Global Clean Air

Meet Jim Morris, Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief, Public Health Watch

By lambrogi / Published: July 8, 2022

Jim Morris is the Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief of Public Health Watch, a nonpartisan investigative news site focused on the prevention of illness, injury and premature death. Public Health Watch’s coverage of health inequities, environmental injustice and the impact of pollution on communities includes this in-depth look at toxic air pollution in Harris County, Texas. 

How did you first get interested in public health?

I got into journalism in 1978, and I became interested in the petrochemical industry while working in Galveston, Texas, near the chemical plants and refineries along the Houston Ship Channel. I spent nine years as an investigative projects reporter with the Houston Chronicle in the 1990s, and that’s where I really decided that this should be the focus of my career: toxic exposures in the workplace and communities. 

I felt like most journalists weren’t paying attention to these issues. When something blew up, of course, that was front-page news. But the rest of the time, workers were dying of cancer, community members were dying prematurely, kids had asthma, and nobody was paying attention. People would say, “That’s just the way it is.” I never thought that should be the way it is. Laws are supposed to protect workers and the public.

You launched Public Health Watch last summer, and your series on air pollution in Texas, and specifically this feature on the fight to hold polluters accountable in Harris County, tells a powerful story about the people exposed to the health harms of air pollution. What are you hoping to accomplish with this site?

There are other nonprofit news outlets that are great at what they do, but we want to go much deeper. We’re not going to run away from a 10,000-word story if we think that’s what it takes to get someone engaged in a topic. Especially for something like air pollution–we’re in a good position to connect the dots and go deeper. 

In the Harris County piece, we connected voter suppression with pollution control, when most wouldn’t necessarily make that connection. The ability to choose your local elected officials really can have an impact on things like environmental enforcement. It’s a cliché, but it’s about trying to go much deeper than the usual “this happened yesterday.”

We’re going to stay focused on this topic of Texas air pollution at least for the rest of this year. We have four to six substantial investigative pieces in the works. This doesn’t include shorter, newsier pieces.  

What role can investigative journalism play in bringing about change for communities most impacted by air pollution?

Well, with this story, we don’t know yet. But just looking at social media–the story was being shared and liked by people we had never heard of before. People from all over the world. It was pretty remarkable and indicated to us that we had struck a nerve or done something beyond the ordinary. And a Texas state representative from Houston said she was “deeply disturbed” by our findings and would propose legislation next year to crack down on polluters.

We’re not expecting miracles here. Rarely do you see immediate impact; I’ve done projects where I’ve found out years later that something I wrote led to a policy change. The more of these stories we do, however, the greater the chances of impact.

What gives you hope?

People like [Harris County Attorney] Christian Menefee and [Harris County Judge] Lina Hidalgo–young elected officials of color who genuinely care about the people in fenceline communities. They’re doing what they can to crack down on chronic air pollution. Those two are genuinely inspiring. If you get enough people like them holding local and, ultimately, state office, that’s when you’ll see real change.

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

Houston may exceed national standards for harmful fine particulate matter, new monitoring shows

By Fern Uennatornwaranggoon / Published: May 4, 2022

Big Gaps in Air Monitoring 

Air quality in the U.S. has improved tremendously over the last 50 years thanks to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970, but not all neighborhoods have benefited from these improvements. The law mandated the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) and to determine which areas of the country meet the standards and which do not, setting the foundation for air quality management in the U.S. 

Air quality management agencies and EPA rely on data from regulatory monitoring networks that exist across the country. However, these monitoring networks are designed to give region-wide pollution averages, and monitors are often sparsely located. For the 25 largest U.S. urban areas with continuous regulatory monitoring, there are an average of only 2 to 5 monitors per million people. Some of these monitors are intentionally sited away from emissions sources to capture background pollution levels; the trade-off is that they can miss critical pollution hotspots, especially near major sources of pollution. 

This is exactly what happens in Houston, TX. High levels of harmful particulate matter (PM2.5) have for far too long gone undetected. One such area is the Settegast neighborhood, northeast of downtown Houston, where community members have long voiced concern about air pollution from a nearby railyard, concrete batch plants and metal recyclers. Finally, in 2019, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) recommended adding a PM2.5 continuous monitor to the Settegast neighborhood at a site on North Wayside Drive to “improve population exposure coverage,” which EPA approved in the same year. At last, the monitor was deployed in May 2021.

Risk of Nonattainment in Houston

Since the deployment, the new monitor has consistently shown some of the highest PM2.5 levels in the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria (HGB) region. The average PM2.5 concentration over the past 11 months exceeds the current annual NAAQS threshold of 12µg/m3, threatening to push the region into nonattainment status for this pollutant. (Table below shows mean concentration = 12.3µg/m3 from May 3, 2021 to March 10, 2022) 

Annual Average PM2.5 Concentrations at Wayside, as of March 20, 2022. Source: https://www.tceq.texas.gov/cgi-bin/compliance/monops/24hr_annual.pl

The review process currently underway at EPA to reexamine the NAAQS for particulate matter is expected to result in stronger, more health-protective thresholds. It is expected that EPA will make the final ruling on PM NAAQS in Spring 2023, which will trigger a designation process for many areas of the country. A more health-protective standard will make it more difficult for the HGB region to remain in attainment unless actions are taken now to reduce emissions.

A nonattainment designation is costly for a region, both in terms of direct costs of pollution controls and the potential larger economic losses from lower business activities and lost investment opportunities. One analysis estimates that exposure to particle pollution in the nine-county metropolitan Houston area contributed to more than 5,000 premature deaths in 2015 and nearly $50 billion in economic damages.

In addition to the annual trend, the Wayside monitor also shows high short-term spikes in PM2.5 concentrations. So far in 2022, the four peak days of PM2.5 concentrations at this monitor are some of the highest in the HGB region, with peak 24-hour concentrations ranging from 22 to 27µg/m3. (See diagram below. Wayside measurements are shown in yellow dots.)

Four Highest 24-Hour PM2.5 Concentrations in 2022 as of March 20, 2022. Source: https://www.tceq.texas.gov/cgi-bin/compliance/monops/pm25_24hr_4highest.pl

Where Is Pollution Coming From?

The Wayside monitor sits ~700ft east of the Union Pacific railyard. Traditionally, railyards and the associated locomotives and drayage truck activity are a major source of particulate matter. Other emission sources adjacent to the site include a metal recycler, a concrete batch plant and several nearby truck yards. Flanked between the railyard and North Wayside Drive is a community that includes a large apartment village, a retirement home, a high school and churches. This railyard is also known to have used creosote to preserve wooden ties, which created an underground contaminated plume that has drifted beneath people’s homes.

EDF and partners are developing a tool that would allow us to investigate the sources of emissions that are measured by regulatory monitors like the one on North Wayside. Early data shows high pollution readings that can be traced to multiple industrial locations in that area. Data also shows that on three of the four highest readings in 2022, the source area is to the west of the monitor around the UP railyard. 

What Should We Do?

It behooves the region to come together now to address this issue before a nonattainment designation is made. EDF and others are reaching out to TCEQ, the Houston-Galveston Area Council, industry groups and community organizations to identify best-management practices that could be deployed to help reduce the elevated PM2.5 emissions.

At the request of EDF and community groups, TCEQ now plans to install a speciation monitor at Wayside to better evaluate the sources on an ongoing basis. While a more thorough analysis is needed to reach any conclusions about potential sources, there are near-term actions that can be taken to protect communities’ health and to prevent Houston from exceeding the NAAQS threshold. 

  • TCEQ should be requiring the railyard, local metal recycling and concrete plants to adopt best management practices. For instance, requiring anti-idling devices be installed on locomotives and upgrading to cleaner engines could significantly reduce emissions at the Union Pacific railyard.
  • Increasing anti-idling enforcement on main truck routes and around truck-attracting facilities can also lower truck emissions in the near-term.
  • TCEQ could also require industrial facilities such as metal recyclers to adopt best practices to minimize both primary and fugitive emissions, including adoption of abatement and control equipment.
  • There is a need and opportunity for broad adoption of zero-emission equipment which is readily available and affordable, as costs have come down significantly in the last few years.  

EDF will continue to facilitate discussions among stakeholders on this issue and support efforts to minimize pollution and help position Houston to meet the current–and future–national air standard to protect people’s health.

 

Also posted in Concerned Citizen, Health, Monitoring, Public Health/Environmental Official, Science, Texas, USA / Comments are closed

Global Clean Air Blog: Houston students thriving during lockdown by learning about air quality

By Kevin Tuerff / Published: January 26, 2021

 

By Shannon Thomas, Project Manager, EDF Environmental Youth Council Program

2019 photo: Houston Environmental Youth Council

Ask parents and educators about the spring 2020 semester, and they’ll likely tell you similar versions of the same story: students were just hitting their strides with various projects and the end of the academic year was in sight. Then it all came to a screeching halt.

The same was true for the students I work with in EDF’s Environmental Youth Council, an educational program for high-school-age youth from communities in Houston that are most affected by high levels of air pollution.

Pasadena Memorial High School teens had learned about the harmful impacts of engine idling as a part of the program. So when a few of our students noticed their classmates leaving their cars running while watching videos on their phones or doing their makeup in the mornings, they were rightfully concerned. They prepared a proposal, went to their principal, and convinced him to adopt a no idling policy in the student parking lot. The students purchased signage and began developing a marketing campaign to support the new policy just as everything shut down.

The signs went into a closet, and I wondered what would become of our program and its 30 students. One of the hallmarks of this program, which started in 2019, has been the creative ways we engage our students. What would happen without the trips to Washington, DC, the hands-on experiments, bus rides to the top of a 200-foot pile of garbage and engaging guest speakers?

Light has a funny way of pushing through darkness, and teenagers can still surprise me.

Growing while meeting virtually

Despite going fully virtual this academic year, we didn’t just keep our Council going; we nearly doubled its size, to 55 students. Teens from Pasadena Memorial, Pasadena High School, and Raul Yzaguirre School for Success in the East End meet online to learn not only about environmental health and science, but also civic leadership, thanks to grant funding from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

By going fully virtual, we’ve actually been able to engage more students. And while the teaching strategies have changed, we’re still able to educate them about the science of air quality and the physical impacts of pollution on the body. 

We’re also hopefully inspiring them to become environmental leaders in their communities, which, due to their proximity to oil and gas refineries, chemical facilities and other industrial sites, are disproportionately impacted by pollution. 

Developing new environmental leaders

One graduate of the program who recently moved away told me she didn’t realize that the odor she smelled every day wasn’t normal. By teaching these students about what’s going on around them and the levers of power that can change it, I hope they’ll develop into leaders who will fight for cleaner air in their communities. 

Houston ship channel

Houston ship channel

So while we haven’t been able to do our boat tour down the Houston Ship Channel this year and won’t be able to visit local Congressional representatives at the U.S. Capitol, I’m excited that such an engaged group of students will emerge from this pandemic with a deeper understanding of the air they breathe and the change they can make. 

 

Read other Global Clean Air blogs here. 

 

Also posted in Academic, Health / Comments are closed