Air Pollution at Schools

  • In August, the EPA put air samplers outside of 63 schools in 22 states. (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

The US Environmental Protection Agency
is wrapping up a 60-day initiative
looking at toxic air pollution around
schools. They’re looking to gauge the
health effects linked to pollution exposure.
Many of the schools were chosen based
on how close they were to heavy industry.
Gigi Douban reports:

Transcript

The US Environmental Protection Agency
is wrapping up a 60-day initiative
looking at toxic air pollution around
schools. They’re looking to gauge the
health effects linked to pollution exposure.
Many of the schools were chosen based
on how close they were to heavy industry.
Gigi Douban reports:

It’s pretty much a given: put a school near heavy industry and an interstate, and those
kids are going to be breathing polluted air. What the EPA didn’t know was just how
polluted it would be. So the agency in August put air samplers outside of 63 schools in
22 states. One of those schools is Lewis Elementary in Birmingham, Alabama.

(sound of calling out names for carpool)

As he does every day, Richard Gooden is waiting in the carpool line to pick up his
granddaughter, who attends pre-K at the school. Not far away, near the basketball
court, there’s an air pollution monitor. Gooden, for one, was glad it was there. Living
up the hill from the American Cast Iron Pipe Company, he’s seen thick layers of dust
settle on his windows.

“I got a little white house with vinyl siding, and you can’t tell there’s vinyl hardly
because of the dirt coming from that pipe shop.”

Gooden has lived in that house for 43 years. His granddaughter spends most days
there, and he worries about her health and his own.

“I had a triple heart bypass a while back. I’m just wondering is that air completely
clean to breathe.”

The EPA plans to have some answers. In Birmingham, the Jefferson County Health
Department is collecting the data on the EPA’s behalf. Corey Masuca is the county’s
senior air pollution control engineer. He says they’re screening for about 100 different
pollutants.

“We looked for them, then, we found them.”

So far, he says, only three of those – benzene, manganese and acrolein – were found
at high levels. Most concerning, acrolein levels were more than 100 times higher than
what the government considers safe. Where does it come from?

“Pretty much any type of combustion source – whether it’s combustion coal, or
fuels from a plant, or fuel from a car. It even emanates from cigarette smoke, so it’s
fairly ubiquitous.”

But ubiquitous doesn’t mean safe. In fact, excess exposure to manganese can cause
brain damage. Acrolein can damage the lungs, and benzene is a carcinogen.

Masuca says the findings aren’t a major cause for concern. But Janice Nolen,
Assistant Vice-President for Policy and Advocacy at the American Lung Association,
disagrees.

“The fact that it’s in lots of places doesn’t mean it is not a big problem. It means
that we have a lot of things that we need to clean up.”

And when it comes to schools, she says, industrial pollution isn’t the whole picture.
Diesel buses drive right up to the school doors every day. Inside schools, poor
ventilation and even things like some glues can lead to health problems.

Yet there are definite links between these air toxins and heavy industry. So Masuca, of
the Jefferson County Health Department, says just knowing what’s out there is a huge
first step. Next they’ll come up with ways to reduce exposure. Things like having kids
stay indoors during recess on days when pollution levels seem to be highest.

Janice Nolen of the American Lung Association hopes monitoring will lead to stricter
controls on nearby industry. And maybe spark even a little bit of self-regulation.

“Letting people know about what’s in the air often raises public awareness and
causes industry to rethink what they’re doing and come up with less toxic ways to
produce their products.”

She says this research can galvanize communities into action. Most of the parents I
spoke with at Lewis Elementary didn’t know a thing about the EPA’s monitoring
program. But perhaps once the EPA gathers long-term data on schools across the
country in the months to come, that will change.

For The Environment Report, I’m Gigi Douban.

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Low in the Vitamin D Department

  • How much sun you need to get enough Vitamin D depends on where you live, the time of year, how much skin you're exposing - and even the color of your skin. (Photo source: Kallerna at Wikimedia Commons)

According to two recent studies,
most kids in this country aren’t
getting enough Vitamin D. Scientists
say a lot of adults are low in the
vitamin, too. Ann Dornfeld looks
at whether the solution is as simple
as spending more time in the sun:

Transcript

According to two recent studies, most kids in this country
aren’t getting enough Vitamin D. Scientists say a lot of
adults are low in the vitamin, too. Ann Dornfeld looks at
whether the solution is as simple as spending more time in
the sun:

(sound of kids building sandcastles on the beach)

If you’ve been to the beach this summer, or anywhere
outdoors, you probably slathered on the obligatory
sunblock. If you were extra-careful, you wore a wide-
brimmed hat, or made sure your kids wore t-shirts in the
water instead of a skimpy suit.

Thing is, the solar radiation you work so hard to avoid is
also kind of healthy. That’s because it creates Vitamin D
through a chemical reaction in your skin.

“Vitamin D is essential.”

Susan Ott is a professor of medicine at the University of
Washington.

“It’s actually a steroid hormone that helps you absorb
calcium from your diet. And it works in your intestines so
the calcium can get into your system and become
available to the bones.”

Ott specializes in bone diseases like osteoporosis and
osteomalacia – both diseases that Vitamin D helps
prevent.

When you slather on sunblock, you’re also blocking the
creation of Vitamin D.

Before you run outside to soak up the last few rays of
summer unprotected, there’s a catch. Ott says no one
knows how much sun you need to get enough Vitamin D.
It depends on where you live, the time of year, how much
skin you’re exposing – and even the color of your skin.

“People with dark skin do not make as much Vitamin D
with the same amount of sunlight exposure – they need to
be out in the sunlight longer to get the same amount of
Vitamin D as a fair person.”

Scientists don’t have a way to recommend how much sun
you need to get enough D.

Kim Nowak-Cooperman is a nutritionist at Seattle
Children’s Hospital. She says a recent study looked at
people who live in Honolulu.

“They looked at 93 people who got three or more hours of
sun every day for five days a week. And they actually
found that half of those people were Vitamin D insufficient,
when you would think that they would be very, very high in
Vitamin D.”

Getting your Vitamin D from food can also be hard. It’s
naturally abundant only in oily fish like sardines, salmon
and mackerel. Since the 1930s, Vitamin D has been
added to milk to prevent the bone-softening disease
rickets in children. Now rickets is making a comeback.

Nowak-Cooperman says that’s because most kids don’t
drink enough milk to get the recommended daily
allowance of Vitamin D. And even that recommendation
might not even be enough.

“Originally that number was derived from the amount of
Vitamin D that would prevent rickets. We are now seeing
that Vitamin D has a more important role and that the
insufficiency of Vitamin D can be implicated in other
disease processes.”

Studies show Vitamin D might prevent everything from
rheumatoid arthritis to diabetes to tuberculosis. So the
American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends kids
get twice the US RDA for Vitamin D. That means 400 IU from either four glasses of milk or a
supplement.

Professor Susan Ott says adults should take a
supplement, too. She recommends 800 to 1000 IU. Any more than that, she says, and you risk
absorbing too much calcium.

“I think right now there’s a fad and people are taking too
much. I just went to the drugstore the other day and I saw
pills that were 5000 units. That’s enough to last you a
week! And I have patients that are taking that every day.
I’m worried they’re gonna get kidney stones.”

Ott says there’s also a trend for people to get blood tests
to determine whether they’re getting enough Vitamin D.
She says unless you’re elderly or have other serious
health problems, it probably isn’t necessary.

So what should you do? Ott says just pop that daily
supplement – 400 IU for kids, 800 for adults – and
keep slathering on the sunblock.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

Related Links

Not All Sunscreens Created Equal

  • The Environmental Working Group is critical of the Food and Drug Administration for not requiring sunscreens to filter out UVA rays (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

Labor Day weekend means backyard
grilling, maybe some time at the
beach. The last holiday of summer
usually includes a lot of time outside.
Lester Graham reports sunscreen
seems like a good idea, but there’s
some controversy about what works:

Transcript

Labor Day weekend means backyard
grilling, maybe some time at the
beach. The last holiday of summer
usually includes a lot of time outside.
Lester Graham reports sunscreen
seems like a good idea, but there’s
some controversy about what works:

The Environmental Working Group issued a report saying not all sunscreens are equal. The group is critical of the Food and Drug Administration for not requiring sunscreens to filter out one kind of solar radiation.

“There currently are no requirements for UVA filters in sunscreens. And they’ve been working on sunscreen standards since 1978.”

David Andrews is a senior scientist with the group. He’s says with a gap in FDA regulation, the industry is making unverified statements about how well sunscreens protect.

“So these are claims that are very misleading to the consumer and it makes it hard for everyone to get adequate protection.”

The Personal Care Products Council is a trade group for sunscreen makers. It says the Environmental Working Group’s report is – quote – “unscientific and unsubstantiated.”

Bottom line: look for a sunscreen that does protect you from both UVB and UVA rays, reapply often, and stay out of the sun as much as possible.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Growing Upward, Not Outward

  • Valcent's vertical farm has hundreds of clear plastic sheets holding pockets of plants. These hang from moving racks. (Photo courtesy of Valcent)

It takes a lot of land to grow
crops. There are concerns there won’t
be enough land to grow all the needed
food for the rapidly growing population.
That’s why some researchers and business
people are creating what they call
vertical farms. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

It takes a lot of land to grow
crops. There are concerns there won’t
be enough land to grow all the needed
food for the rapidly growing population.
That’s why some researchers and business
people are creating what they call
vertical farms. Julie Grant reports:

On the outside, it looks like a big green house. Inside,
there’s an overhead conveyer system.

It looks kind of like a dry cleaner. Hanging from the moving
racks are hundreds of clear plastic sheets. Each has rows of
pockets. In each pocket, there’s a vegetable plant.

The conveyor moves them around to make sure the plants
get enough light, nutrients and water.

Glen Kertz is president of Valcent Products, which is building
its first commercial-scale vertical farm in Alberta, Canada –
where it can be expensive to truck in fresh produce.

“A couple of hundred years ago, they couldn’t get fresh
lettuce in the dead of winter. But do they want it today?
Yes.”

Kertz and others think we could vertical farm in cities in
skyscrapers.

But Kurtz says the farm’s heat, lighting and conveyor system
all run on fossil fuels and he wants to switch to renewable
energy.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Homeland Security to Remove Hazmat Placards?

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security are considering removing hazardous material placards from freight trains. They say doing so will help protect people from terrorists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security are considering removing
hazardous material placards from freight trains. They say doing so would help
protect people from terrorists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:


Because of the September 11th terrorist attacks, officials see the potential for a
lot of things to be used as weapons. One of their latest fears is that shipments of
hazardous materials could be used by terrorists. In order to protect people from this
threat, the Department of Homeland Security says it might require the removal of the
diamond shaped placards from rail cars. Emergency workers use the placards to quickly
identify a hazard after an accident.


Richard Powell is the Executive Director of the Michigan Association of Fire Chiefs.
He says while the Department of Homeland Security is well-intentioned, removal of the
placards would put more people at risk:


“We need to protect our citizens. We need to keep that system in place. If we don’t know something is there, our people could not evacuate perhaps, as quick as we normally would.”


Homeland Security officials say they’ll consider other options that would help disguise the rail cars, but would still allow emergency workers to know what’s inside.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.

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