Global Clean Air

Traffic-related air pollution results in new childhood asthma. The actions we take today matter.

By Ananya Roy / Published: March 15, 2022

Asthma changes the physical, emotional and academic trajectory of a child’s life. More than 5 million children in the United States have asthma, and every year there are over 750,000 emergency room visits and over 74,000 hospitalizations for asthma among children. Asthma is the leading cause of missed school days each year, and it has been linked to diminished school performance. Although ambient air pollution exposure has long been associated with the worsening of asthma symptoms, mounting evidence indicates that it also leads to the development of asthma among children. 

A recent study found that annually nearly 2 million children worldwide develop asthma due to exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a traffic-related air pollutant. Transportation is a key driver of this pollution. Freight trucks and buses make up less than 10% of the vehicles on U.S. roads, but they are responsible for half of the transportation sector’s nitrogen oxide emissions. In some urban areas, 1 in 5 new childhood asthma cases are due to exposure to nitrogen dioxide; in particular neighborhoods, this risk can be twice as high. 

How NO2 causes asthma

Studies exploring how NO2 affects the lungs indicate that repeated or long term exposure results in activation of biological pathways that contribute to the development of asthma: secretion of inflammatory cytokines, altered cellular structure, oxidative stress, allergic sensitization, increased mucus formation, airway remodeling and airway hyperresponsiveness. Studies of NO2 exposure to human bronchial epithelial cells find an increase in pro-inflammatory mediators and inflammation involved in the pathology of asthma.

A growing body of evidence describes the impact of NO2 on new cases of childhood asthma. It shows consistent and reproducible effects across different cities and populations in North America. Below are a few:

  • In studies of Latino and African American children across Chicago, Bronx, Houston, San Francisco and Puerto Rico, a higher average NO2 exposure during the first year of life was associated with higher odds of being diagnosed with asthma. This was also seen in another study of children in East Boston, Massachusetts.
  • Among 1.2 million children in Quebec, scientists found that higher childhood exposures to NO2 levels at their residential address were linked to increased risk of asthma development.
  • A recent study of 4,140 elementary school children (with no history of asthma) in southern California provides particularly strong evidence.  Scientists found that a drop in nitrogen dioxide, over a period of air pollution decline, was associated with a reduction in asthma incidence. This finding was reinforced when using cutting edge causal methods, which found that “childhood asthma incidence rates would have been significantly higher had the observed reduction in ambient NO2 in southern California not occurred in the 1990s and early 2000s, and asthma incidence rates would have been significantly lower had NO2 been lower than what it was observed to be.”

These are just a few of the studies that have been done in North America. A systematic review and meta-analysis of 41 studies from around the world investigated the impact of different air pollutants on asthma incidence among children. Of these, 20 studies directly assessed the impact of NO2, and found that a small increase (4 µg/m3) in NO2 exposure led to a 5% increase in the risk of developing childhood asthma.

Across these studies, scientists took pains to ensure the findings were not due to other factors like age, sex, race-ethnicity, poverty or smoking in the household. 

We have an opportunity to protect our children’s health

We have an opportunity to protect our children by identifying communities overburdened by NO2 pollution and its sources. 

First, we need to end the blindspots on NO2. We must make the true cost of diesel clear through investments in transparency and accountability. New satellite data and community monitoring can help identify pollution hotspots. Robust funding for NO2 monitoring, analysis and enforcement will enhance existing data to support protective action. The US EPA’s $20 million in grant funding for increased air quality monitoring in communities overburdened by pollution is an important step in this direction.

Better emissions inventories–especially around areas of high truck traffic like ports and warehouses–are important to further illuminate sources and target solutions.

Finally, eliminating harmful pollution from diesel vehicles is crucial. Transitioning to electric school buses, cars and trucks is feasible. New research from EDF finds that by 2027, electric freight trucks and buses will be cheaper to purchase and operate than their combustion engine counterparts. EPA recently proposed stronger pollution standards for medium- and heavy-duty freight trucks and buses, but it needs to go much further in leveraging zero-emitting solutions. Bold clean energy investments by Congress would provide credits to people who purchase electric vehicles, support development of additional charging infrastructure and increase air quality monitoring to ensure that NO2 doesn’t linger in frontline communities.

We must act now to reduce NO2 pollution and prevent more asthma every year. The status quo is clearly unacceptable for our children.

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Meet Ethan McMahon, Chief of Party, Clean Air Catalyst

By lambrogi / Published: February 1, 2022

Ethan McMahon is the new Chief of Party for the Clean Air Catalyst, a flagship program launched by the U.S. Agency for International Development and a global consortium of organizations led by WRI and EDF. He brings 27 years of experience with the U.S. EPA, where he worked with cities and states to build capacity to address climate change and air pollution, and he advocated to make environmental data more accessible.

What first got you interested in environmental science, and what do you find most interesting about this field?
I started my career as a mechanical engineer, doing things such as evaluating alternative refrigerants. Within a few years I learned about the impacts of climate change and I realized that I wanted to apply my analytical skills to issues that make a difference. This work on the Catalyst interests me because it involves so many dimensions. Technology, human health, collaboration–you need all of these ingredients and more to affect change on many environmental issues.

Why is open, publicly available data so crucial for solving environmental problems?
It’s hard to solve environmental issues because the causes and effects are complicated. In order to present a convincing case to decision-makers you need to speak their language, using numbers and sometimes stories. But you can only crunch the numbers if you can get the data, so it’s critical that data collectors make their data accessible and usable. 

If governments collect data for one purpose, it makes sense to get more value out of the data by making it available for other purposes. For example, EPA collects data on air quality for regulatory purposes, but community groups may want to use that same data to understand if their air quality has suddenly shifted to be worse. AirNow is a great example of how EPA makes their data available for non-regulatory purposes.

How can more data on air quality improve people’s lives?
Air quality affects some portions of the public more than others. For example, some people can only afford to live or work where pollution levels are high, such as near power plants, roadways or outdoor waste burning. The Clean Air Catalyst is finding ways to help people in the pilot cities (Jakarta, Indonesia; Indore, India; and soon, a third city). We use data from existing air quality monitors and analyze where the pollution is coming from. Then we increase awareness of the pollution – and ask people what they experience in their daily lives. Then we collect more air quality data to complement the existing monitors. After we analyze a few dimensions – health, climate change and gender – we evaluate which actions provide lasting benefits and work with communities to implement them.

Is there something about air quality monitoring that you’re especially excited about right now?
I’m really excited about people using data to affect change. They’re thinking beyond the accuracy of individual sensors and focusing instead on how they can use data to make decisions. That’s where the true value is, the benefit to health and society. Communities can use data from a few nearby sensors to understand if air quality is getting better or worse. That might be enough information for people to change their habits and protect themselves, for example by not exercising during hours when pollution levels are high.

What are some goals you have for the Clean Air Catalyst program?
I want the Clean Air Catalyst program to help cities improve their air quality in ways that are effective and sustainable. We’re using a lot of innovative methods in our pilot cities so we don’t exactly know which activities will be the most successful. However, we’ll learn from the experience and share the lessons with other cities so they can make progress easier. In parallel, we’re fostering two types of coalitions. First, we’re bringing several sectors together at the local level. Second, we’re connecting global and local experts so they can collaborate about feasible interventions. Follow our progress and feel free to suggest ways to make lasting improvements to air quality.

Learn more about the Clean Air Catalyst program here.

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Profile: Kaushik Hazarika, Project Manager, Clean Air Catalyst Indore

By EDF Web Team / Published: November 29, 2021

Kaushik Raj Hazarika is an advisor for EDF’s air quality work in India and a Project Manager for Clean Air Catalyst in Indore. Clean Air Catalyst is a flagship program launched by the U.S. Agency for International Development and a global consortium of organizations led by World Resources Institute and Environmental Defense Fund.

With a population of 3.4 million, Indore is the commercial hub and most populous city in the state. The city is not meeting the national government’s ambient air quality standards. Reducing air pollution to the recommended levels could save lives, while slowing climate change and addressing social inequities.

Kaushik and Clean Air Catalyst team members are working with local stakeholders and key government organizations like the Indore Municipal Corporation and the Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board to tackle the root causes of the city’s pollution.

Kaushik says, “I find Indore’s achievement of being declared the cleanest city for solid waste in India inspiring. It is a testament to the dedication of the public representatives, government officials and general public, and demonstrates what we all can achieve by well-concerted public action. My hope is that Clean Air Catalyst will spur similar innovation and success, making Indore an air quality role model for other South Asian cities.”

Kaushik has been a climate and environment professional in India for over a decade now, working on different issues related to the broader sustainability agenda including  natural resource management, forestry, clean energy, circular economy, waste management and now air pollution after joining EDF and leading Clean Air catalyst in India.

Kaushik has found more success driving the climate narrative into public consciousness in his work to achieve better air quality due to the immediate health risks of air pollution. He hopes to use his previous climate experience in his current work to shape Source Awareness, a key aspect of the Catalyst methodology and achieve better air quality apart from highlighting the immediate health risks of air pollution. He says, “Addressing these issues with an approach backed by strong scientific research is incredibly timely and relevant, and I am very hopeful about what Clean Air Catalyst can achieve.”

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Air Pollution Research Reveals Exposure Disparities in Bay Area

By Maria Harris / Published: November 19, 2021

After working with EDF and partners to map hyperlocal pollution in Oakland, CA using Google Street View vehicles, researchers Dr. Joshua Apte (University of California, Berkeley) and Dr. Sarah Chambliss (University of Texas at Austin) collected additional mobile data across the San Francisco Bay Area to expand understanding of street-level air quality and disparities in pollution exposure. Their new paper, “Local- and regional-scale racial and ethnic disparities in air pollution determined by long-term mobile monitoring” was published in September in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. It builds on previous work in Oakland published by Dr. Apte in 2017. I recently spoke with Dr. Chambliss about the latest findings.

What were the key findings of this new research?

Dr. Chambliss: In this study, we broadened the geographic scope of our mobile pollution measurements beyond Oakland to neighborhoods across the Bay Area. Throughout the other areas we drove across the SF Bay Area, we saw some of the same types of patterns that we originally described in the original Oakland study: steep increases in concentrations near major roads (especially for nitric oxide, or NO) and some additional localized peaks that could be attributable to other localized sources that we are still working to identify.

We also saw evidence that the types of sources contributing to local pollution differ among study areas: some areas have more prominent peaks for black carbon, others for NO. The mix of pollution is different in different areas around the Bay. We saw that some neighborhoods were much cleaner than others, and some neighborhoods had higher levels of some pollutants but were not higher for every pollutant. Because we had looked at so many different types of neighborhoods, we saw an opportunity to extend the Oakland analysis by also asking: Who lives in the neighborhoods that are more polluted, and how do pollution patterns compare to or interact with patterns of racial/ethnic segregation that persist in the Bay Area?

After connecting the street-level air pollution data with census data, we found that there were systematic differences in pollution exposure across racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, Black and Hispanic/Latino people had 10-30% higher average exposure to NO, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ultrafine particles (UFP) than the population as a whole, while white non-Hispanic residents had 20-30% lower average exposure. The neighborhoods where we measured the cleanest air tended to have higher proportions of white residents, as well. In contrast, neighborhoods where more people of color lived tended to have higher concentrations not just near roadways but in areas of the neighborhood we would consider “background” locations: residential areas where we expect conditions to be cleaner.

Why do these disparities in air pollution exposure matter?

Dr. Chambliss: Air pollution can have major short-term and long-term health impacts. Studies have shown linkages among the group of pollutants we looked at–NO and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), black carbon, and ultrafine particles- with hospital visits, chronic lung and heart disease, with particular risks for the health of newborns and the elderly.

Because air pollution causes systemic inflammation, its impacts spread far beyond the lungs: there is evidence of air pollution affecting cognitive development and diabetes prevalence, for example. Those exposed to higher air pollution are at higher risk of a wide range of health problems. When disparities fall along lines of socioeconomic status or other social vulnerabilities, the health risks caused by air pollution can compound with issues like lower access to medical care or less capacity to handle the financial burden of health issues.

How did you collect such detailed street-level pollution data?

Dr. Chambliss: We had several partnerships that allowed us to achieve this level of coverage. A partnership with Google Earth Outreach allowed us to use Google Street View vehicles to drive “blackout” patterns, where we drove down every road in a study area each time we visited. We also partnered with Aclima, Inc., who installed laboratory-grade instrumentation in these cars and kept the equipment maintained and calibrated for near-daily driving.

We drove two of these “mobile laboratories” nearly every weekday over a 32-month period, visiting different neighborhoods each day and revisiting each neighborhood every 6 weeks or so to collect measurements representing different seasonal conditions.

What kind of policy implications do you see for this work?

Dr. Chambliss: That there are higher pollution levels in neighborhoods with more people of color isn’t a new finding in and of itself, but the level of spatial detail that we could bring to this analysis provided some additional insights. Often, within one neighborhood or several adjoining neighborhoods, there is a wide range in the outdoor pollution levels at different addresses. And these differences do not typically lie along racial/ethnic lines. It’s only when you zoom out to look at city-wide patterns of segregation that you see racial/ethnic disparity in exposures. This is strongly influenced by neighborhoods where the lowest levels of pollutants like NO2 and UFP are higher than even peak levels in cleaner neighborhoods.

This gives us an indication of how policies could be improved to geographically target pollution mitigations to better address disparity and promote environmental justice. Look specifically at communities where the baseline pollution levels are higher and where residents are predominantly people of color. This segregation is often connected with historically racist policies such as discriminatory lending policies or racial covenants built into housing deeds. While those policies may have ended, they leave a persistent legacy placing communities of people of color in areas with higher pollution and greater environmental health risks. To help reverse these patterns of environmental injustice, it’s critical to work to clean up the air pollution sources within those neighborhoods.

What does work like this mean for the future of hyperlocal air pollution monitoring?

Dr. Chambliss: An implication of how localized some pollutant peaks are – a phenomenon that mobile monitoring is particularly suited to measure – is that when you cut emissions from a particular source or type of source, you will see major benefits very close to that source but more moderate reductions everywhere else. If you want to evaluate the full benefits of such a policy, making measurements with fuller spatial coverage may show a magnitude of improvement that wouldn’t be reflected at a single fixed monitoring site. For example, anti-idling policies would help specifically at locations with a lot of truck activity, like ports or warehouses, but it may not be obvious from the outset where the most idling occurs. Mobile monitoring is a way to find those areas that really benefit.

Another thing this research shows is how important it is to spread out measurements over a broader geography as much as possible, given time and resource constraints. It would be great to do a similar study in another US city, because each one has a unique history of growth, industrialization and zoning, and segregation or discriminatory housing policies. It would also be interesting to look at cities outside of the US where urban development patterns, both demographic and land-use related, are much different.

What’s next for you in this field?

Dr. Chambliss: We are continuing to work with these mobile monitoring data to gather further insight into what features of the urban environment lead to pollution hot spots.

 

 

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How the Build Back Better Act will help clear the air

By Aileen Nowlan / Published: November 3, 2021

With the Build Back Better Act, Congress has the opportunity to make an unprecedented investment in public health and the climate, particularly in the reduction of harmful air pollution, which disproportionately harms low-income residents and communities of color. 

While many cities across the country have experienced an overall improvement in air quality, residents in neighborhoods from West Oakland, California to the 5th Ward in Houston must still fight for cleaner air, as heavy truck traffic and industrial pollution continue to seriously impact their health. 

woman on ladder installing small air pollution monitor on telephone poll

Hyperlocal air quality monitors have demonstrated how air quality levels can vary street by street.

Air pollution is not evenly distributed across the places that people live, work, play and worship.  A critical step in better understanding and taking action to reduce these inequities in air pollution impacts is to fill in the many gaps in our national air quality monitoring network. 

Historic investments in air quality monitoring 

This bill would help eliminate air pollution blindspots by providing at least $170 million for direct air quality monitoring, a near doubling of federal investment in such monitoring, which has dropped by 20% in real terms over the past 16 years.

It also allocates $50 million to monitor and reduce air pollution in schools that serve students from low-income communities.

This funding has the opportunity to make a tremendous impact on the health and wellbeing of children, as 1 in 5 of all new childhood asthma cases in the United States are attributable to traffic related air pollution. Asthma is a leading cause of school absenteeism, accounting for about 14 million absences each school year, or one-third of all school days missed. 

Data-focused investing

The Build Back Better Act also recognizes that historically we have been investing in activities that cause or mitigate pollution with our eyes closed. The bill invites, and in some cases requires, insights about local pollution in order to apply for billions in grant funding available to mitigate pollution.  

Specifically, the bill provides $5 Billion in planning and implementation for pollution reduction, and requires applications to include ‘‘(A) the degree to which greenhouse gas air pollution is projected to be reduced [in] low-income and disadvantaged communities.” Communities would be required to demonstrate how they will verify that pollution is decreasing after receiving the grants. 

It also offers $4 Billion to mitigate or remediate the negative impacts of transportation, starting by monitoring or assessments of local and ambient air quality, transportation emissions, and hot spots of extreme heat or elevated air pollution.

These funds could be especially helpful in communities that bear the greatest cumulative burdens of pollution–those adjacent or downwind of major industries, plagued by heavy truck traffic and/or surrounded by highways–the consequence of systemic racism.  

To address this, the bill includes $3 Billion in Environmental And Climate Justice Block Grants, which could include monitoring and mitigation of air pollution, and facilitate engagement of disadvantaged communities in state and federal public processes.

Opportunities to harness new technology

This bill comes at a time when technology and analytics like satellites and low-cost air pollution monitors are making it simpler to track pollution and its impacts. These insights will be critical to the accountability required by the grants and can help transform our understanding of where air pollution comes from, what it does to local health, and who is responsible. 

With this historic funding, we can put the new, innovative methods to use at far greater scale, fueling a better understanding of how air pollution impacts health at the neighborhood level. With richer, more reliable data in hand, policymakers can focus mitigation efforts on areas with the highest burden and turn to solutions that have the potential for the greatest impact, especially for those who are most at risk.

Also posted in Government Official/Policymaker, Homepage, Monitoring / Comments are closed

Digging into Freight Pollution Data in London

By Greg Slater / Published: November 1, 2021

Road transportation is a major source of air pollution in London, with heavy goods vehicles one of the top contributors of pollutants that harm people’s health.

The thinktank, Centre for London, has been conducting research this year to look “at how we can create smarter, fairer and more sustainable freight and logistics ecosystems.”

Centre for London was keen to understand more about freight activity in London, like daily activity patterns and how it was affected by COVID-19 lockdowns in the last year. These questions aren’t easy to answer with publicly available data sources. Using supportive traffic and congestion datasets, we were able to produce an analysis that provides a closer look at freight across the capital city – and a special focus on a particular neighbourhood in South London to get a more granular picture.

Here’s what we found. Read More »

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Take Back Health In Your City: WHO’s Dr. Maria Neira’s argument for reducing emissions

By Sergio Sanchez / Published: October 25, 2021

When the World Health Organization (WHO) released its new Global Air Quality guidelines earlier this month for the first time since 2005, it cited an overwhelming body of evidence showing how air pollution severely impacts health at even lower concentrations than previously understood. And while concentrations still largely exceed levels published by the WHO in 2005 for several pollutants in many areas around the world, the organization has now set more aggressive targets along with a phased approach in the hopes it can encourage countries to redouble their efforts to abate air pollution for protecting public health.

The price of inaction is clear: The burden of disease from both ambient and household air pollution exposure continues to grow. Children’s health is largely impaired by reduced long growth and function, respiratory infections and aggravated asthma resulting from breathing poor air quality. In adults, major causes of premature death attributable to air pollution are heart disease and stroke, and there is emerging evidence of diabetes and neurodegenerative conditions, among other effects.  Every year, exposure to air pollution causes some 7 million premature deaths and results in the loss of millions more healthy years of life.

In a recent conversation, Dr. Maria Neira, the WHO’s Director of Public Health, Environment and Social Determinants, suggested that policymakers examine what they will gain from implementing stricter air quality standards, in addition to the consequences of inaction.

Dr. Maria Neira, World Health Organization

 

Health benefits of taking action

Dr. Neira argues that we should reframe our approach to focus on the multiple benefits of reducing pollution. “If the world stops burning fossil fuels, we will see an incredible benefit to public health,” Dr. Neira said. Not only could we prevent a significant percentage of chronic diseases, she says, “You could have more walking in the city. You could have more physical activity. You could take back your city.”

Dr. Neira, who wanted to be a physician since she was a child growing up in Spain, began her career as an endocrinologist, providing her a fist-hand look at the body’s feedback to endocrine disruptors like air pollution emissions. She later served as the medical director for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) in refugee camps in El Salvador and Honduras. That experience prompted her to work in public health. “I couldn’t accept the fact that I was treating patients and then sending them back into conditions that were causing diseases,” she says. “I realized I could make a bigger impact if I worked on sanitation problems or children breathing poor air.”

Slowing climate change, benefitting public health

Now, charged with the leading of the WHO prevention arm, Dr. Neira examines the multitude of factors that can influence health, including diet and the environment.  She hopes that in addition to adopting stricter air quality standards, countries will begin to look more closely at the health benefits associated with combating climate change. She argues that the cost savings in health—from the reduction in chronic diseases to increased productivity—would outweigh the investments needed to end our dependence on fossil fuels. Showing that kind of positive outcome in a similar way that current models illustrate economic benefits, would be “the indicator we would dream about.”

While climate change and air pollution impact vulnerable populations more acutely, Dr. Neira notes that dirty air and its impacts are harmful across all sectors of society. “In Europe we have 400,000 deaths every year due to air pollution.” When you add the cost of related hospital visits and the loss of work days, the impacts represent an overall cost to society, she says. Cities known for higher levels of air pollution may even find themselves less attractive to businesses, if they cannot lure top talent to live with their families, she says, citing Shanghai as a prime example.

Following positive examples

cyclists travel in special traffic lane

Social distancing requirements for COVID-19 brought many cities like Bogota, Columbia to expand bicycling infrastructure.

Countries like Canada and those in Scandinavia are trending in the right direction because their clean air and climate policies, Dr. Neira says. She also noted that mayors with the political will to transform their cities with low emission, sustainable interventions are seeing positive results. Bogota, Colombia, and Bilbao, Spain, are examples of industrialized cities that are now becoming “a pleasure to see.” However, “national politicians need to go farther.”

Need for additional research

While the WHO cited a wealth of research in its decision to lower emissions standards, Dr. Neira says scientists still have plenty of areas for future study. “I think most of the research now needs to go to interventions,” she says. “And whether we can prove those interventions are impactful or not.” Measuring health gains from changing traffic patterns or agricultural practices could help determine which interventions countries adopt. Researchers should examine whether interventions are cost-effective, how soon their impacts can be measured and how beneficial they are to both the environment and human health. “We have to prioritize those that have the biggest public health impact in the shortest possible period of time,” she concluded.

 

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Global Clean Air Profile: Rodolfo Lacy Tamayo, Director of the Environmental Directorate at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

By Sergio Sanchez / Published: October 5, 2021

Rodolfo Lacy Tamayo is the Director of the Environmental Directorate at the OECD, where he studies the intersection of land use change, housing and urban planning. Lacy and his colleagues are determining how the development of cities can change to reduce the burden of air pollution from vehicles.

How did you get involved in clean air work?

In 1977, when I was a student at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City, World Environment Day was celebrated with a week of panels and exhibitions about environmental problems in Mexico. One of them was the air pollution problem in the valley of Mexico. At that time there were no catalytic converters, and we used leaded gasoline. We suffered from traffic congestion and high air pollution. In the valley of Mexico, Lake Texcoco had been drained, changing the ecosystem. We were suffering from dust storms, heat waves, and of course, air pollution problems that were related to sulfur dioxide. Then, the amount of uncontrolled air pollution sources was huge, and air pollution problems were very critical.

I was a student and was very interested in working on those problems, so I started to focus my studies in environmental engineering with a specialty in air quality.

Later, I was in charge of the first comprehensive air pollution program in Mexico City and the citywide air quality monitoring network, in addition to enforcement teams and the first smog inspection program for the whole metro area.

Why do you find this work so critical, especially today?

Many of the technological advances related to air pollution control in the world are helping us now to address the global challenges related to climate change. We started with very small initiatives at local level and then found out that the pollution we were trying to tackle was related to global problems that are transforming the planet in general. I think I found in this discipline the way to really help my community, my city, my country and now the climate.

How should leaders couple climate and clean air goals?

I think leaders are seeing this problem even today with a siloed approach. But everything is related to the way we are using our resources, the energy we are selecting to give us the comfort we are enjoying and the way we are addressing technological challenges. If I need to move people from one place to another, I can choose a car as a mode of transportation that is very polluting. Or, I can design something that really solves the problem without affecting the environment or ecosystems. Now we are realizing that electric cars, vehicles in general—ships, boats, airplanes—could not only reduce but eliminate air pollution problems in our cities. We knew it several decades ago, but the siloed approach and the lack of comprehensive vision of how we can improve our quality of life without breaking all ecological cycles has been a failure. It’s clear for many people now that we have abused the planet—we have used it in an unsustainable way. We have to change the way we are living and satisfying our needs; otherwise, we will destroy the planet very soon.

How can organizations align funding to achieve both clean air and climate benefits simultaneously?

There is a revolution in the financial system, because the governing decisions in central banks and financial institutions are changing. Now we can adopt regulations to really promote low-carbon technologies or technologies that are not emitting any pollutants. Many financial institutions recently stopped financing or investing in coal. This is a new attitude of central banks and the financial system. The changes that we are now seeing are related to consciousness, the knowledge we have about how very profitable investments are really destroying ecosystems, our way of life and our quality of life. So instead of promoting and subsidizing oil and gas industries, mining activities and petrochemical corporations that are producing very harmful and toxic substances and materials, the financial system is willing to invest in technologies that we must massively deploy to protect natural resources.

I think that the financial system is changing, and we can see it is avoiding climate risks. They are requiring different kinds of assessments to make decisions about what kind of portfolios they will be promoting. That these institutions are now making good decisions for the future is a positive sign.

What gives you reason to hope?

Under the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol, we were addressing 6 greenhouse gases. But recently, with the advances of science, the IPCC has started to talk about 13 different climate forcers. We must reduce emissions of those climate forcers that are increasing the temperature and exacerbating the greenhouse gas effect, including short-term pollutants like black carbon. We have to expand the scope of work of many of the policies that countries are implementing now. Otherwise, we will not be able to tackle the climate challenge or improve the quality of life of people in cities, because we are not really reducing those pollutants that are affecting air quality and the climate system as a whole.

We can see that the agendas to tackle air quality and greenhouse gases are overlapping more and are converging in a common set of policies, decisions and regulations that are more comprehensive, and that will help us solve the problem in an integrated way.

 

 

 

 

 

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Capturing the health benefits of climate policy is critical

By jgohlke / Published: October 4, 2021

Over the past 30 years, numerous scientific reports have highlighted the health impacts of climate change, starting with the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report in 1990. The report included a short summary on heat stress, vector and water borne diseases and air pollution health effects like asthma and heart attacks.

Yet health impacts are not fully accounted for in cost of carbon estimates – presenting a missed opportunity. Public health researchers and economists should continue to work together to more fully capture the health value of policies that cut climate pollution.

Climate and health

The most recent National Climate Assessment, published in 2018, provides an extensive review of climate change effects on human health in U.S. regions. Public health impacts include:

  • changes in mortality and hospitalizations due to extreme weather events including heat waves, floods, and droughts.
  • changes in vector-, food-, and waterborne infectious diseases.
  • changes in chemical exposures via air, food and water.
  • stresses to mental health.

The World Health Organization (WHO) quantifies global health impacts of climate change, utilizing the burden of disease methodology to estimate mortality and disability-adjusted life years. Based on heat-related mortality, diarrheal disease, malnutrition and malaria, the most recent WHO assessment projected 250,000 additional deaths per year in 2030 – despite only quantifying a subset of health impacts from climate change.

The Lancet has also commissioned several series of articles and reports detailing the human health implications of climate change. After the Paris Agreement, the outlet initiated the Lancet Countdown, tracking the status of health effects from climate change through reporting on numerous indicators across impacts, exposures and vulnerabilities, as well as adaptation and mitigation actions. For example, the most recent Lancet report estimated a 53.7% increase in heat-related mortality over the last 20 years and an estimated 15% increase in climate suitability for transmission of dengue.

Health benefits largely absent

Benefit-cost analysis – typically managed by economists – is a cornerstone of U.S. regulatory analysis. The U.S. Government is required to use a monetized estimate of the net impacts of global climate change, referred to as the social cost of carbon (SCC), in regulatory rulemakings of greenhouse gas emissions. The current models used to estimate the SCC incorporate impacts to agriculture productivity, energy use, property damage and, within the health sector, an estimation of changes in cold and heat-related mortality.

Yet, while the research community continues to provide more detailed characterizations of climate change’s health effects, health researchers have been less involved in applying these findings to estimate the SCC. As a result, health is still not fully represented in the SCC.

Quantification of health benefits, like lives saved and hospitalizations avoided, can provide critical justification for and evidence of success of environmental policies. For example, the regulatory impact analysis of the Clean Power Plan included an estimation of health and other benefits from reduced greenhouse gas emissions using the SCC estimate, as well as expected health co-benefits via reduced air pollution.

Improving health benefits estimates

A 2017 National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine report recommended two critical research needs for advancing the science behind the SCC estimate:

  1. Updating health damage modules to incorporate recent health literature.
  2. Improving delineation of the different effects of climate change across regions of the world – e.g., trying to determine the different health impacts expected in different areas.

Since the release of this report, several groups have been working to address these recommendations. For example, the Climate Impact Lab has developed an improved temperature-related mortality estimate that incorporates adaptation and delineates distributional effects across areas of the globe.

A recent analysis utilized WHO, Climate Impact Lab, and Lancet Countdown temperature-mortality functions to produce estimated mortality costs associated with climate change – suggesting a seven-fold increase in estimated monetary damages from previous estimates. In other words, adding in more specific health damage estimates increased the estimated cost of carbon pollution by seven times—from $37 to $258 per metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted.

Although climate change is a global phenomenon, the impacts are unequal and disproportionately burden underserved, low-income and marginalized communities. For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that socially vulnerable populations are likely to experience the most severe harms from climate change. Evaluating distributional health effects of climate change at a finer geographical scale could help policymakers address inequities.

It’s critical for policymakers to have accurate information to weigh the benefits and costs of cutting carbon. With health researchers involved, benefit-cost analyses can more accurately capture the threat that climate change poses to people’s health – and the benefits that come with acting on climate.

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How integrated transport solutions can maximize health and climate benefits

By Sergio Sanchez / Published: August 18, 2021

We are facing an epic twin challenge: climate change and the air pollution crisis.

One way we can confront this challenge is by approaching transport solutions with both a climate and clean air lens – simultaneously targeting multiple pollutants that warm the planet and harm our health.

Transport, health and climate

Transport is one of the main sources of air pollution around the world, with direct effects on mortality as well as on respiratory and cardiovascular disease. These effects disproportionately impact vulnerable populations like children, the elderly and those with preexisting conditions. For example, a recent health impact assessment by Environmental Defense Fund estimated more than 2,500 lives are lost and 5,200 children develop asthma every year in the San Francisco Bay Area due to exposure to traffic-related pollution.

Transport-related sources of air pollution that damage our health are also sources of climate pollution. The extraction, transport and refining of hydrocarbons and the burning of gasoline, diesel or any other fuel to power our vehicles emits a cocktail of substances that harm both people and environmental health, as well as a mixture of greenhouse gases that heat the Earth.

With overlapping sources of pollution, the transportation sector presents a huge opportunity to achieve both climate and air pollution goals simultaneously.

The dangers of looking at climate without a clean air lens

Often climate and air quality goals are treated separately within a city or region, creating an artificial division and disconnected solutions. A city might have a climate plan and a distinct air pollution plan, run by different teams, which can inadvertently lead to harmful health outcomes.

For example, in the 1990s and 2000s in the European Union, climate policy encouraged drivers to switch to diesel vehicles. That policy was focused on reducing carbon pollution – without accounting for the significant amount of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution that diesel engines put into the air. According to the American Lung Association, NO2 is associated with increased inflammation of the airways that can cause:

  • Worsened cough and wheezing;
  • Reduced lung function;
  • Increased asthma attacks; and
  • Greater likelihood of emergency department and hospital admissions.

The pro-diesel policy led to a huge uptick in diesel-fueled cars on European roads, kicking off a new wave of air pollution that cities across the continent are still grappling with today. In London, for example, our research revealed how diesel pollution remains a huge source of the city’s air pollution, with diesel cars serving as the largest single source contributor to nitrogen oxides (NOx) pollution at London primary schools. NOx is a group of gases that includes NO2.

The benefits of an integrated approach

Fortunately, city leaders are beginning to address climate and air pollution goals simultaneously. For example, Medellin, Colombia launched an Integrated Air Quality Management Plan that addresses both climate pollutants and health-damaging air pollutants. The plan includes the implementation of a Low Emission Zone focused on reducing fine particulate matter pollution and the incorporation of 64 zero-emission buses to the city’s Bus Rapid Transit system.

Sustainable transport is not just about clean vehicles. The ‘Avoid-Shift-Improve framework’ from the SLOCAT Partnership is useful:

  • Avoid trips in motorized vehicles and diminish distances travelled by both passenger and goods, through policies such as home office and other travel demand management measures, transit-oriented development, and logistics optimization.
  • Shift travel to sustainable mobility modes, by prioritizing investments on walking, cycling and public transport infrastructure, complemented by promotion strategies to ensure their preference by passengers, as well as to prioritize the use of efficient freight alternatives such as railways.
  • Improve the environmental performance of transport modes through energy efficiency, and ultra-low and zero emission technology and fuel systems.

Integrated climate and clean air solutions means more livable cities where people can breathe clean air, safely walk and cycle and access better and affordable public transport. It means optimized freight logistics, options to reduce commuting whenever possible and technologies and measures to reduce air pollution and carbon emissions. Integrated solutions mean using less-polluting vehicles and creating connected cities in which people can enjoy family and friends, go to school, work and have fun – all within a short distance.

We can tackle our twin challenge of climate and air pollution, with transport playing a key role in reducing emissions, protecting people’s health and achieving multiple other benefits for our lives and the planet.

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