According to a recent report, a decade of cleanup measures to reductions in emissions have paid off in cutting levels of deadly particle and ozone pollution. (Photo courtesy of the NREL)
A new report finds some of the cities with the worst air pollution are breathing a little easier. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A new report finds some of the cities with the worst air pollution are breathing a little easier. Lester Graham reports.
The American Lung Association’s annual “State of the Air” report uses the latest data from 2006, 2007 and 2008. That’s just before the economy really tanked. Janice Nolan is with the American Lung Association. She says even though factories were still running at full tilt, improvement in air quality was seen across the nation. Particularly in cities the group watches closely.
“We’ve tracked some of the 25 most polluted cities each year to see how they’re faring and in each case we saw significant improvement in most of the cities in those twenty-five.”
Nolan says cleaner diesel fuel and new less polluting trucks… along with some improvements at coal-burning power plants helped. But she says other dirtier coal-burning plants and older diesel trucks continue to pollute the air.
Researcher Kevin Keener has been working on a device that turns the air inside food packaging into ozone (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)
Researchers are working overtime to find ways to kill dangerous bacteria in food such as Salmonella and E. coli. Rebecca Williams reports one researcher has found a new way to kill bacteria:
Transcript
Researchers are working
overtime to find ways to kill dangerous bacteria in food such as Salmonella and E. coli. Rebecca Williams reports one researcher has found a new way to kill bacteria:
Food processors expose produce like lettuce to ozone for a few seconds or minutes to kill bacteria.
Kevin Keener has been working on a device that turns the air inside food packaging into ozone.
Keener is a food process engineer at Purdue University.
He attaches the device to the outside of food packages – like a bag of lettuce – and applies electrodes that send high voltage through the bag.
“Visually it’s very Frankenstein-ish. It’s a safe process, there is a high voltage, but it’s similar to a spark you’d get with an electric fence.”
Keener says the ozone spends more time with the food so it kills more bacteria.
There’s a problem though – in some of their tests the device turned green spinach white.
So there are a few kinks to work out. But food companies are interested and we might see this commercialized in a year or two.
This commonly-prescribed albuterol asthma inhaler will
soon be a relic of America's medical past. The federal
government fears the device's chlorofluorocarbon-based
(CFC) propellent harms the ozone layer. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
We usually expect environmental
regulations to make us healthier in the
long run. Well, there’s one coming down
that some people aren’t so sure about.
Reporter Shawn Allee says it has to do
with propellants in asthma medicine:
Transcript
We usually expect environmental
regulations to make us healthier in the
long run. Well, there’s one coming down
that some people aren’t so sure about.
Reporter Shawn Allee says it has to do
with propellants in asthma medicine:
Maureen Damitz struggles with asthma.
She’s got it and two of her kids do, too.
But fighting it is also a career.
Damitz is with the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago – it’s the
nerve center for asthma issues in her area.
She says recently, pharmacies have been running out of a familiar asthma inhaler.
“Our phones started ringing off the walls months ago. All of a sudden patients
started getting these new inhalers, and no one was prepared for that.”
The old-standby has been the albuterol inhaler – it’s for quick relief.
Damitz says there is a cheap generic, but it’s got a propellant with Chloro-fluoro-carbons
or CFCs.
And, the government’s banning CFC albuterol inhalers.
Damitz says some patients will miss them.
“When you’re spraying it, it comes out with quite a blast.”
(puff, puff)
“People mistake that as, ‘it forces it into my lungs’; it doesn’t, it’s just the type of
propellant.”
Three new inhalers have the same medicine but a different propellant, known as HFA.
“The new HFA comes out much softer and its warmer when it comes out. They
mistake that as, ‘Oh, my medication doesn’t work.’”
Damitz says studies show the new inhalers work just as well or better than old ones, but
some patients report just the opposite.
Regardless, no one will have a choice soon. By January, no pharmacy can sell albuterol
inhalers with CFC propellents.
Why?
“Originally it arose from the concern that CFC’s were damaging the atmosphere.”
Dr. Nicholas Gross is an asthma specialist.
He says CFCs used to be in many things – refrigerators, air conditioners, and asthma
inhalers.
But CFCs deplete the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere. That lets more solar radiation
through and causes skin cancer.
The government banned CFCs in most products.
But drug companies got exemptions and were slow to develop alternative propellants.
In 2005, the government asked a medical panel to speed things up.
“They were concerned nothing much was changing. It looked like companies were
going to keep claiming exemptions indefinitely, so they asked what we would
recommend they should do about that.”
Gross and other panelists found three competing albuterol inhalers with new propellents.
So, they recommended a ban start next year. Now, Dr. Gross regrets that ban.
“One thing I don’t think anybody paid enough attention to was the fact that it was
going to be much more expensive in the HFA version than the CFC version.”
CFC-based albuterol inhalers cost about thirteen bucks a pop.
New HFA ones cost three times that.
There won’t be a generic inhaler with the new propellant until 2010.
Dr. Gross worries some patients will go without.
“I think it’s very difficult for the FDA to turn around and rescind itself. It means
somebody made a mistake and in government that’s not something you’re allowed
to admit.”
But, the FDA is sticking with the ban.
One asthma expert is more at ease with the transition.
He’s Paul Greenberger – head of the Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.
He says if patients puff through new, expensive albuterol inhalers quickly – there might
be something wrong with how they’re using them.
“We don’t want people using them everyday if they can help it. We have to take a
look at their overall asthma control – do they need better therapy, frankly than
these albuterol inhalers?”
Of course, that might mean a doctor’s visit and new meds.
Dr. Greenberger says all of this is expensive, but he still supports a ban on CFC albuterol
inhalers.
He says if patients get treatment that’s also better for the atmosphere, well, that’s
priceless.
A layer of smog over upstate New York at sunset on October 21, 2000 (Photo courtesy of the Earth Science and Image Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center)
A new report says smog can contribute to
premature death. Rebecca Williams reports:
Transcript
A new report says smog can contribute to
premature death. Rebecca Williams reports:
Ozone is a main ingredient in smog – it comes from cars and smokestacks and
other sources.
The National Academies of Science report says ozone can send people to the
hospital, and even lead to earlier death. That’s because ozone can damage
your lungs and make it harder to breathe. It can be especially bad for
kids, older people, and people with lung diseases.
Dan Greenbaum is the president of the Health Effects Institute. He worked
on the report.
“It just reinforces the risks of exposure to ozone are there, they’re
significant and people really should be paying attention to alerts when
there are high ozone days.”
Ozone alerts mean even healthy people should avoid working or exercising
outdoors during the day.
The EPA recently tightened the ozone standards. But the agency’s scientific
advisory committee said the standards should be tightened even more.
Environmental advocates are calling for tighter controls on the farm pesticide methyl bromide, after finding out there’s more of the chemical sitting around in places such as railroad tank cars. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
Environmental advocates are calling for tighter controls on the farm pesticide methyl bromide, after finding out there’s more of the chemical sitting around in places such as railroad tank cars. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Under an international agreement made during the 1980’s, the US is supposed to be phasing out use of methyl bromide. The chemical is linked to potential health risks and destruction of the ozone layer.
But it was recently learned that the size of the US stockpile of methyl bromide is larger than previously revealed. Now the Bush Administration has promised the US would try to cut production of methyl bromide while reducing the stockpile.
David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council says it’s now up to the EPA to live up to that promise in upcoming regulations.
“The EPA needs to cut that production allowance, because the stockpiles are there to meet the needs.”
The EPA says it’s trying to keep a “strategic reserve” of methyl bromide, while a lot of money is being spent on developing alternative pesticides.
The circle of trees, as seen from the outside. The white pipe seen near the top delivers either normal air, one, or both of the experimental gasses to the trees. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)
Inside one of the circle of trees. Each flag marks the site of another experiment under way. More than 100 researchers take part in various experiments among the trees. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)
Two researchers on the Aspen Face project: Dave Karnosky, left and Neil Nelson, right. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)
In northern Wisconsin, they’re finding that gasses such as carbon dioxide and ozone will change the makeup of what survives in a future forest. An open air experiment called the Aspen FACE project has been testing trees in elevated levels of ozone and carbon dioxide for ten years. But they don’t know whether the forest can change as quickly as the climate does. The GLRC’s Bob Kelleher has more:
Transcript
In northern Wisconsin, they’re finding that gasses such as carbon dioxide and ozone will
change the makeup of what survives in a future forest. An open air experiment called the
Aspen FACE project has been testing trees in elevated levels of ozone and carbon dioxide
for ten years. But they don’t know whether the forest can change as quickly as the
climate does. The GLRC’s Bob Kelleher reports:
We’re standing inside a circle of trees: paper birch, aspen, and sugar maples, maybe 15
feet high. And they’re surrounded by a ring of large white pipes spraying the trees with
gasses – that’s the high pitched noise.
Among 12 different circles of trees, some get carbon dioxide, or ozone, or a
combination. These are the very gasses believed responsible for changing the climate –
they hold in the earth’s warmth, forcing surface temperatures higher.
Dave Karnosky, with Michigan Technological University, heads the Aspen FACE project,
near Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Karnosky’s trying to predict how these gasses will affect
the northern forest:
“Those species, with aspen and aspen mixed with birch and maple make up a huge
portion of our northern forests, and there was a lot of interest by industry as well as to
what’s going to happen in the future as these greenhouse gasses continue to build up in
the atmosphere.”
Even ten years ago, when this project started, it was clear that carbon dioxide and ozone
levels were on the increase.
Ozone is destructive. It’s bad for people and for plants. Carbon dioxide, on the other
hand, is what we exhale, and what green plants need to grow. Both gasses have been on
the increase, largely due to burning fossil fuels such as in coal-fired power plants and in
cars and trucks. Karnosky says he knew aspen were quite responsive to both CO2 and
ozone:
“We weren’t sure much about the interaction, but we were sure interested in what would
happen with that, because those two pollutants are both increasing at about the same rate
in the atmosphere.”
The Aspen FACE project has shown that most trees grow well when exposed to carbon
dioxide, and most do poorly in ozone. With the gasses combined, bad effects tend to
offset the good ones, but results vary greatly between the different kinds of trees, and
even within a single species of trees, like aspen.
Karnosky has found there’s a tremendous range of genetic variation even among the
relatively few trees they’ve tested. That variation makes clear predictions difficult:
“It’s very tough to make a single prediction for species or individuals within species,
there’s so much genetic variation. So that’s been one of the, I think, kind of the highlights
from what I see in terms of a bit of a surprise for us.”
That genetic variation could be the forest’s salvation. Karnosky thinks that if some
aspens, for example, die off from ozone, maybe others will do okay, and fill the forest
back in. Sugar maples, which seem more tolerant of ozone, could replace some aspen
and birch. Then, the mix of trees in the forest would change, but the forest would
survive.
But, there could be problems if the air changes the forest too quickly. Neil Nelson is a
plant physiologist with the US Forest Service. Nelson says the region’s paper and pulp
industries rely heavily on aspen trees. He’s uncertain how quickly the forest, and forest
industry, can respond if aspen begins to die off – and how long it might take for other
trees to grow in.
“One of my colleagues has said, you know, the key issue may be whether things change
too fast for our society and economy to adjust to, and I think that’s an open question.
There seems to be great plasticity, and we aren’t quite there in terms of predicting from a
forest management standpoint what these results mean.”
It takes time to grow trees, maybe too much time if the climate suddenly shifts. The
Aspen FACE project has already provided regulators preliminary data on ozone. It could
become the basis for future pollution law. But, even ten years into the Aspen Face
project, there’s still a lot more data to harvest among the aspen and hardwoods.
A new federal study finds ground level ozone in the air can cause lung damage and lead to premature death at levels the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe. The new study was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the EPA itself. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports:
Transcript
A new federal study finds ground level ozone in the air can cause lung
damage and lead to premature death at levels the Environmental
Protection Agency considers safe. The new study was funded by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the EPA itself. The
GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports:
Ozone is the major ingredient of smog. Ground level ozone can make
asthma worse and can even cause permanent lung damage.
A new study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives says the
EPA’s current standards aren’t good enough. The authors say breathing
ozone at levels the EPA considers safe can increase the risk of premature
death. The authors say if there is a safe level of ozone, it’s at very low
concentrations… far below current EPA standards.
But there’s a problem. Cities already have trouble meeting the current
EPA standards. The EPA says more than 100 million Americans live in
areas that exceed what the EPA considers safe.
The EPA is reviewing the scientific evidence on ozone to decide whether
to revise its standards further.
The ozone layer helps to protect Earth from UV radiation. (Photo courtesy of NASA)
A new study shows the ozone layer decline is leveling off. Ozone 10 to 20 miles above the Earth protects the planet from the harmful effects of UV radiation. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
A new study shows the ozone layer decline is leveling off. Ozone 10 to 20 miles above the Earth protects the planet from the harmful effects of UV radiation. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
The study says a leveling off in the ozone layer decline follows a 1987 international agreement. It established controls for chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. The chemicals were used in air conditioning, refrigeration, and industrial cleaning.
Scientists say CFCs are the primary source of ozone destruction. Betsy Weatherhead is with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She says despite the encouraging news, the ozone layer is still depleted.
“That means high UV radiation, which means that we still have to be vigilant about protecting our skin, protecting our eyes, and taking special care with our children.”
The study observed small increases in the ozone layer in some regions, but researchers say because CFCs stay in the atmosphere for decades, it may be forty years before the ozone layer is significantly repaired.
A new study takes into account the resources used to grow the corn that is used to make ethanol. (Photo by Ian Dun)
Despite its political popularity, a study suggests ethanol from corn is not as environmentally friendly as its supporters claim. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Despite its political popularity, a study suggests ethanol from corn is not as environmentally
friendly as its supporters claim. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.
A new study published in the journal “Critical Reviews in Plant Science” shows producing ethanol
from corn uses more energy than the fuel provides.
Researchers at the University of California-Berkeley looked at the amount of energy used to plant,
fertilize, harvest and process corn into ethanol. Some studies have shown a net energy gain, but
this research takes into account the water and nutrients used to grow corn as well as the pollution
caused by fertilizers and pesticides.
The researchers say that makes this study a more accurate assessment of energy consumed to produce
ethanol. Supporters of ethanol say it’s the most environmentally-friendly replacement for MTBE,
that’s a gasoline additive used to reduce ozone pollution.
MTBE is being phased out because of concerns that it can contaminated groundwater sources.
Smokestacks, diesel engines, and a number of other things cause particulate emissions, which can create some negative health effects, and aggravate existing health problems. (Photo by Kenn Kiser)
In the summer, local weather forecasts often
include information about dangerous ozone levels.
But scientists are learning more and more about
another type of pollution that can reach harmful
levels even in the winter months. And as the Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports… we
might be hearing more about this type of pollution in
our daily weather reports:
Transcript
In the summer, local weather forecasts often include information about dangerous ozone levels. But scientists are learning more and more about another type of pollution that can reach harmful levels even in the winter months. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, we might be hearing more about this type of pollution in our daily weather reports:
Parts of the region recently reached “code red” for poor air quality. And
that had some people perplexed. Warnings about dangerous levels of ozone are
frequent on hot summer days, especially in urban areas. But this was the
middle of winter.
The warnings were for high levels of tiny particles that federal regulators
only recently began monitoring. They’re spewn from diesel engines,
factories, power plants, and fireplaces. Air monitors in Michigan,
Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Indiana recently registered unhealthy levels of
these particles – some of them for a few days straight.
Jim Haywood says the problem was an unusual weather event for this time of
year. Haywood is a meteorologist with the Michigan Department of
Environmental Quality. He says a high pressure system moved very slowly over
the Great Lakes region for several days. When you get high pressure, the air
below sinks, generating a layer of warm air that acts like a lid.
“So that warm air that was sinking effectively stops at a few hundred feet
from the surface of the ground. It acts like a cap. It does not let any of
the pollutants that are released at the surface pop up through that cap.”
So all the pollutants that would have gotten picked up and diluted by the
wind instead just hung out for days – building up, and reflecting sunlight
to create haze.
Eventually, a cold front pushed the high pressure system out of the way, and
took the pollution with it. But what about those few days when the Environmental Protection Agency was warning about unhealthy levels of particulate pollution? For people with
heart or lung disease, agency health officials say short-term episodes can
lead to asthma attacks or even heart attacks. And they say healthy children
and adults can experience throat and lung irritation.
Susan Stone is an environmental health scientist with EPA. She says
particle pollution warnings could soon become a staple of the daily weather
report – much like the familiar summer ozone warnings.
“With ozone, we have the network in place to be able to deliver those
forcasts, people are used to hearing that on TV, and we are working to
provide that same level of coverage for particle pollution.”
Stone says EPA is rolling out a new program called Enviro-Flash
nationwide. It sends real-time air quality information to people’s email
accounts or pagers. EPA is offering the service through state
environmental agencies. And beginning in 2010, areas that register
unacceptable levels of particle pollution will be required to clean up their
air.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.
According to a recent report, a decade of cleanup measures to reductions in emissions have paid off in cutting levels of deadly particle and ozone pollution. (Photo courtesy of the NREL)
