief of cardiology at the Herrington Heart and Vascular Institute of University Hospital in Cleveland. “And pregnancy is a vulnerable state. The fetus is in an environment where it is growing and vulnerable.”

However, Rajagopalan, who co-authored an American Heart Association scientific statement about air pollution and cardiovascular disease, said most studies so far have established only correlations between polluted air and disease rather than a direct cause-and-effect.

One obstacle, Rajagopalan said, is “it’s difficult to persuade pregnant women to partake in research. But this is becoming widely recognized as a field to explore. It’s just a matter of time.”

Meanwhile, pregnant women shouldn’t breathe easy. For expectant mothers and everyone else, Ritz said, the dangers of pollution should fuel campaigns for better air quality everywhere in the world.

But that’s unlikely to change much in nine months, bringing simple precautions and common sense to the forefront.

Indoor air purifiers are a good idea, Ritz said, as is keeping windows closed that face roadways and heeding health warnings on high-pollution days.

Rajagopalan stresses all the healthy behaviors for pregnancy – eating well, physical activity, prenatal care, avoiding alcohol and tobacco, monitoring blood pressure and other health indicators – as well as reducing exposure to bad air.

“Try to visit green spaces and areas that will probably have low levels of air pollution,” he said. “And if you don’t have to make that crazy car ride to downtown Los Angeles in your convertible, don’t do it.”

via Air pollution means pregnant women can’t breathe easy

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Paris bans old diesels to tackle pollution

Posted on July 3, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Paris on Monday banned all diesel vehicles aged 13 years or over from the city centre, the latest move in a campaign to tackle pollution on the city’s streets.

Diesel vehicles over 18 years old and petrol vehicles over 21 years old are already banned in Paris — a measure that was extended Monday to a new “low-emissions” belt surrounding the city.

Central Paris meanwhile went further by also banning diesel cars, trucks and motorbikes aged 13 years and over — a move aimed at cleaning up the air in a city that is regularly shrouded in smog.

Motorists who flout the traffic restrictions in central Paris, which were trialled during last week’s heatwave, face a 68-euro ($77) fine, rising to 135 euros for trucks and buses.

A Greenpeace report listed Paris as the worst western European capital for small particle air pollution in 2018, with levels higher than cities such as the Philippines capital Manila or the Colombian capital Bogota.

Beyond the city’s boundaries, the authorities are also clamping down on polluters in the 47 districts that ring the central Paris region, which are home to around 5.5 million people.

Unlike in central Paris, however, offenders in the suburbs, where car dependency is greater, face no punishment for the first two years of the ban.

The government agreed to a two-year punishment-free “learning period” after resistance from some mayors who feared that the ban could rekindle the “yellow vest” protests, which erupted late last year among motorists furious over fuel price hikes.

The protests quickly escalated into an anti-government revolt, marked by weekly demonstrations in cities around France that have regularly turned violent.

Reflecting on the lessons learnt, a senior official for the greater Paris area, Patrick Ollier, told reporters last week: “We don’t want to force the environment on people, but rather that it be accepted as the outcome of dialogue.”

The subject of air quality has become a burning issue for governments across the EU, where green parties made strong gains in May’s elections to the European Parliament.

In November, Madrid followed a handful of other European cities that have restricted traffic in their centres.

But whereas London, Stockholm and Milan have sought to dissuade motorists by driving into the city centre by hitting them with congestion taxes Madrid went further, banning many vehicles from accessing the centre altogether and fining them if they did.

In France, air pollution causes 48,000 extra deaths a year, according to the health service, making it the country’s second-biggest killer after smoking, ahead of alcohol.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has restricted car access and promoted walking and cycling in central Paris in a bid to banish the smog that periodically shrouds the capital.

The city aims to phase out the use of diesel cars by the time it hosts the Summer Olympics in 2024.

via Paris bans old diesels to tackle pollution

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Jakarta residents to sue government over severe air pollution

Posted on July 2, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Tired of breathing in some of the world’s filthiest air, a group of activists and environmentalists in Jakarta has decided to sue the Indonesian government to take action.

Air quality in the south-east Asian metropolis has plunged dramatically in the past month and recorded worse conditions than notoriously polluted cities such as Delhi and Beijing.

Social media users have uploaded photographs of the Indonesian capital blanketed in smog under the hashtag, #SetorFotoPolusi.

Screen Shot 2019-07-02 at 08.15.13.png

On 25 June, the capital registered an air quality index (AQI) of 240 according to the dynamic IQAirVisual index. For comparison, London’s current index reading is 12 while San Francisco is on 26.

The Jakarta smog has now prompted more than 30 plaintiffs, including activists, environmentalists, civil servants, artists, and businesspeople to band together and work on submitting a civil lawsuit against the government this month.

The case will be filed against the Indonesian president, as well as the ministries of health, home affairs and environment, and the governors of Jakarta, Banten and West Java.

“We hope that through this lawsuit the government can improve existing policies and take effective steps to overcome air pollution because current policies are not working,” explained Ayu Eza Tiara, a lawyer from the Jakarta Legal Institute, which is handling the case.

“In the last week of June, based on our data, the air pollution index is often really bad,” said Ayu, “It is often high in the red zone, which is classified as very unhealthy.”

According to the dynamic IQAirVisual index, Jakarta topped the charts for the world’s most polluted city at least half a dozen times this June.

The AQI reading is based on measurements of particulate matter, including PM 2.5, small particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter that can be inhaled and cause serious health problems.

Last year Jakarta was ranked the most polluted city in south-east Asia, based on a study by Greenpeace and AirVisual, published this March.

In addition to Jakarta’s notoriously bad traffic, Greenpeace believes the city’s industries, legal and illegal smelters, open-waste burning and coal-fired power plants are also to blame.

But the Indonesian government appears reluctant to acknowledge the problem.

The acting head of the Jakarta environmental agency recently dismissed the poor June readings, saying the government “doesn’t really respond to real-time data” and in general the air quality had been “moderate” this year.

Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan has put the problem down to the high number of vehicles on the road, but Greenpeace energy campaigner Bondan Andriyani argues that is only part of the picture.

“In 2018 the data showed that traffic in Jakarta was improving, but the air quality, declined. It’s a contradiction,” said Bondan, “The PM 2.5 data showed that number of unhealthy days almost doubled in 2018 from the year earlier.”

via Jakarta residents to sue government over severe air pollution | World news | The Guardian

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Air pollution ‘may affect number of eggs ovaries can produce’

Posted on June 26, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Results suggest environmental factors could play a role in female reproductive health

Air pollution has been linked to a drop in activity of a woman’s ovaries, researchers have revealed.

Experts say the findings suggest the female reproductive system is affected by environmental factors, although the study does not look specifically at the impact of air pollution on fertility.

However, they added that if such an effect were permanent, it might mean that women might have a shorter period of their life in which to reproduce and an earlier menopause.

“Environmental aspects of our lives matter so we should take care about indoor environments as well as external,” said the study’s lead researcher, Antonio La Marca, of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, in Italy.

The findings, presented at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, are based on a study of levels of a hormone called AMH. This is released by cells in the ovaries and gives an indication of a woman’s ovarian reserve – the number of viable eggs the ovaries can produce. This level differs between women and is affected by a number of factors, including genetics, age and smoking. Its link to fertility is debatable: a low ovarian reserve does not necessarily mean natural conception will be difficult.

However, La Marca said previous studies had suggested there could be a link between higher air pollution and reduced fertility in women, and animal models have inferred air pollution could affect levels of AMH.

To explore the issue further, La Marca and colleagues looked at AMH levels in about 1,300 women, the samples being collected in Modena between early 2007 and autumn 2017. From the participants’ home addresses, the team estimated daily levels of small particulates known as PM2.5s and PM10s, as well as levels of nitrogen dioxide.

For women over the age of 25, levels of AMH in the blood fell with age. After taking age into account, though, the team found AMH levels were lower among women who lived in areas with higher levels of air pollutants.

More specifically, when the team split the air pollution levels into four bands, they found women living amid the worst pollution were two to three times more likely than those in the other bands to have AMH levels below 1ng/ml – a level the team say signifies a severely low ovarian reserve. La Marca said previous research had shown only about 10% of healthy women under the age of 30 had such low levels of AMH.

La Marca said while the link between AMH levels and the chances of becoming pregnant naturally in the short term remained unclear, the results suggested environmental factors could play a role in female reproductive health.

“Having a high AMH is in some way a reproductive advantage because women with a higher AMH are going to have a longer reproductive lifespan,” he said, adding it was also significant to those undergoing IVF. “If you have a high AMH you will have a higher number of eggs after ovulatory stimulation which turn into a higher number of embryos,” he said.

The study has limitations, not least that the team was unable to take into account other factors, such as poverty and poorer health, that tend to be more prevalent in areas of high pollution and might also affect AMH levels. What’s more, AMH and pollution levels were not tracked over time.

Richard Anderson, a professor of clinical reproductive science at the University of Edinburgh, said while the impact of environmental factors on sperm count and quality was a topic of much research, there had been far less work on possible impacts on the female reproductive system.

“This does show a reduction in the activity of the ovaries in women [living in areas of high air pollution],” he said, although he pointed out the levels of air pollution women were directly exposed to was not measured.

Anderson said questions remained. “There is uncertainty in whether this is a permanent effect, which might indicate perhaps a reduced reproductive lifespan and an earlier menopause, or whether this is a temporary effect that women could recover from if they are no longer exposed to those chemicals,” he said.

via Air pollution ‘may affect number of eggs ovaries can produce’ | Environment | The Guardian

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