No Alternative To Clean Air

 

The American Lung Association will release its 23rd annual “State of the Air” Report 2022 later this morning. While the organization last year noted significant progress in cleaning up air pollution over the last few decades, the benefits haven’t been equally shared coast-to-coast in some communities:

[M]ore than 40% of Americans—over 135 million people—are living in places with unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution. The burden of living with unhealthy air is not shared equally. People of color are over three times more likely to be breathing the most polluted air than white people.

 

The changing climate threatens air quality in new and dangerous ways:

High ozone days and spikes in particle pollution, related to extreme heat and wildfires, are putting millions more people at risk and adding challenges to the work states and cities are doing across the nation to clean up air pollution.

 

Air quality has improved in some locales more than others. Pittsburgh-area zip codes consistently receive “F” grades for having some of the worst air quality east of the Rocky Mountains for year-round and daily spikes of fine particle pollution (PM2.5) and  ground-level ozone (smog).

One could consider the United States a bright spot for clean air. Looking at the planet as a whole, however, Cara Murex reports that few people breathe clean air anymore:

Almost no one in the world is breathing good air, according to a new World Health Organization report, which issued a call for reducing the use of fossil fuels.

Air quality is the worst in WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean and Southeast Asia regions, but 99% of the global population breathes air that exceeds air quality limits and contains disease-causing particles. Air quality is also especially poor in Africa.

 

Doctors have learned from an abundance of occupational and community-based research conducted over several decades that short-term as well as chronic exposure to air pollution — most of it from burning fossil fuels for heat, electricity, food, and transportation — makes people sick, from pregnancy to childhood and into adulthood, from the cradle to a premature grave.

We know that air pollution — a complex mixture of tiny particles, smelly vapors, and chemicals — can impair fertility, complicate pregnancies, and lead to poor birth outcomes. Birth defects and developmental delays caused by some components of toxic air pollution lead to lifelong health burdens for young children, for their families, and for society. People living with heart disease and chronic lung diseases, including children with asthma, have more exacerbations and worse outcomes when the air they breathe is polluted. Lung cancer, bladder cancer, and other types of adult and childhood cancers are linked to air pollution, which impacts practically every organ system in the body —not just the heart and lungs, but also the brain, liver, and kidneys. Recent research describes the links between air pollution and the development of obesity, type 2 diabetes, dementia, anxiety, depression and other forms of mental illness.

We should take a moment and remember that any human who witnesses environmental degradation and destruction — from pollution, climate change, earthquakes, war, or other human-caused and natural disaster — will experience a negative mental health impact. This is especially true in children, who always seem to bear the highest burden of all. A new study published in Developmental Psychology highlights this last point:

The results of this study indicate that adolescents who live in census tracts with relatively higher average ozone are at greater risk for experiencing trajectories of increasing depressive symptoms over time relative to teens who live in areas with lower levels of ozone, even when levels are below the .07 ppm national standard for ozone.

 

Erin T. Welsh identifies a new study showing that compared with children breathing cleaner air, kids with asthma living in Pittsburgh and surrounding zip codes are more likely to have asthma attacks severe enough to require an emergency department visit or hospital admission on days when the local air quality index is elevated for PM2.5:

During the study period [from 2010-2018], 6,573 [asthma exacerbations] occurred. Particulate matter less than 2.5 µm (PM_2.5) was the primary pollutant in 62% of days with events and ozone was the second most common pollutant in 29% of days with events.

“There is a wealth of data demonstrating that outdoor air pollution harms children with asthma, but how to incorporate this data into clinical practice is less clear, [said]  Franziska Rosser, MD, MPH, assistant professor of pediatricsin thedivision of pulmonology at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh at the University of Pittsburgh. “Many pollutants don’t have known ‘safe’ levels, and several studies in children with asthma have shown that asthma can get worse even at levels below national air standards. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency designed the Air Quality Index (AQI), which alerts the public to the air quality and provides recommendations of what to do when the air quality is poor.”

 

One thing doctors and other health professionals can do to better advise their patients is to check their local air quality index (AQI) forecast at airnow.gov before heading in to work each day. It is also helpful when weather forecasters and local health departments routinely warn residents — especially pregnant women, the elderly, and children and adults with chronic medical conditions — when the AQI is expected to be not “good” for particulate matter and ground-level ozone.

All of us can make breathing easier for everyone if we work together to rapidly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels by making other arrangements for our energy and material needs.

Clean air, clean water, a stable climate system. Sounds like a reasonable plan for a healthy and prosperous future. Because when all is said and done for biologic creatures like us, there is no alternative.

 

Read the full 2022 “State of the Air” report from the American Lung Association here.

 

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source http://www.thepediablog.com/2022/04/21/no-alternative-to-clean-air/