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malaise

(267,817 posts)
Thu Jun 29, 2017, 08:18 PM Jun 2017

New Research Finds Air Pollution is Far Deadlier than Previously Thought

https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/new-research-finds-air-pollution-far-deadlieer-previously-thought
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The U.S. standards for our two deadliest air pollutants--ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5 )--are not stringent enough to prevent thousands of premature air pollution deaths each year among the elderly, found a study by Harvard University scientists, led by Qian Di, released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The research was exceptionally vast and lengthy, covering all 61 million Americans on Medicare, age 65 and older, for the thirteen years from 2000 to 2012.

“This study shows that although we think air quality in the United States is good enough to protect our citizens, in fact we need to lower pollution levels even further,” said Joel Schwartz, professor of environmental epidemiology at Harvard and the study’s senior author.

Death certificates never list air pollution as the cause of death. Nevertheless, air pollution is a huge and silent killer: about 3 million premature deaths per year globally are due to outdoor air pollution. Between 91,000 and 100,000 air pollution deaths per year occur in the U.S., according to separate studies done in 2016 by the World Bank and the Health Effects Institute (a U.S. non-profit corporation funded by the EPA and the auto industry.) Even higher U.S. air pollution deaths in excess of 200,000 per year were estimated for 2005 in a 2013 MIT study.

Air pollution deaths are calculated using epidemiological studies, which correlate death rates with air pollution levels. Air pollution has been proven to increase the incidence of death due to stroke, heart attack and lung disease. Since these causes of death are also due to other factors—such as life style and family history—we typically refer to air pollution deaths as premature deaths. A premature air pollution-related death typically occurs about twelve years earlier than it otherwise might have, according to Caiazzo et al., 2013.
Benefits of cutting air pollution far exceed the costs

The research comes at a time when many Republicans and the Trump administration are actively pursuing efforts to increase the amount of air pollution, potentially reversing decades of remarkable progress in cleaning our air which has saved tens of thousands of lives. As I explained in detail in a March post, Trump issued an executive order designed to undo the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which aimed to reduce pollution from power plants. His June announcement that the U.S. would pull out of the Paris Climate Accord was a further blow to hopes for a cleaner atmosphere.

The cost to industry was given as the primary reason for these actions. However, a full cost-benefit analysis does not support this rationale. For example, the EPA estimates that annual costs to industry of the Clean Power Plan will be $1.4 - $2.5 billion in 2020, increasing to $5.1 - $8.4 billion per year in 2030. These estimates factor in the costs of investments in transitioning to lower-carbon electricity options and the savings that result from investments in energy efficiency. Electricity bills are predicted to rise modestly by 2.4 to 2.7 percent in 2020, but then decline by 2.7 to 3.8 percent in 2025, and 7 to 7.7 percent in 2030 as investments in energy efficiency pay off.
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