Air pollution can improve health
A One-Dimensional Baby: Dolores Perales’s Asthma and Her Mother’s Inhaler
Dolores Perales was 10 years old the first time she couldn’t take a breath and thought she was going to die. She knows it was early April, when softball season started, and she was playing outside. She remembers that she has a tightness in her chest and a feeling of panic. After it happened repeatedly, her mother took her to a doctor, who diagnosed her with asthma. “Ever since then I just had my inhaler,” she says. One of my brothers had asthma, and my cousin did the same. So many of the kids in my classroom had asthma,” Perales says. As a child, you start to think this is normal.
Source: Fixing Air Pollution Could Dramatically Improve Health Disparities
What’s the problem with air pollution in Detroit? How much does it matter when you’re exposed to it? The case of an urban Detroit skyline
Equally normal, as far as Perales was concerned, was a Detroit skyline hazed by the fume-spewing Marathon petroleum refinery. The Ambassador Bridge, the busiest crossing between the U.S. and Canada, is usually filled with idling, diesel- fueled trucks. Both were within a few miles of her home.
It was not until Perales began traveling with her middle school softball, volleyball and basketball teams that she realized the chemical-laced air she knew so well was not the norm for everyone. Perales took a 30-minute drive from her own neighborhood to meet the quiet streets. The suburbs were more striking to her than the greenery. “It smelled different,” she says. It didn’t smell bad when I was there.
Efforts to learn more about air-pollution risks have led to increased understanding of the inequity of exposure. As Susan Anenberg, an environmental health expert at the George Washington University, says, “We can now get down to a pretty granular scale when thinking about who receives the health benefits of improved air quality and who is still having to deal with the repercussions of poor air quality.”
The study says air pollution caused about 6.7 million premature deaths in 2019. The nation with the highest number of these deaths was India. As part of its efforts to address this threat, in 2015 the Indian government issued a report that declared air pollution a national health concern. The first of its kind from a low- and middle-income country, the plan laid out in the report states that exposure to emissions that matters, as well as the people who are exposed to it. The question of equity comes up when you do that, he says.
Smoke from coal fires became a sign of increased wealth in the 19th century, as the city and industries expanded. Air pollution around the globe is caused by coal and oil. Economic growth taints the air.
In some places, smoke was considered an aesthetic problem but not necessarily a medical one. Most people were “only concerned with that which was visible,” says historian Awadhendra Sharan of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, India. “There’s this long-standing view that there is something aesthetically wrong with a polluted atmosphere.”
Air pollution endangers almost every aspect of human health. PM 2.5 particles are 2.5 micron or less, that are the worst threat. They can cause or contribute to respiratory diseases including asthma, COPD and lung cancer. These minute particles slip through layers of lung tissue to enter blood vessels and affect major organs such as the heart, kidneys and liver. They cause inflammation that causes a range of diseases, including heart disease, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. “It seems as though pretty much every organ system can be affected by pollution,” says environmental health researcher Michael Brauer of the University of British Columbia and the University of Washington.
Making policies that protect and prioritize the health of vulnerable people is not easy. In New Delhi, for instance, air quality is especially awful during certain winter months because of local weather conditions and emissions from agricultural burning as farmers clear fields for planting. To try to protect people’s health, government authorities identified a set of steps they hoped would reduce toxic air exposure in the nation’s capital. When PM2.5 levels hit a certain mark, schools are to shut down so children can stay indoors. Vehicles are only allowed to drive on paved roads if they want to avoid throwing excess dust into the air. Private construction activities—at homes, malls, and other nonessential sites—must halt to protect workers and reduce the amount of fine particles flying into the air from cement grinding or stone cutting.
It can be hard to implement policies that work in rich countries. Pallavi Pant, a global health researcher at the Health Effects Institute in Boston, points to car emissions as one example. In Kenya and Uganda, the demand for personal vehicles has led to an increase in imported used cars from countries such as Japan. The imported cars were designed to meet emissions-control standards for high-income countries, so they’re built using the newest catalysts and pollution fighting technology. Poorer countries can be hard to maintain those cars due to locating and paying for parts. These components have been removed completely by importers as a result of this.
But top-down approaches may still be effective, Pant says. In India, for instance, regulators have begun to enforce more stringent standards for vehicle emissions, an approach shown to motivate the auto industry to find ways to meet those standards so it can continue selling cars. The results from this strategy are not yet visible, Pant says, because it takes time for an older fleet of vehicles to be replaced by new, cleaner ones. “We’ll continue to see improvements in the vehicle fleet,” she says.
Recognizing this problem has prompted some low- and middle-income countries to make changes. Off-grid solar-powered systems have been focused on providing electricity in rural areas. As of 2021, nearly 50 percent of the country had access to electricity, with much of that a result of solar power. India, too, is working to increase the amount of electricity it gets from renewable sources. In May of this year the Indian government announced plans to focus on renewable energy over the next 5 years and put off coal-burning power plants. It is not a case that places are worse and never improve. We really do see improvement.
Sustainable Living – A Sustainable Approach towards a More Sustainable World, Reducing Heart Disease, Cardiovascular Diseases, and Health Risks through Planting
Another way to offset the health effects of pollution and simultaneously clean up some of our environmental mess is through planting trees. Exposure to PM2.5 can significantly reduce blood flow to the brain, which influences stroke risk. A study that followed more than 9000 people in Beijing found that living in greenery mitigated potential harm. Plants may also be able to help reduce heart disease risk.
It’s one of the deadliest tropical diseases. It is the most dangerous condition because people with the least resources are less likely to protect themselves from being bitten and less likely to access the best care. New treatments can save lives and limbs.
The climate crisis is changing the range and prevalence of many diseases. Valley fever has expanded into new locations, and those working outdoors in construction sites and dusty agricultural fields are the most at risk. White people are less likely to contract the illness and often experience more severe symptoms, but Latino, Asian and Indigenous people are more likely to contract it.
Better understanding and a fresh approach are required for solutions to work. Innovative researchers are devising healthier buildings, designing clinical trials with community involvement, and monitoring the air and water to empower people to protect themselves. They are creating a movement toward a more livable and more just world.
