Global Clean Air

New EDF study shows unequal burden from truck-related pollution near warehouses

By Aileen Nowlan / Published: May 12, 2023

New research from EDF–Making the Invisible Visible: Shining a Light on Warehouse Truck Air Pollution—shows some 15 million people live within a half-mile of a warehouse in 10 states across the United States. The research demonstrates how the burden from truck-related air pollution exposure is not evenly distributed. In all of the states studied, warehouses and the trucks they attract are disproportionately located in Black, Latino, Asian or American Indian communities as well as areas of low wealth.

The boom in just-in-time delivery has resulted in a rise in warehouse-related truck traffic.

While warehouses and the trucks that deliver their goods became more common after the deregulation of the trucking industry, the explosion of just-in-time production and next-day delivery has brought more of these facilities much closer to people’s homes and in more communities than ever before. Understanding who is bearing the brunt of the health burdens associated with warehouse activity can help policymakers, businesses and communities implement smart, targeted policies to reduce emissions and protect health, keep kids in school and improve workforce productivity.

How we did it: Our teams identified warehouse location data and analyzed it through the lens of our Proximity Mapping framework that allowed us to learn demographic information about the people living near them.

Why it matters: More than 1 million children under 5 live within a half-mile of warehouses, making them more vulnerable to adverse health impacts like asthma. Their families are more vulnerable to adverse birth outcomes, dementia, heart disease and stroke, , because of the pollution from the trucks that serve warehouses.

The good news: Low-cost solutions are available today to reduce the pollution burden on these communities. Increased air quality monitoring and zero-emissions goods transport are all tools we can tap into now to reduce harm from truck pollution.

Meanwhile companies are investing in zero-emission delivery vans, yard trucks and even long-haul vehicles. States can help advance this trend through policies such as the Advanced Clean Trucks rule, which eases permitting requirements for charging infrastructure. The EPA’s recently proposed tailpipe regulations are designed to ensure that half of up to half of new urban delivery freight vehicles sold by 2032 will be zero-emitting. Indirect Source Review rules are a tool for state and local leaders to ensure warehouses don’t burden their neighbors.

But we can’t let up. Communities deserve to know what kinds of businesses are operating near their homes and schools, especially if they attract vehicles that are harmful to their health. We must demand greater transparency around warehouse locations and the extent of pollution generated at warehouses. Transparency around health costs and the cost of clean up is essential for fairness to those already impacted by warehouses, while alerting communities facing warehouse expansion to the threats posed by their new neighbors.

Also posted in Community Organizer, Concerned Citizen, Government Official/Policymaker, Public Health/Environmental Official / Comments are closed

Collaborating on clean air in Latin America and around the world

By Sergio Sanchez / Published: February 10, 2023

Many Latin American and Caribbean countries are implementing clean air solutions, but much more must be done to protect public health and slow climate change. An intensive two-day clean air workshop in Bogotá, Colombia made one thing clear: cooperation and collaboration are critical to scaling clean air solutions in Latin America, the Caribbean and the world.

Professionals from 15 countries attended the workshop, co-hosted by Environmental Defense Fund and the United Nations Environment Programme’s Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Participants shared best practices for clean air strategies aimed at improving public health and advancing climate action goals.

Key workshop themes:

Sensors, satellites and other advances in air quality technology are improving our ability to understand where pollution is coming from and who is being most harmed by it, which is critical for developing targeted clean air solutions.
Strengthening air quality management is key to supporting LAC climate, health, biodiversity and sustainable development goals.
Government leadership—supported by commitments from industry, academia, and civil society—is necessary for delivering cleaner, healthy air for the LAC region.
In order to secure the funding and public support needed to prioritize clean air solutions, more must be done to make the benefits of reducing air pollution more explicit.

Why it matters: Air pollution is the biggest environmental health threat in Latin America and the Caribbean. The UN has declared access to clean air a human right, but more than 500 million people in the LAC region breathe air that exceeds the World Health Organization’s guidelines for pollutants like nitrogen dioxide, fine particle pollution and ground-level ozone.

What’s next: A paper to be published in February highlights priorities for integrated air quality management in 33 LAC countries.

EDF and UNEP are collaborating to develop clean air solutions in LAC. In April, EDF, UNEP and the Climate & Clean Air Coalition will co-host a workshop in Bogotá on actions to reduce short-lived climate pollutants that harm people’s health and warm our planet. Later this year, EDF will select 10 projects to provide with technical assistance and will facilitate a resource mobilization effort to support their implementation. As the selected projects are developed and implemented, ongoing collaborative activities will be held across the region.

Also posted in Climate, Mexico, Monitoring, Partners / Comments are closed

Environmental justice groups bring Air Tracker to cities in Alabama and California

By Alex Franco / Published: December 12, 2022

EDF’s Air Tracker pollution monitoring tool is now live in two new cities—Birmingham, AL, and Vallejo, CA—as local groups ramp up efforts to understand how industrial activity impacts community air quality and engage both the public and area regulators.

Who’s using it: GASP, also known as the Greater-Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution, is working to learn more about the impacts of local steel, coke and cement facilities to inform public comments on Clean Air Act Title V permit renewals for these facilities. They also want to use the tool to alert regulators and inspectors of acute pollution events.

In Vallejo, the Citizen Air Monitoring Network (VCAMN) is actively monitoring particulate matter and wants to use Air Tracker to identify potential pollution sources. The local community is surrounded by a Phillips 66 refinery, NuStar Energy tank farm, Selby toxic slag site and the I-80 interstate highway. Multiple heavy and medium industrial sites—including a wastewater treatment plant, a quarry, a concrete recycling plant and a dry dock for ship maintenance and repair—also reside within the city boundaries.

“The Air Tracker tool from EDF is an incredible resource for small, local groups like GASP,” said GASP Executive Director Michael Hansen. “We can use it to gather information and form testable hypotheses about air quality issues in the communities we serve. We’re so grateful for the scientists who created the Air Tracker and look forward to using it in our advocacy work.”

Why it matters: We designed Air Tracker in part to help local communities learn about the air they’re breathing and hope to engage with more groups like these before bringing Air Tracker to new areas.

Go deeper: Learn more about how Air Tracker works, read the blog post about its development or watch a recent Q&A with the team behind it.

Also posted in Community Organizer, Concerned Citizen, Environmental Justice, Health, Partners, Science, USA / Comments are closed

Investigating air pollution inequity at the neighborhood scale

By Maria Harris / Published: November 16, 2022

Air pollution in the United States has declined dramatically over the last several decades, thanks to strong, protective clean air policies. And yet, unjust disparities in pollution exposure remain, with people of color in the United States burdened by higher levels of health-harming pollution than white people, regardless of income.

One cause of these pollution inequities is the historic legacy of disinvestment in communities of color through racist policies like redlining, along with discriminatory siting of highways and polluting industrial facilities. This results in health disparities and higher vulnerability to the health impacts of air pollution for people who live, work and play in close proximity to its sources.

Neighborhood-scale air quality data can provide a clearer picture of air pollution’s impacts

Air quality is often evaluated at the city or county scale, but pollution levels vary at a much finer scale, as do the demographics of neighborhoods shaped by residential segregation.

Variability in pollution and demographics across census tracts and blocks in Minneapolis compared to the full extent of Hennepin County, MN.

New legislation recently introduced to Congress would require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to advance development of hyperlocal air quality monitoring systems that will provide better, more localized data on pollution hotspots and inequity in pollution exposure. Importantly, the bill calls for monitoring “at a geographic scale that is (i) as small as practicable to identify communities; and (ii) not larger than that of a census tract.”

Why is this issue of geographic scale so important? The scale at which data is collected and analyzed can have major impacts on our understanding of pollution disparities. New research from EDF and partners explored whether it is possible to accurately estimate disparities in exposure to air pollution using larger scale data (for example, county averages) or whether finer scale data (census tract or smaller) is needed.

We found that for two important health-harming pollutants, fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), using state and county scale data led to substantial underestimates in US-wide racial/ethnic exposure disparities compared to those based on finer scale data—on average, using country vs. tract data would underestimate national exposure disparities by 20%.

Within individual cities, while census tract scale data was often adequate to characterize disparities, it was sometimes necessary to use even finer data – as small as a city block— to capture the full magnitude of inequity across neighborhoods.

This research adds further evidence to support what environmental justice advocates have long been telling policymakers: in order to identify the people and communities most exposed to harmful pollution, we need data and analysis at the scale of individual neighborhoods.

Data can direct funding to communities with the greatest need

Air pollution can vary across communities–even from block to block–and more data is needed to understand where air pollution comes from, who it’s impacting and who’s responsible for it. This is critical to reduce disparities in pollution exposures throughout the U.S.

EPA’s recent announcement of $53m in new funding for community-level air quality monitoring is a powerful step in support of the Justice40 Initiative, a federal commitment calling for our nation’s most overburdened communities to be prioritized for investment and reductions in pollution. Continued advancements in hyperlocal monitoring and analytical methods will help accurately identify those places, track progress and hold our institutions accountable for eliminating inequities in exposure to health-harming pollution.

Also posted in Environmental Justice, Health, Monitoring, Public Health/Environmental Official, Science, USA / Comments are closed

EDF joins global organizations calling on UNFCCC to strengthen action on short-lived climate pollutants to achieve climate goals

By Sergio Sanchez / Published: November 4, 2022

This blog is co-authored by Sergio Sanchez, Global Clean Air Policy Director and Julia Gohlke, Lead Senior Scientist, Climate & Health

Environmental Defense Fund supports the World Health Organization (WHO), The World Bank Group, the United Nations Environment Programme and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, which have appealed to the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Parties to expand the scope of pollutants under consideration and the methodology for Short-Lived Climate Pollutant (SLCP) assessment, and to strengthen the focus on sector approaches to climate action.”

WHO issued an October 31, 2022 policy brief about SLCPs (black carbon, methane,. tropospheric ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons), along with a group of other major international development organizations. The policy brief urges UNFCCC delegates gathering at COP 27 (November 6-18) to strengthen ambition, improve data reporting and encourage integrated health assessments of air pollution in each country’s nationally determined contribution (NDC). Furthermore, it calls for the full incorporation of SLCPs as an explicit agenda item under the UNFCCC.

Credit: Climate & Clean Air Coalition

Fast action to reduce SLCPs will result in quick benefits for climate change and for human health. SLCPs have historically not been comprehensively included in country emissions inventories and NDC mitigation pledges. Some countries, such as Mexico, have included SLCPs in their NDC, pledging to reduce black carbon by 51% by 2030. Through recognition of the immediate health gains realized with SLCP reductions, climate action ambitions can be strengthened at COP27.

Also posted in Climate, Government Official/Policymaker, Health, Partners, Public Health/Environmental Official, Science / Comments are closed

Historic investments in air quality monitoring can give communities a voice in clean air solutions

By Aileen Nowlan / Published: September 8, 2022

The United Nations General Assembly recently declared that access to clean air and a healthy environment is a universal human right, but far too many people live in communities overburdened by pollution. Together, new legislation and a historic investment in clean air present a tremendous opportunity to reduce pollution and improve public health in the U.S. And for the first time, communities have an opportunity to direct their tax dollars to local projects that can improve air quality.

We have hotspots when it comes to air quality – and they matter

Air pollution can vary across communities–even from block to block–and additional monitoring can shine a light on pollution hotspots. More data is needed to understand where air pollution comes from, who it’s impacting and who’s responsible for it.

Exposure to air pollution is not equally experienced, and the health harms fall most heavily on Black and Latino communities. The discriminatory practice of redlining, for example, played a role in determining land use throughout cities. Neighborhoods falsely labeled “definitely declining” or “hazardous” in the 1930s then experienced decades of depressed property values, which allowed polluters to move in.

Air pollution exposure leads to negative health impacts at every stage of life. New satellite analysis shows places where monitoring isn’t reflecting health burdens, and more data is urgently needed to better understand who is being impacted by air pollution.

New legislation and investments in air quality

The newly passed Inflation Reduction Act includes some powerful provisions that could deliver cleaner air to communities, as well as strengthen the impact of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The Inflation Reduction Act includes an historic $296m investment in air monitoring including:

$117.5m: grants for monitoring focused on community air toxics from industrial facilities beside fenceline communities
$50m: funds to expand multipollutant regulatory monitoring
$3m: grants focused on air quality sensors in low-income and disadvantaged communities
$25m: flexible Clean Air Act grants
$50m: air pollution monitoring in schools
$18m: U.S. Environemental Protection Agency enforcement to crack down on polluters
$32.5m: Council on Environmental Quality data collection

But that’s not all. For the first time, the federal government is welcoming air insights to influence how additional billions in funds are awarded.

$6b in new funding where air monitoring is an eligible activity to ensure funds are prioritized to disadvantaged communities ($3b for Environmental Justice Block Grants and $3b for Neighborhood access and equity grants)
$5.8b for advanced industrials, prioritized in a way that welcomes air and health insights: “projects which would provide the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people within the area in which the eligible facility is located”
$15b for greenhouse gas reductions, where disadvantaged communities are to be prioritized, creating an opportunity to include health and equity impacts in the forthcoming prioritization
$5b for climate pollution reduction grants, where disadvantaged communities are to be prioritized, creating an opportunity to include health and equity impacts in the forthcoming prioritization
$1.15b in additional funding for non-attainment areas ($400m for clean heavy-duty vehicles and $750m for ports)

There were also three bills recently introduced that, if passed, would support communities and EPA to better understand the air we breathe:

The “Technology Assessment for Air Quality Management Act,” introduced by Senator Markey and Representative McEachin, would require EPA to better enable the development and understanding of air pollution, health and equity insights at the community level.
The “Environmental Justice Air Quality Monitoring Act of 2021,” introduced by Senator Markey and Representative Castor, would direct $100m a year to hyperlocal air quality monitoring. It would enable monitoring of criteria air pollutants, hazardous air pollutants and greenhouses gases at a neighborhood scale in order to identify persistent elevated levels of air pollutants in environmental justice communities.
The “Public Health Air Quality Act of 2022,” reintroduced by Representative Blunt Rochester and Senator Duckworth, would strengthen air quality monitoring in communities near industrial sources of pollution, require a rapid expansion of the NAAQS or national ambient air monitoring network and deploy at least 1,000 new air quality sensors in communities.

Community-centered solutions

There are billions of dollars available, and it’s critical that state and local leaders design good projects that provide communities with data to better understand what’s in their air and advocate for a healthier environment. Solutions to environmental problems must center the communities that are most gravely damaged by pollution. That means a multi-stakeholder, solutions-oriented public engagement process.

This unprecedented investment in clean air can give communities a voice in their own local air quality solutions.

Also posted in Community Organizer, Concerned Citizen, Environmental Justice, Government Official/Policymaker, Health, Monitoring, Science, USA / Comments are closed

Introducing Air Tracker: A backward take on air quality to pinpoint sources

By Tammy Thompson / Published: June 13, 2022

EDF’s new Air Tracker tool allows us to better understand how local air pollution behaves, illuminating the path it takes from a likely source area. Because this tool allows us to look backwards at where pollution likely originated, it shifts the focus, putting communities and people first. Developing it required a shift in thinking.

Most atmospheric scientists focus on particle and air movement to help us predict what’s going to happen in the future. As a scientist working in air pollution, I wanted to use those same principles to look backwards so I could better understand how the emissions upwind of us mix and travel through the air, providing a better picture of what we’re breathing at any given time. This way, we don’t have to model every single source to know what’s important to who and when.

When I joined EDF in 2019, our scientists had already successfully shown how mobile air monitoring programs could highlight dramatic differences in pollution levels within individual city blocks. We wanted to go beyond showing the presence of pollution–and illustrate how it traveled to get there.

EDF and academia joined forces to leverage cutting edge insights.

To do this, we enlisted the help of John C. Lin, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Utah who developed the STILT model (which has since been incorporated into NOAA’s HYSPLIT model). He and his team were already working with our partners at Google Earth Outreach on a source apportionment project. We also tapped Paul Dille (who pulled in Randy Sargent and Amy Gottsegen) from CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, whose Smell PGH application allows users to better understand the pollution landscape in Allegheny County, PA. EDF colleagues Alex Franco, Mindi DePaola and Grace Tee Lewis provided invaluable insight and help as well.

Air Tracker runs on real-time, trusted, scientific models coupled with air pollution and weather data to help residents, scientists and cities learn more about the air they’re breathing. While Air Tracker is currently mapping fine particle pollution trajectories in Houston, Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh, we designed it to work with other primary pollutants anywhere in the world.

Air Tracker allows users to trace the path of likely sources of air pollution in Houston, Pittsburgh and Salt Lake City.

Filling current air monitoring gaps

Despite advances in low-cost mobile and stationary monitoring networks, existing air pollution tracking is still lacking. Currently designed to provide us with a solid understanding of background air pollution, the federal and state government system of monitors essentially smudges out the rough edges to create averages, which underemphasizes the very real, very harmful pollution burden many urban–often historically vulnerable–communities face.

Air Tracker can help counter that averaging effect. It allows users to click anywhere within their city map to see the most likely source area of the air they’re breathing at any given time.

Beyond the mapping application, it can improve air quality efforts in the following ways:

Placement of new monitors and networks

For communities that have long suspected they’ve been subjected to dirty air, Air Tracker can help them show that their air is influenced by nearby facilities. This can help them place monitors in specific locations to show just how much pollution they face and when it’s at its worst.

Cities wanting to get serious about air quality can also use the tool to design either stationary or mobile monitoring efforts. It can also help them answer questions about specific facilities that are known emitters, while spotting ones that may not have been on their radar.

Hold polluters accountable

Even in cities like Houston–where a lack of zoning has allowed industry to flourish unchecked, putting homes, schools and entire communities in the path of harmful pollution–it can be hard to pinpoint which facilities are most likely responsible for localized emissions. The models behind AIr Tracker’s source area development use wind and weather data to illuminate which pollution sources are the most likely culprits, giving regulators a powerful enforcement tool.

Putting communities and people first

Because Air Tracker can look backwards at pollution’s path, we can start with communities and people first when seeking to map exposure and its impacts. This can help correct for the current distortion of our current air pollution monitoring system, which wrongly assumes all people are exposed equally.

We know communities face an unequal burden from air pollution. Our hope is that Air Tracker will allow us to better capture and highlight those discrepancies so the people living there can get the relief they need and deserve. Read more about the methodology here.

Also posted in Academic, Community Organizer, Concerned Citizen, Houston, Salt Lake City, Science / Comments are closed

Meet Jennifer Hadayia, Executive Director, Air Alliance Houston

By lambrogi / Published: May 25, 2022

Jennifer Hadayia is the Executive Director of Air Alliance Houston, a nonprofit advocacy organization working to reduce the public health impacts from air pollution and advance environmental justice. With nearly 25 years of public health experience, Jennifer leads AAH’s mission and strategies, which include equity-centered research, community-based education and collaborative advocacy.

How did you first get interested in the public health impacts of air pollution?

I have worked in public health for close to 25 years, and most of that time has been at state and local health departments where I oversaw prevention-focused programs on infectious diseases, chronic disease, and even maternal and child health. I spent a lot of time reading and researching and trying to understand how to help people prevent poor health outcomes.

Even 25 years later, I still remember the day when my eyes were first opened. I was reading a report from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which explained that the number of heart attacks in a community could be predicted by the level of PM2.5 in the air. The impact of air quality on public health was mind-blowing! After years of trying to change individual behavior, it was clear that improving environmental conditions could have a far greater impact on people’s health at a population level.

Tell us about Air Alliance Houston’s work.

Air Alliance Houston was formed in the late 1980s as a merger between two groups of residents and parents concerned about smog. We’ve undergone some key evolutions and expansions in the last 30 years to embrace a population health perspective and a focus on environmental justice. Today our mission is to reduce the public health impact of air pollution through research, education, and advocacy.

We run several campaigns on specific air pollution issues and solutions such as problematic air permits, transportation planning that de-prioritizes Single Occupancy Vehicles (SOVs), connecting air pollution to climate action and community-level air monitoring. But it’s our approach to the work that I think makes us unique:

We inform the narrative about public health and air pollution through an environmental justice lens by uplifting community voices and experiences through participatory research and planning.
We work to build community knowledge and power through the diffusion of accurate information about air pollution, its sources, and how environmental decisions are made in Texas.
We create pathways for impacted and overburdened residents to engage in environmental decision-making and become advocates for their health.

Is there an upcoming project or initiative that Air Alliance Houston is working on that you’re especially excited about?

Yes! We’re planning to unveil two new initiatives this year that build on our past advocacy successes, so we can scale our impact even further.

The first is called AirMail, which is an enterprise mapping system that scrubs air permit applications to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for “bad actors” in Houston’s environmental justice neighborhoods. It then maps the facilities to a public web-based platform and notifies impacted residents via postcard. The map and the postcards explain the air quality impact of the permit (for example, a refinery expansion or a new residential concrete batch plant) and provide actions that residents can take, including connecting to our second new initiative, the Environmental Justice Leadership Lab (EJLL).

The EJLL is a consolidation of the various training and technical assistance options we provide to community members, so they have the tools and knowledge that they need to speak out against a problematic permit or engage in other environmental decision-making.

Both of these initiatives have been in the “proof-of-concept” phase, requiring extensive manual time and effort. With the automation of AirMail and the consolidation of our training and technical assistance resources under the EJLL-branded umbrella, we will be able to oppose even more polluters and to empower even more residents.

Why is clean air important to you personally?

I was born and raised in Houston. My father and grandfather were dock workers at the Port of Houston, surrounded every day by oil refineries, chemical facilities, tankers and trucks. Growing up, I remember that my father never left the house for work without two things: his cowboy boots and his asthma inhaler. He had debilitating asthma his entire life, and he died young, as did my grandfather, after many years of cancer and heart failure. I don’t think either of them or our family ever made the connection between where they worked and were exposed to poor air quality every day and their poor health and early death.

Knowing what I do now about air quality and health, I have little doubt there was a connection. I’m deeply proud that I now have the opportunity to work to improve health conditions for Ship Channel families like my own, and to do so with the talented and dedicated staff of clean air advocates at AAH.

Also posted in Environmental Justice, Health, Houston, Monitoring, Partners, USA / Comments are closed

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.

Also posted in Health, Science / Comments are closed

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.

Also posted in Health, Monitoring, Partners, Science / Comments are closed