Heart attacks, cancer, dementia, premature deaths: 4 essential reads on the health effects driving EPA’s new fine particle air pollution standard
Retrieved on:
Thursday, February 8, 2024
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These minute particles can penetrate deeply into the body and have been linked to many serious illnesses.
Key Points:
- These minute particles can penetrate deeply into the body and have been linked to many serious illnesses.
- The new rule sets an annual limit of 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air, down from the previous level of 12 micrograms.
- Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to set air pollution standards at levels that protect public health.
1. An alarming array of health effects
- Subsequent research has linked fine particulates to a much broader range of health effects.
- They termed fine particle pollution an urgent global health threat.
- “Developed countries have made progress in reducing particulate air pollution in recent decades, but much remains to be done to further reduce this hazard,” they observed.
2. Aging the brain
- Medical researchers are looking closely at air pollution as a possible accelerator of brain aging.
- “When we compared the brain scans of older women from locations with high levels of PM2.5 to those with low levels, we found dementia risk increased by 24% over the five years,” Chen wrote.
- More alarmingly, “(T)hese Alzheimer’s-like brain changes were present in older women with no memory problems,” Chen noted.
3. Disadvantaged communities have dirtier air
- As researchers in environmental justice have shown, facilities such as factories and refineries often are concentrated in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.
- This means that these areas are exposed to higher pollution levels and face heavier related health burdens.
- Regulations put in place under the Clean Air Act have greatly reduced levels of harmful air pollutants across the U.S. over the past 50 years.
- “In 1981 PM2.5 concentrations in the most polluted 10% of census tracts averaged 34 micrograms per cubic meter,” the authors reported.
4. Fine particle pollution hurts wildlife too
- Like the proverbial canaries in coal mines, wild animals can show effects of exposure to pollution that offer broader warnings.
- Cornell University conservation biologist Wendy M. Erb was studying wild orangutans in Indonesian Borneo when that island suffered large-scale wildfires.
- “Using passive acoustic monitoring to study vocally active indicator species, like orangutans, could unlock critical insights into wildfire smoke’s effects on wildlife populations worldwide,” she observed.