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Measure air quality Essentially an excessive measure, any amount of toxic nitrogen oxides, ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter may be harmful to human health. But when it comes to federal regulations, the concept of “excess” can become a little weird. When a refinery or factory exceeds the pollution limit set by the local public health authority, the fumes are considered “excessive emissions” or, fortunately, “excessive”.
Of course, the emission limit is arbitrary.In a country with more than 20 countries, less pollution is always better People are dead The hourly burden caused by poor air quality is biased towards people of color. However, analyzing the labor costs of these spillovers can help measure (or possibly strengthen) these arbitrary limits.Therefore, Nikolaos Zirogiannis, an environmental economist at Indiana University, decided to quantify the number of healthy people in a state: how many people die each year. additional Pollution?
His team chose to focus on Texas, where a large number of fossil fuels and chemical plants combined with the state’s industry-friendly regulations make it a hot spot for excessive emissions. But this happens to be the most stringent public disclosure requirement in the United States; in 2001, state legislators not only required facilities to report excessive emissions within 24 hours, but also updated this data daily for public review. Zirogiannis said: “Texas is the only state in the country that has very, very detailed record keeping requirements for such emissions.”
He and his team combed through 15 years of reports, as well as mortality statistics and data from local air quality monitors. They concluded that every year, 35 elderly people in Texas die because of these excessive emissions-in other words, if all polluters are kept within allowable limits, these deaths are impossible. This is the first time any scientist has linked health effects to this part of pollution. result Will appear in the July issue Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
Zirogiannis said: “This is a very high number, because it is only from those numbers that exceed the standard.”
The team’s main way to link these emissions to deaths is to isolate them and increase the degree to which local ozone levels are raised. Annoying pollutants It may cause heart problems and respiratory diseases. Joan Casey, an environmental health scientist at Columbia University, said: “There is a large amount of literature linking rising ozone levels to mortality from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.” Casey said, heart attack, stroke , Asthma attacks, exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease-“I hope these results will illustrate what they are seeing here.”
Oil refineries, natural gas facilities, chemical plants, power plants and pipelines are hardly closed systems. Whenever someone shuts down for maintenance, starts up or fails, this is an opportunity for abnormal emissions. Nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds (VOC) or other pollutants spill into the local air. Each substance may be dangerous in its own right, but in the atmosphere exposed to sunlight, these chemicals also contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone.
The team established a link between industrial air pollution and local ozone levels by collecting reports from the Texas Environmental Quality Commission between 2002 and 2017. The data shows when, where, why and what types of emissions. Involved in chemical pollution.They found a correlation between the release of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and VOC and the jump in ozone readings in the monitor Being tracked Environmental Protection Agency.
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