2/16/03
Every day, 24 million U.S. children head to school on yellow buses, widely considered the safest way of transporting kids. That may be true in terms of accident rates, but not in terms of health: The vast majority of school buses run on diesel fuel, which can cause or aggravate asthma and other respiratory problems and may lead to the development of lung cancer. Now, the city of Boston is moving to protect its students by retrofitting school buses with new filtration systems that can eliminate 90 percent of diesel emissions. The Boston project is the largest in a New England-wide effort to clean up school buses; it is being paid for out of a $1.4 million fund created by the U.S. EPA with money won in a lawsuit against a Massachusetts waste-handling company. According to EPA estimates, the upgrades will eliminate at least 540 pounds of diesel particulate matter, 2,480 pounds of smog-causing hydrocarbons, and 17,380 pounds of carbon monoxide from the air every year. (Grist Magazine)
Boston Globe, Franco Ordonez, 16 Feb 2003
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/047/west/On_the_road_to_cleaner_air+.shtml

1/16/03
The EPA has recently released it's 2001 air quality report for New England. Read it: Full Text
Or go to their webpage: Ecosystems Assessment Unit http://www.epa.gov/region1/oeme/annualrpt.html

12/13/02
In December 1952, an acrid yellow smog settled on London and killed thousands of people. The catastrophe, known as the “Big Smoke,” was a turning point in efforts to clean up polluted air in cities across the Western world. It has taken half a century, though, for some of the fog to clear around the death toll from the roiling sulfurous clouds. New research suggests that the U.K. government might have underestimated the number of smog-related deaths by a factor of 3.
Read the Full Text

12/11/02
Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, have established a first-ever link between urban air pollution and genetic damage that can be passed on from generation to generation. In a study published in the most recent issue of the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, biologists at the university found that male laboratory mice that were placed downwind of two different steel mills in and around Hamilton for 10 weeks underwent one and a half to two times as many genetic mutations as a control group placed in a rural, mill-less area; the damaged genes were then passed on to the mice's offspring. The scientists warned that genetic mutations can increase the risk of cancer and birth defects and said human genes were likely to be affected in the same way, but stopped short of making a direct comparison between the fate of the lab mice and human health. (Grist Magazine)
Go to the NAS website
Read the Full Report

11/15/02
Electric power plants burn fuels that can produce harmful emissions, such as carbon dioxide, mercury, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide, which can pose human health and environmental risks. To assess the potential risks of meeting future electricity demand, congressional committees asked the General Accounting Ofiice (GAO) to (1) report on the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA’s) national and regional projections of such emissions by 2020, and (2) determine how the projections would change using alternative assumptions about future economic growth and other factors that advisers in these fields recommended. GAO also assessed the potential effects of future electricity demand on water demand and supply.
Go to the GAO website
Read the Executive Summary
Read the Full Report

11/15/02
After years of court battles, the U.S. EPA agreed yesterday to begin enforcing a stricter standard for ozone pollution that was developed by the Clinton administration in 1997. Industry groups such as the American Truckers Associations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to block the standard, but eventually lost their case on most grounds. With the Bush administration in power, it was left to environmental groups to coax the feds (in court) to establish a schedule to enforce the standard and thereby reduce smog levels around the country. The EPA will now designate cities that fail to meet the new standard by April 2004. At the moment, more than 300 communities in 38 states could be classified as "non-attainment" and be forced to implement pollution-cleanup plans. The EPA says the new standard for ozone and another one for particulates will prevent thousands of premature deaths, hundreds of thousands of cases of asthma, and 1 million cases of diminished lung function in children. (Grist Magazine)
Read a News Story Los Angeles Times, Gary Polakovic, 14 Nov 2002

11/13/02
The case for reduction of air pollution has been predicated primarily on the frequently observed relationship between pollution and mortality and morbidity. Because pollution control usually involves costs, a rational public policy will weigh the benefits against the costs. A recent study investigated another potential benefit from pollution reduction: namely, decreased use of medical care. They found a strong relationship between particulate matter and inpatient and outpatient care at ages 65-84 across 183 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). The relationship is statistically significant at a very high level of confidence even after the region and population size of the areas, education, real income, racial composition, use of cigarettes, and obesity are controlled for.
Read a news story
Read the article

11/4/02
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the availability of a new report, the Asthma Research Strategy. The Asthma Research Strategy serves to guide the planning of EPA research efforts led by the Office of Research and Development (ORD) to address the significant issues of exposures, effects, risk assessment, and risk management of environmental pollutants relevant to asthma. The report highlights significant information gaps in each of these areas, prioritizes the research needs, and proposes advisory guidelines indicating how available resources can be utilized to advance scientific knowledge and control environmental factors that contribute to asthma prevalence and severity.
Connect to the EPA's Office of Research and Development
Read the report

10/23/02
Cleaner Air Linked to Better Health
Over the past two decades, a large body of research has established the link between air pollution and an increased risk of death due to cardiopulmonary disease. But a new study, published in The Lancet, examined the long term health benefits of the 1990 ban of coal sales in Dublin, Ireland, is among the first to yield tangible evidence that public policy interventions can reverse that trend.
Read a news story
Read the Lancet article

10/20/02
People Living or Working Near Major Freeways Are Exposed to 30 Times the Concentration of Dangerous Particles From Motor Vehicle Emissions
Read the Press Release

9/25/02
NOAA's Office of Global Programs has agreed to fund our research proposal The Effect of Air Quality and Weather on Human Health in New England: Assessing Vulnerability and Generating Decision Relevant Information
Read the Press Release