Air Pollution Kills Thousands of Americans Yearly – Here’s a Low-Cost Strategy to Help

By Jason West and Yang Ou
About one of every 25 deaths in the U.S. occurs prematurely because of exposure to air pollution. Dirty air kills roughly 110,000 Americans yearly, which is more than all transportation accidents and shootings combined.
When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) weighs decisions about air pollution regulations, it typically selects candidate actions from one or more sectors, such as electric power generation and industry. For each strategy considered, the agency carefully estimates the costs and benefits, then decides which actions to pursue.
We study air pollution and options for reducing it. In a newly published study, we flipped the traditional approach around by starting with the goal of finding emission control actions, among all sources, that could save a specified number of lives for the lowest cost. In doing so, we identified a set of low-cost actions to reduce air pollutant emissions from highly polluting industrial and residential sources, such as residential wood-burning furnaces, that can provide highly cost-effective health benefits.
The U.S. has made tremendous progress in reducing air pollution since 1990, and this has produced significant public health improvements. But air pollution still imposes a serious health burden on the U.S. population, and there are signs that past progress in improving air quality may now be leveling off. New ways of analyzing actions to control air pollution and its health impacts can help.
The number of bad air days in 35 major U.S. cities has plateaued since 2013. U.S. EPA
An Alternative Approach
Under the 1970 Clean Air Act, it is the EPA's job to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards. These regulations limit concentrations of six major air pollutants that harm public health and the environment. Then each state adopts actions that will meet these standards, such as reducing emissions from power plants or large industries.
The EPA also sets limits on emissions from some specific sources over which it has legal authority, including new power plants and motor vehicles. In doing so, the agency aims for air that is considered healthy for all Americans to breathe.
For each strategy considered, the EPA often runs a full cost-benefit analysis. This approach requires a complex atmospheric model to estimate how each proposed action will affect air pollutant concentrations, and the health impacts that will result. This limits the number of options that can be considered.
Our study focused on fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5. We created a framework that simplified the complexity of the atmosphere and air pollution's health impacts. For each U.S. state we calculated impact factors, which represent deaths related to PM2.5 exposure per ton of emissions of different chemical components from different sources. Then we fed these impact factors into an economic model of the U.S. energy system, allowing the model to calculate deaths for any strategy.
Next we set a limit on total deaths caused by PM2.5, and let the model select the least expensive set of actions that would meet energy needs – an important factor because energy use is a major air pollution source – while keeping PM2.5-related deaths below our ceiling. Our model projected future scenarios to 2050, so we considered different ceilings at various points in time, and observed the actions the model selected.
This alternative approach has the advantage of considering a wide range of possible control strategies that affect many different sources. It prioritizes the actions that most cost-effectively reduce premature deaths. Further, by considering these actions in the context of the broader energy system, we can include actions like fuel switching and energy efficiency as alternatives, and quantify consequences of actions throughout the U.S. energy system.
High Particulate Emitters
Using this approach, we pinpointed a set of sources whose emissions contribute disproportionately to PM2.5 mortality impacts. They include factories and other industrial facilities powered by coal and oil, and wood-fired residential furnaces. Emissions from these sources are rising and may continue to increase in the future without additional controls.
Our model showed that reducing emissions from these sources – mainly by electrifying them – could cut projected national air pollution-related deaths in 2050 in half very cost-effectively. Overall national health benefits from these reductions would be roughly seven times the cost of the pollution controls. As many studies have found, air pollution controls tend to be very cost-effective because these emissions cause people to die prematurely through cardiovascular diseases, stroke, lung cancer and other long-term illnesses.
Reductions in the costs of PM2.5-related deaths due to emission reductions from each state, from a scenario that cuts projected national PM2.5-related deaths in 2050 in half. Ou et al., 2020., CC BY
Our study shows that this approach would reduce PM2.5-related emissions in each state. Progress would be greatest in northern and eastern states, including Ohio and Pennsylvania. These regions have many large industrial sources and are densely populated, which means that many people benefit from cleaner air.
Ohio has the largest potential for cost-effectively reducing PM2.5 deaths through cutting industrial coal emissions. California would benefit most from controls on residential wood burning, and Texas would see the greatest reductions in emissions from large petrochemical industries.
We also found that these actions had little influence on overall energy usage in the U.S., and therefore little effect on greenhouse gas emissions. This was interesting because previous research has found that most initiatives to reduce greenhouse gases – which typically involve switching to less-polluting fuels, such as going from coal to natural gas to renewables – also reduce air pollutant emissions, with significant benefits for public health. But the opposite is not true: Low-cost air pollution controls do not appear to have a big influence on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
The costs and health benefits of identified low-cost actions to reduce projected national 2050 PM2.5-related deaths by 10% to 50%. Yang Ou, CC BY-ND
Looking Forward to Cleaner Air
Our approach finds the least-cost way of reducing the health impacts of fine particle pollution among all Americans. But it does not ensure that current standards will be met everywhere. One limitation of our method is that we analyzed emissions at the state level, but our current model does not permit us to look more closely at air quality and health impacts for individual urban areas within states that exceed fine particle standards.
Still, our methods offer another tool that the EPA and states can use to help in planning air quality improvements, and the actions identified as being cost-effective for improving health can be compared with those currently being pursued. Spotlighting alternative pollution reduction options can help federal and state regulators make decisions about energy resources and their environmental and health impacts for the coming decades.
As natural gas and renewable energy prices fall, energy industries are in the midst of a transition driven by new technologies and changing economics. As this shift takes place, it is important to consider how to meet new energy demands while reducing greenhouse emissions and the health impacts of air pollutants. We hope our methods will be useful in informing these decisions in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Inefficient wood stoves and wood-burning furnaces are major fine particle sources. Madison & Dane County Public Health
Jason West is a professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Yang Ou is a postdoctoral associate at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Disclosure statements: Jason West receives funding from the EPA, NASA, NSF, the Donald and Jennifer Holzworth Faculty Acceleration Fund in Climate Change, and the State of North Carolina.
Yang Ou was supported by the Research Participation Program at the Center for Environmental Measurement and Modeling, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE).
Reposted with permission from The Conversation.
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‘Existential Threat to Our Survival’: See the 19 Australian Ecosystems Already Collapsing
By Dana M Bergstrom, Euan Ritchie, Lesley Hughes and Michael Depledge
In 1992, 1,700 scientists warned that human beings and the natural world were "on a collision course." Seventeen years later, scientists described planetary boundaries within which humans and other life could have a "safe space to operate." These are environmental thresholds, such as the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and changes in land use.
The Good and Bad News
<p><span>Ecosystems consist of living and non-living components, and their interactions. They work like a super-complex engine: when some components are removed or stop working, knock-on consequences can lead to system failure.</span></p><p>Our study is based on measured data and observations, not modeling or predictions for the future. Encouragingly, not all ecosystems we examined have collapsed across their entire range. We still have, for instance, some intact reefs on the Great Barrier Reef, especially in deeper waters. And northern Australia has some of the most intact and least-modified stretches of savanna woodlands on Earth.</p><p><span>Still, collapses are happening, including in regions critical for growing food. This includes the </span><a href="https://www.mdba.gov.au/importance-murray-darling-basin/where-basin" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Murray-Darling Basin</a><span>, which covers around 14% of Australia's landmass. Its rivers and other freshwater systems support more than </span><a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/latestproducts/94F2007584736094CA2574A50014B1B6?opendocument" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30% of Australia's food</a><span> production.</span></p><p><span></span><span>The effects of floods, fires, heatwaves and storms do not stop at farm gates; they're felt equally in agricultural areas and natural ecosystems. We shouldn't forget how towns ran out of </span><a href="https://www.mdba.gov.au/issues-murray-darling-basin/drought#effects" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">drinking water</a><span> during the recent drought.</span></p><p><span></span><span>Drinking water is also at risk when ecosystems collapse in our water catchments. In Victoria, for example, the degradation of giant </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/logging-must-stop-in-melbournes-biggest-water-supply-catchment-106922" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mountain Ash forests</a><span> greatly reduces the amount of water flowing through the Thompson catchment, threatening nearly five million people's drinking water in Melbourne.</span></p><p>This is a dire <em data-redactor-tag="em">wake-up</em> call — not just a <em data-redactor-tag="em">warning</em>. Put bluntly, current changes across the continent, and their potential outcomes, pose an existential threat to our survival, and other life we share environments with.</p><p><span>In investigating patterns of collapse, we found most ecosystems experience multiple, concurrent pressures from both global climate change and regional human impacts (such as land clearing). Pressures are often </span><a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1365-2664.13427" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">additive and extreme</a><span>.</span></p><p>Take the last 11 years in Western Australia as an example.</p><p>In the summer of 2010 and 2011, a <a href="https://theconversation.com/marine-heatwaves-are-getting-hotter-lasting-longer-and-doing-more-damage-95637" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">heatwave</a> spanning more than 300,000 square kilometers ravaged both marine and land ecosystems. The extreme heat devastated forests and woodlands, kelp forests, seagrass meadows and coral reefs. This catastrophe was followed by two cyclones.</p><p>A record-breaking, marine heatwave in late 2019 dealt a further blow. And another marine heatwave is predicted for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/24/wa-coastline-facing-marine-heatwave-in-early-2021-csiro-predicts" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this April</a>.</p>What to Do About It?
<p><span>Our brains trust comprises 38 experts from 21 universities, CSIRO and the federal Department of Agriculture Water and Environment. Beyond quantifying and reporting more doom and gloom, we asked the question: what can be done?</span></p><p>We devised a simple but tractable scheme called the 3As:</p><ul><li>Awareness of what is important</li><li>Anticipation of what is coming down the line</li><li>Action to stop the pressures or deal with impacts.</li></ul><p>In our paper, we identify positive actions to help protect or restore ecosystems. Many are already happening. In some cases, ecosystems might be better left to recover by themselves, such as coral after a cyclone.</p><p>In other cases, active human intervention will be required – for example, placing artificial nesting boxes for Carnaby's black cockatoos in areas where old trees have been <a href="https://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/publications/factsheet-carnabys-black-cockatoo-calyptorhynchus-latirostris" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">removed</a>.</p><p><span>"Future-ready" actions are also vital. This includes reinstating </span><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/factsheets/a-burning-question-fire/12395700" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cultural burning practices</a><span>, which have </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-you-have-unfinished-business-its-time-to-let-our-fire-people-care-for-this-land-135196" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">multiple values and benefits for Aboriginal communities</a><span> and can help minimize the risk and strength of bushfires.</span></p><p>It might also include replanting banks along the Murray River with species better suited to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/factsheets/my-garden-path---matt-hansen/12322978" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">warmer conditions</a>.</p><p>Some actions may be small and localized, but have substantial positive benefits.</p><p>For example, billions of migrating Bogong moths, the main summer food for critically endangered mountain pygmy possums, have not arrived in their typical numbers in Australian alpine regions in recent years. This was further exacerbated by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/six-million-hectares-of-threatened-species-habitat-up-in-smoke-129438" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2019-20</a> fires. Brilliantly, <a href="https://www.zoo.org.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Zoos Victoria</a> anticipated this pressure and developed supplementary food — <a href="https://theconversation.com/looks-like-an-anzac-biscuit-tastes-like-a-protein-bar-bogong-bikkies-help-mountain-pygmy-possums-after-fire-131045" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Bogong bikkies</a>.</p><p><span>Other more challenging, global or large-scale actions must address the </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iICpI9H0GkU&t=34s" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">root cause of environmental threats</a><span>, such as </span><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0504-8" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">human population growth and per-capita consumption</a><span> of environmental resources.</span><br></p><p>We must rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero, remove or suppress invasive species such as <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/mam.12080" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">feral cats</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-buffel-kerfuffle-how-one-species-quietly-destroys-native-wildlife-and-cultural-sites-in-arid-australia-149456" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">buffel grass</a>, and stop widespread <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-reduce-fire-risk-and-meet-climate-targets-over-300-scientists-call-for-stronger-land-clearing-laws-113172" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">land clearing</a> and other forms of habitat destruction.</p>Our Lives Depend On It
<p>The multiple ecosystem collapses we have documented in Australia are a harbinger for <a href="https://www.iucn.org/news/protected-areas/202102/natures-future-our-future-world-speaks" target="_blank">environments globally</a>.</p><p>The simplicity of the 3As is to show people <em>can</em> do something positive, either at the local level of a landcare group, or at the level of government departments and conservation agencies.</p><p>Our lives and those of our <a href="https://theconversation.com/children-are-our-future-and-the-planets-heres-how-you-can-teach-them-to-take-care-of-it-113759" target="_blank">children</a>, as well as our <a href="https://theconversation.com/taking-care-of-business-the-private-sector-is-waking-up-to-natures-value-153786" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">economies</a>, societies and <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-address-the-ecological-crisis-aboriginal-peoples-must-be-restored-as-custodians-of-country-108594" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cultures</a>, depend on it.</p><p>We simply cannot afford any further delay.</p><p><em><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/dana-m-bergstrom-1008495" target="_blank" style="">Dana M Bergstrom</a> is a principal research scientist at the University of Wollongong. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/euan-ritchie-735" target="_blank" style="">Euan Ritchie</a> is a professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences at Deakin University. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/lesley-hughes-5823" target="_blank">Lesley Hughes</a> is a professor at the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/michael-depledge-114659" target="_blank">Michael Depledge</a> is a professor and chair, Environment and Human Health, at the University of Exeter. </em></p><p><em>Disclosure statements: Dana Bergstrom works for the Australian Antarctic Division and is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Wollongong. Her research including fieldwork on Macquarie Island and in Antarctica was supported by the Australian Antarctic Division.</em></p><p><em>Euan Ritchie receives funding from the Australian Research Council, The Australia and Pacific Science Foundation, Australian Geographic, Parks Victoria, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, and the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC. Euan Ritchie is a Director (Media Working Group) of the Ecological Society of Australia, and a member of the Australian Mammal Society.</em></p><p><em>Lesley Hughes receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a Councillor with the Climate Council of Australia, a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists and a Director of WWF-Australia.</em></p><p><em>Michael Depledge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/existential-threat-to-our-survival-see-the-19-australian-ecosystems-already-collapsing-154077" target="_blank" style="">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>- Coral Reef Tipping Point: 'Near-Annual' Bleaching May Occur ... ›
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A new EarthxTV film special calls for the protection of the Amazon rainforest and the indigenous people that call it home. EarthxTV.org
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