Health effects of pollution

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Smog in Europe and North America could be more than 25 times more lethal than the average air pollution found in Chinese cities, a new study suggests. In the largest ever study of its kind in the developing world, researchers tested the effects of air pollution on the health of people in 272 cities in China. They found average annual exposure to fine particles, known as PM2.5, in those cities was more than five times higher than the level recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO), according to a paper in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

However they also discovered that it was much less likely to increase the death rate than PM2.5 in Europe and North America. The researchers, led by Dr Maigeng Zhou, of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, suggested this was because China is affected by large amounts of natural dust blown by the wind from arid areas, while most pollution in the West comes from industry. They found that for every increase of 10 micrograms of air pollution in a cubic metre of air, the mortality rate increased by 0.22 per cent, discounting deaths from accidents.

European smog could be 27 times more toxic than air pollution in China | The Independent

Air pollution is a major problem in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The country has the world’s fifth highest incidence of death by air pollution. Rates of lung diseases are among the highest in the world. Bosnia loses a staggering 21.5% of its GDP each year due to the air pollution.

'It's killing us': how steel giant ArcelorMittal is failing to reduce emissions | Cities | The Guardian

According to a new study of global air pollution, some 1.1 million people die prematurely every year in India due to air pollution, making it the one of the deadliest countries in terms of air quality in the world. Worldwide, air pollution-related deaths are also rising: particulate-matter related air pollution was responsible for 4.2 million deaths in 2015, or about 7.6 percent of all deaths worldwide.

India’s polluted air now kills 1.1 million people per year

Air pollution could be a contributing factor in millions of premature births around the world each year, a new report has found. Nearly 15 million babies are born annually before reaching 37 weeks gestation. Premature birth is the leading cause of death among children younger than five years old, and can cause lifelong learning disabilities, visual and hearing problems, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports. Researchers for the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Colorado, have concluded that as many as 3.4 million premature births across 183 countries could be associated with fine particulate matter, a common air pollutant, with sub-Saharan Africa, north Africa and south and east Asia most impacted by the issue.

Millions of premature births could be linked to air pollution, study finds | Cities | The Guardian

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Two new studies add to the growing body of evidence that air pollution is causing higher rates of Alzheimer’s and dementia. Particulate matter may be responsible for more than one in five dementia cases, as the smallest particles appear to travel directly from the nose to the brain, where they do considerable damage.
Tragically, the new president campaigned on rolling back Clean Air Act rules and boosting coal use, which, along with vehicle exhaust, is the principal source of particulates..

Trump’s EPA policies risk more Alzheimer’s cases, doctors warn

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The letter from campaigners, including the British Lung Foundation, Greenpeace and doctors’ groups, says toxic air poses a daily risk to people’s health – particularly the young and those suffering from lung problems. “Air pollution has ... been shown to stunt children’s lung growth, which could leave them with health problems in later life,” it states. “We all deserve to breathe clean air.” 

On Saturday the Guardian revealed that thousands of children and young people at more than 800 nurseries, schools and colleges in London faced dangerous and illegal levels of toxic air, much of it from diesel cars.. 

Air pollution causes 40,000 early deaths in the UK and costs the country £27.5bn a year, according to a government estimate. MPs have called it a public health emergency.

End UK tax incentives for diesel vehicles, ministers are urged | Environment | The Guardian

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However, the research also shows air pollution particles can penetrate through the lungs of lab animals into many major organs, including the brain and testicles. This raises the possibility that the health damage caused by toxic air is even greater than currently known.

Air pollution around the world is rising at an alarming rate, according to the World Health Organization, with virtually all cities in poorer nations blighted by unhealthy air and more than half of those in richer countries also suffering.

Low air quality has long been linked to lung and heart disease and strokes, but scientists are now uncovering links to brain problems such as dementia, mental illness and reduced intelligence, as well as diabetes, kidney diseaseand premature births.

Omega-3 oils could tackle damage caused by air pollution, research shows | Environment | The Guardian

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Apart from climate deniers you also have pollution deniers. Both are rightwingers and their motivation is one or both of:

• Denial of the existence of a market failure and the idea that any regulation can correct these
  
• Money from polluting companies.
  

Here they are:

There are, indeed, very few people who believe air pollution—specifically “fine particulate” pollution, or PM2.5—doesn’t cause death. Those who do, however, are getting louder and gaining influence in conservative political circles and inside President Donald Trump’s administration. These air-pollution deniers have just one hope: the repeal of clean-air regulations that have long protected Americans’ health.

At last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), during a little-noticed panel on climate change and environmental regulation, air pollution denial was rampant and went unchallenged. Steve Milloy, formerly a paid flack for the tobacco and fossil fuel industries and member of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, argued that excessive air pollution is not linked to premature death.

“My particular interest is air pollution,” Milloy said, alleging that EPA’s scientists are inherently biased. “These people validate and rubber-stamp the EPA’s conclusion that air pollution kills people.” Milloy also said, baselessly, that EPA scientists are “paying for the science it wants,” and that Trump must change the research process at the agency.

...

It is extensively proven, and widely accepted, that air pollution can harm humans, which is why the government regulates it. PM2.5 refers to tiny particles that are 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter—small enough to penetrate deep into the circulatory system and potentially infiltrate the central nervous system. The particles range in composition, originating anywhere from cement dust to tobacco smoke to pollen. They are currently regulated under the Clean Air Act, a widely popular law passed in 1963 that has seen major amendments receiving unanimous or overwhelming support in the Senate. The CAA currently requires Congress to set what’s known as National Ambient Air Quality Standards for particulate matter.


Even Breitbart, the alt-right media organization with close ties to Trump, seems to accept that air pollution is bad for human health. It has published dozens of articles over the years—many from wire services, but some from its own contributors—that report, without opinion, about studies on the issue. “The chronic problem of pollution in China has been linked to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths,” Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart’s Rome bureau chief, wrote in 2015. “The fine particles are believed to play a role in cardiovascular disease, lung problems, cancer, and emphysema.” Earlier this month, Breitbart senior editor-at-large Joel B. Pollack reported, “Air quality in some East Asian capitals is famously poor, with residents of Beijing taking extreme measures to avoid the health risks associated with heavy pollution.”

But Breitbart has also provided a platform for those leading the charge for air pollution denial. Last year, it published a column by Milloy titled, “How stupid is air pollution ‘science’?” And earlier this month, Breitbart columnist James Delingpole—who usually sticks to columns attacking climate science—joined the fray. In an article declaring that “The EPA’s Air Pollution Scare Is Just Another Fake News Myth,” Delingpole took issue with the most recent State of Global Air report, which found that air pollution contributed to 4.2 million deaths in 2015, because the study was partly funded by the EPA—while conveniently ignoring that it was also funded by 23 car companies and Exxon Mobil. Delingpole cited Milloy exclusively and extensively, linking to Milloy’s “fact sheet” on air pollution.

“Frankly, it’s full of stuff and nonsense,” said Janice Nolen, the assistant vice president of national policy at the American Lung Association, referring to Milloy’s fact sheet. “Particle pollution is one of the most researched topics in the scientific world, and has been reviewed extensively.”

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The good news is, Milloy and Delingpole remain outliers in a sea of evidence. As ThinkProgress pointed out last month, “The Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Institutes of Health, the American Lung Association, and the United Nations all link air pollution to increased risk of asthma, heart disease, and stroke. In 2013, the WHO even concluded that air pollution could be categorized as a human carcinogen.” Even Breitbart, as indicated above, has published uncritical articles about these organizations’ findings.

The bad news is, we already know that outliers can have disproportionate impact on policy. 

Air Pollution Denial Is the New Climate Denial | New Republic

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And then you have lead..

In East Chicago, Indiana, where 90 percent of this population of 29,000 are people of color and one-third live below the poverty line, a lead crisis is unfolding and residents are concerned that the Environmental Protection Agency under Scott Pruitt is unlikely to respond.
For decades, industrial plants polluted the air and soil with lead and arsenic in East Chicago neighborhoods that included a public housing complex and an elementary school.

In 2014, the EPA declared the lead plant in the area a Superfund site and began the cleanup, but a Reuters investigation in 2016 found that children living near the Superfund site still had elevated levels of lead in their blood. The EPA subsequently tested the water and found that not only did the homes in the vicinity have elevated levels of lead in their drinking water, but so did the entire city—much as Flint did during its 2014 water crisis.

The EPA estimated that up to 90 percent of East Chicago homes received water through lead service lines. In December 2016, before the EPA's findings were made public, Mayor Anthony Copeland sent a letter to then-Gov. Mike Pence, the vice president-elect, asking him to declare a state of emergency in the city so communities could acquire financial assistance for residents being forced to relocate because of the lead contamination at the Superfund site. Pence denied the request, but it was subsequently approved by his successor, Eric Holcomb.

This Lead-Poisoned City Could Be Trump's Flint | Mother Jones

As a reminder:

Lead poisoning usually occurs over a period of months or years. It can cause severe mental and physical impairment. Young children are most vulnerable. Children get lead in their bodies by putting the lead containing objects in their mouths. Touching the lead and then putting their fingers in their mouths may also poison them. Lead is more harmful to children because their brains and nervous systems are still developing. Lead poisoning can be treated, but any damage caused cannot be reversed.

Lead Poisoning: Causes, Symptoms, and Diagnosis

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London has breached its annual air pollution limits just five days into 2017, a “shameful reminder of the severity of London’s air pollution”, according to campaigners. By law, hourly levels of toxic nitrogen dioxide must not be more than 200 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3) more than 18 times in a whole year, but late on Thursday this limit was broken on Brixton Road in Lambeth. Many other sites across the capital will go on to break the annual limit and Putney High Street exceeded the hourly limit over 1,200 times in 2016. Oxford Street, Kings Road in Chelsea and the Strand are other known pollution hotspots. NO2 pollution, which is produced largely by diesel vehicles, causes 5,900 early deaths every year in London.. 

Cutting toxic levels of city air pollution to safer levels is simple, but not easy – it requires resolve. Yet, despite the key culprit in the UK being well known – diesel vehicles – the government has been asleep at the wheel for years. Levels of nitrogen dioxide have been illegally high across much of the UK since 2010. In 2015 86% of major urban areas broke annual limits. Cutting this pollution means choking off diesel emissions and there is a wide range of effective measures available.

How do we fix air pollution? It's simple but it needs political will | Environment | The Guardian

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Serious health and environmental risk from the cuts to the EPA

President Donald Trump pledged during the 2016 campaign that he would only "leave a little bit" of federal rules that protect human health and the environment. Now about 50 former officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are firing back in a lengthy analysis that details, program by program, what amounts to a starvation diet for the EPA. 

Calling themselves the Environmental Protection Network, they worked through both Republican and Democratic administrations. The group's members are putting aside their differences over policies and programs to stop what they say "appears to be nothing less than a full-throttle attack on the principle underlying all U.S. environmental laws—that protecting the health and environment of all Americans is a national priority." 

Even before formally registering as a nonprofit organization, the network has put together a 50-page analysis of the president's proposed EPA budget, based partly on the White House's fiscal 2018 budget blueprint. The blueprint, released on March 16, sketched out top-line cuts of 31 percent of the agency's budget and 21 percent of its staff. The new administration's targeting of the agency requires an independent, expert assessment of what's happening there, the group says.

Its analysis, single-spaced with wide margins and small type, can be downloaded here. 

Here are five changes the network's analysis says President Trump has proposed, along with the risks they were created to curb. The number of EPA programs targeted for elimination is more than 10 times as long as this list.

Endocrine disruptors
The EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention runs a program that screens and tests endocrine disruptors, chemicals that can harm reproductive health and child growth and development. The White House's proposed budget would shrink the program from $7.5 million to $445,000, to be spent shutting down the work, according to the Environmental Protection Network's report.

A note in the passback explains that the program has seen a pivot toward using modern tools that, "while important to the future of chemical risk assessment at EPA, has eclipsed efforts by the program to deliver on its original mission." By June, the EPA and OMB are supposed to discuss how to incorporate endocrine disruptor screening into existing work on risk. 

Lung cancer
Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that, when it seeps up from under a house, can pose health risks to occupants. The new budget would cut by 80 percent the $2.9 million in spending on a federal radon program and an $8 million grant program to states and tribes, the EPN report says. About 21,000 people a year die of lung cancer believed to be caused by radon. 

Hazardous materials
The proposed budget removes a federal-state program that would computerize shipping manifests, currently maintained on paper, of trucks carrying hazardous materials. "Seems like a no-brainer," Wyeth said of the modernization, "but it is eliminated." The passback suggests that the first version of the system, called E-Manifest, be completed using other, undedicated agency funding.

Airborne chemicals and toxins
The EPA spends about $92 million a year researching how air pollution affects people and nature and how best to control which pollutants. According to the group, the proposed budget would halve funding for a program the analysis lauds as a critical success. The EPA estimates (PDF) that by 2020, Clean Air Act measures will reap $2 trillion a year  in benefits for $65 million in costs, according to the Network report.

The passback zeroes out the EPA Office of Research and Development's contribution to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, set up in 1989 to coordinate the government's research and analysis of climate change. Also included in the cuts are the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) graduate student fellowships. OMB directs EPA in the passback to focus its resources on initiatives "that are either related to statutory requirements or that are related to basic research inquiries."

The Hidden Risks of Trump's EPA Cuts: Birth Defects, Bad Air - Bloomberg

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Price worked for Peabody Energy and its spinoff company, Patriot Coal, in West Virginia for nearly 30 years. When those companies went bankrupt, they cut pensions and health benefits for retirees. Now, Price is at risk of losing the insurance he was promised would last the rest of his life.

In addition to the uncontrollable mood swings he experienced before going on medication, Price’s memory is so compromised that he can’t recall his telephone number. He also struggles with poor nerve function, insomnia, restless leg syndrome, imbalance, tremors, and Lupus, which could prevent him from having operations in the future — issues that surfaced during his time in the Montcoal #7 Preparation Plant in Raleigh County, West Virginia.

It began with a chemical called polyacrylamide — known to workers as “flock.” Flock is a known neurotoxin and likely carcinogen. Price used the chemical to separate coal from impurities like slate before it was loaded for transport. He also worked with other toxic chemicals, including antifreeze, which he sprayed onto train cars to preventing coal from sticking to their sides.

The coal miners Trump claims to support are about to lose health care, and Congress is MIA

First the coal industry poisons its workers, then they take their insurance and pensions, the Trump comes and promises to make everything all right, but people like the retired coalminer faces several threats to their remaining healthcare, from repeal and replace Obamacare to not replacing the special program covering people like him.

And they're going to be made sicker as the Trump environmental onslaught isn't going to bring coal jobs back but will worsen their environment further.

Keep Americans safe!

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Air pollution from traffic and industry is leading to the premature death of more than three million people a year. Globally, that’s more than malaria and HIV/Aids combined.

Pollutants including nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter from road traffic and sulphur dioxide, from the burning of fossil fuels, have been linked to suppressed lung growth in children, asthma, heart disease and the onset of type 2 diabetes. The exposure of pregnant women to air pollution has also been found to affect to foetal brain growth.

It is an avoidable and unequal health burden. In London, for example, more than 400 schools are located in areas that exceed limits for nitrogen dioxide pollution, but four-fifths of those are in deprived areas.
Even in countries with a long history of tackling air pollution, the problem has not gone away. The UK, which passed its first anti-air pollution legislation 60 years ago today, is currently involved in a long-running legal battle over its failure to cut pollution to legal levels.

This infographic helps explain the main pollutants and their health impacts.

How air pollution affects your health - infographic | Guardian Sustainable Business | The Guardian