Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Europe's Air Pollution Battle

The Government will argue in the Supreme Court this week that it has no obligation to reduce Britain’s harmful levels of air pollution within the time limits set by Europe.

Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels are dangerously high in 16 regions of Britain, exceeding the EU limit which member nations were supposed to have complied with by 2010. Britain is the only nation not to apply for a time extension having failed to meet its 2010 deadline, because the Coalition has decided to fight European air regulations in court while lobbying to have them weakened.

The case comes just weeks after a World Health Organisation review found that exposure to nitrogen dioxide is harmful at even lower levels than the limits currently set by Europe.

Air pollution is estimated to cause 29,000 premature deaths each year in the UK at an average loss of life of 11.5 years. Nitrogen dioxide is one of the pollutants known to contribute to this figure, with links to conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

London has the highest recorded level of NO2 of any capital city in Europe. Mean levels of the toxic gas are not supposed to exceed 40 cubic micrograms over a calendar year, but some of London’s busiest roads are routinely at triple this level.

The Department for Environment and Rural Affairs will argue on Thursday that it is not possible to comply with European limits by 2015, so there was no point asking for an extension to the 2010 deadline. Instead they have made plans that mean most regions (including Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow) will not achieve legal limits for NO2 until 2020, and in the case of London, 2025.

Alan Andrews, lawyer at Client Earth, the campaigning law firm which has brought the lawsuit said: “The science is getting stronger, but the Government’s response is as weak as ever. We know that the higher the levels of nitrogen dioxide, the more people die, and the more people are made sick. So the fact that the Government’s plans won’t achieve compliance with air quality standards until 2025 is nothing short of a disgrace.”

“This Government thinks that laws that are in place to save lives are “red tape”. That’s why they are refusing to act to tackle air pollution, while at the same time lobbying the EU to get the laws weakened. They are on the wrong side of the science, and they are on the wrong side of the law. We need the Supreme Court to step in and force the Government to live up to its legal and moral duty to protect us from air pollution”

Last year the Court of Appeal refused to force Defra to obey EU law and the issue was passed up to the Supreme Court. Though the Court of Appeal said enforcement of the law was up the European Commission, the commission says it has “considerable concerns” about any attempts to circumnavigate their deadlines using a technicality that Defra is expected to argue in court.

Frank Kelly, professor of environmental health at King’s College London, said: “There’s a public health problem here and the Government need to take responsibility. It’s not good enough to say that we can wait to 2025.”

A spokeswoman said Defra plans to reduce NO2 levels in the “shortest possible time,” adding: “Our air quality has improved significantly in recent decades and most of the UK meets EU air quality limits for all pollutants.”

Case studies: 'I can't go down the road now because it's too polluted'

Francis Davidson, 69, lives in North London and believes her health has been directly affected by levels of air pollution there.

“I live just off the Holloway Road, which has to be one of the worst polluted parts of London - there are lorries coming by all the time. My lung collapses regularly and I can’t go down the road now because it’s too polluted. I can’t breathe when I go out and I have to time it carefully for times when there’s less traffic, like one o’clock in the afternoon.

Unless they do something about it we’re all going to get terrible lung diseases. Children are coughing their heads off and I don’t understand why nothing’s being done. I remember the smog in the Fifties which made them pass the clean air act, because it was obvious fires were making people really sick. They need another clean air act now because the air is not clean anymore.”

Fiona Dawson, 35, from East London is concerned that her eldest daughter, Maya, 3, suffers from asthma symptoms because of pollution.

“I’ve become more aware of air pollution since my daughter has had chest problems. She had her first wheezy episode a year ago and it was really frightening. We’ve been back and forth at the doctors’ and hospitals since then. The doctor said ‘ah yes, we’ve had a lot of people coming in with similar conditions because of the weather and the rise in air pollution’. It makes me very angry that more isn’t being done. Maya will be 16 in 2025 - that’s a whole generation exposed to this and the Government just don’t seem to care at all.”

Friday, February 22, 2013

Asthma on the Rise

The prevalence of asthma and allergic diseases has increased dramatically during the past few decades not only in industrialized countries. Urban air pollution from motor vehicles has been indicated as one of the major risk factors responsible for this increase.Although genetic factors are important in the development of asthma and allergic diseases, the rising trend can be explained only in changes occurred in the environment.

Despite some differences in the air pollution profile and decreasing trends of some key air pollutants, air quality is an important concern for public health in the cities throughout the world.Due to climate change, air pollution patterns are changing in several urbanized areas of the world, with a significant effect on respiratory health.The observational evidence indicates that recent regional changes in climate, particularly temperature increases, have already affected a diverse set of physical and biological systems in many parts of the world. Associations between thunderstorms and asthma morbidity in pollinosis subjects have been also identified in multiple locations around the world.Allergens patterns are also changing in response to climate change and air pollution can modify the allergenic potential of pollens especially in presence of specific weather conditions.The underlying mechanisms of all these interactions are not well known yet.

The consequences on health vary from decreases in lung function to allergic diseases, new onset of diseases, and exacerbation of chronic respiratory diseases.Factor clouding the issue is that laboratory evaluations do not reflect what happens during natural exposition, when atmospheric pollution mixtures in polluted cities are inhaled. In addition, it is important to recall that an individual's response to pollution exposure depends on the source and components of air pollution, as well as meteorological conditions.

Indeed, some air pollution-related incidents with asthma aggravation do not depend only on the increased production of air pollution, but rather on atmospheric factors that favour the accumulation of air pollutants at ground level.Considering these aspects governments worldwide and international organizations such as the World Health Organization and the European Union are facing a growing problem of the respiratory effects induced by gaseous and particulate pollutants arising from motor vehicle emissions.

Source: 7th Space Interactive

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Air Quality and Gestation


The observational study pooled data from 3 million births at 14 research centres in 9 countries, including the United States, South Korea and Brazil. It focused on two classes of hazardous air pollutants: inhalable particulate matter (PM) with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres (PM2.5) and of less than 10 micrometres (PM10). These particles are produced from the combustion of fossil fuels by industry and transportation and from burning firewood, but can also include particles of dust or sea salt.

“Those centres that have higher levels of air pollution report higher risks of low birth weights compared with those centres that have lower levels of pollution,” says Payam Dadvand, an epidemiologist at the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona, Spain, who is first author on the study.

By the authors’ calculations, each increase in PM10 by 10 micrograms per cubic metre (μg m–3) was associated with a 3% higher chance of an infant being underweight and with an overall average weight reduced by 3 grammes. That reduction in average weight tripled to 9 g when the authors adjusted for local variables such as maternal age or tobacco use. The calculations took socioeconomic status into account.

The median PM10 value varied across the 14 sites, from 12.5 μg m–3 in Vancouver to 66.5 μg m–3in Seoul. For a subset of centres that included information on PM2.5 exposure, the odds of lower birth weight increased by 10% for each increase in exposure.

As Trasande explains, the risks are small at the individual level, but “on a population basis, a shift can produce large increases in the percentage of low-birth-weight infants”, he says. Smoking, alcohol and drug use and poor maternal health are also linked to low birth weights.

In a study of more than 220,000 US births published last month, Trasande and his colleagues found that outdoor air pollution was associated with longer hospital stays and greater health-care costs2. In 2010, 8.2% of infants born in the United States were of low birth weight.

Pregnant women who have been exposed to higher levels of some types of air pollution are slightly more likely to give birth to underweight babies, a large international study has found. The results are published online today inEnvironmental Health Perspectives1.

Low birth weight — defined as a newborn baby weighing less than 2.5 kilogrammes — increases the risk of infant mortality and childhood diseases, and has been associated with developmental and health problems later in life, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Previous studies have looked at whether exposure to tiny airborne particles during pregnancy leads to more low-birth-weight babies. Although many studies have found links, others have failed to establish a connection.

“The thorn in the side of many studies of air-pollution exposure and impact on fetal growth has been the variability in study design and in exposure assessment,” says Leonardo Trasande, a children’s environmental-health researcher at New York University in New York city. “This one does a tremendous service by making them very comparable.”
Birth pool

The observational study pooled data from 3 million births at 14 research centres in 9 countries, including the United States, South Korea and Brazil. It focused on two classes of hazardous air pollutants: inhalable particulate matter (PM) with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres (PM2.5) and of less than 10 micrometres (PM10). These particles are produced from the combustion of fossil fuels by industry and transportation and from burning firewood, but can also include particles of dust or sea salt.

“Those centres that have higher levels of air pollution report higher risks of low birth weights compared with those centres that have lower levels of pollution,” says Payam Dadvand, an epidemiologist at the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona, Spain, who is first author on the study.

By the authors’ calculations, each increase in PM10 by 10 micrograms per cubic metre (μg m–3) was associated with a 3% higher chance of an infant being underweight and with an overall average weight reduced by 3 grammes. That reduction in average weight tripled to 9 g when the authors adjusted for local variables such as maternal age or tobacco use. The calculations took socioeconomic status into account.

The median PM10 value varied across the 14 sites, from 12.5 μg m–3 in Vancouver to 66.5 μg m–3in Seoul. For a subset of centres that included information on PM2.5 exposure, the odds of lower birth weight increased by 10% for each increase in exposure.

As Trasande explains, the risks are small at the individual level, but “on a population basis, a shift can produce large increases in the percentage of low-birth-weight infants”, he says. Smoking, alcohol and drug use and poor maternal health are also linked to low birth weights.

In a study of more than 220,000 US births published last month, Trasande and his colleagues found that outdoor air pollution was associated with longer hospital stays and greater health-care costs2. In 2010, 8.2% of infants born in the United States were of low birth weight.

Other factors

The authors of the latest study made efforts to control for socioeconomic and lifestyle factors that might skew the results. However, some of those adjustments had limitations. Not all centres included information about whether the mother smoked during pregnancy; maternal education and address were used as proxy measurements to give an idea of socioeconomic status; and the mothers' exposure to air pollution during pregnancy was estimated rather than measured directly.

Despite such limitations to studying these effects, “we are getting more and more consistent signals that particles are related to these birth outcomes and they may affect prenatal development,” says Beate Ritz, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has studied the connection between particulate matter and birth weight in California since the 1990s, but was not involved in the latest analysis.

Epidemiologists are concerned that some of the effects of a mother's exposure to air pollution may not be seen until several decades after her children are born. “If you think of what is happening in China, that doesn’t bode very well,” says Ritz, referring to recent reports of dangerous air-pollution levels in some Chinese cities. For example, in late January, the 24-hour average reading for PM2.5in Beijing reached more than 460 μg m–3 according to the US Embassy there; China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection reported a lower figure of around 350 μg m–3.

The World Health Organization recommends that countries establish rigorous air-pollution standards of an annual mean of 10 μg m–3 for PM2.5 and 20 μg m–3 for PM10. The US Environmental Protection Agency recently strengthened its annual PM2.5 standard by decreasing it from 15 μg m–3to 12 μg m–3. The agency estimates that meeting this standard will provide health benefits worth between US$4 billion and $9.1 billion annually by 2020.

“The impacts of air pollution on pregnancy have not been considered when setting up the regulations,” says Dadvand. “Now is the time to start thinking about it.”



Source: Nature

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Beijing Air Pollution Makes International News


China Lets Media Report on Air Pollution Crisis - New York Times

Record Beijing air pollution forces warning from China officials to keep kids indoors - CBS News

This Unbelievable Photo Shows Beijing's Off-The-Charts Air Pollution - Mashable

Chinese media urges action on air pollution - Reuters

Chinese air pollution hits record levels – in pictures - Guardian

China hit by extreme air pollution - LA Times

Beijing's Air Quality Catastrophe - The Atlantic Cities

Beijing's 'Airpocalypse' Spurs Pollution Controls, Public Pressure - NPR

Chinese Pollution Leads to Rare Criticism in State Media - Hollywood Reporter

Friday, January 11, 2013

Biofuel Effect on Air Quality and Crops


Fighting climate change by producing more biofuels could actually worsen a little-known type of air pollution and cause almost 1,400 premature deaths a year in Europe by 2020, according to a new study.

The report said trees grown to produce biofuel - seen as a cleaner alternative to oil and coal - release a chemical into the air that, when mixed with other pollutants, could also reduce farmers' crop yields.

"Growing biofuels is thought to be a good thing because it reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said Nick Hewitt, who worked on the study with colleagues from Lancaster University, UK. "What we're saying is 'yes, that's great, but biofuels could also have a detrimental effect on air quality'."

The report, in the journal Nature Climate Change, looked into the impact of a European Union scheme to slow climate change by producing more biofuels.

Hewitt told Reuters there would be a similar impact wherever biofuels were produced in large quantities in areas suffering air pollution, including the United States and China.

Poplar, willow or eucalyptus trees, all used as fast-growing sources of renewable wood fuel, emit high levels of the chemical isoprene as they grow, the study said. Isoprene forms toxic ozone when mixed with other air pollutants in sunlight.

"Large-scale production of biofuels in Europe would have small but significant effects on human mortality and crop yields," said Hewitt. "As far as we know, no one has looked at the air quality of growing biofuel crops before."

The report estimated that ozone from wood-based energy to meet the European Union's 2020 goal would cause nearly 1,400 premature deaths a year, costing society $7.1bn. The European plan would also would reduce the annual value of wheat and maize production by $1.5bn since ozone impairs crop growth, the study added.

Siting new biofuel plantations far away from polluted population centres would help limit ozone formation, the study suggested. Genetic engineering might be used to reduce isoprene emissions, it said.

Ozone can cause lung problems and is blamed for killing about 22,000 people a year in Europe. Overall air pollution, mainly from fossil fuels, causes about 500,000 premature deaths in Europe a year, according to the European Environment Agency.

The study did not compare the potential damage caused by biofuels to the impact on human health from producing coal, oil or natural gas as part of policies to slow global warming. "We're not in a position to make that comparison," Hewitt said.

He noted that the main reason to shift to biofuels was to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, mainly from fossil fuels, that UN studies project will become ever more damaging this century.

The United Nations' World Health Organisation estimates global warming has caused more than 140,000 deaths annually worldwide since the 1970s.

The biggest impact was recorded in developing nations where the floods, droughts and other disasters blamed on climate change left millions suffering from diarrhoea, malnutrition, malaria and dengue fever.

Burning biofuels is viewed as neutral for climate change because plants soak up carbon when they grow and release it when they burn or rot. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, add carbon to the atmosphere from underground stores millions of years old.

Biofuels are often blamed for causing food price spikes by competing for cropland. Responding to such criticisms, the European commission said in 2012 it aimed to limit crop-based biofuels - such as from maize or sugar - to 5% of transport fuels.

Source: Guardian

Friday, January 4, 2013

Air Pollution, Traffic, and Childhood Asthma


As part of an international collaborative study on the impact of Traffic-Related Air Pollution on Childhood Asthma (TRAPCA), the health effects associated with long-term exposure to particles with a 50% cut-off aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 µm (PM2.5), PM2.5 absorbance, and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were analysed.

The German part of the TRAPCA study used data from subpopulations of two ongoing birth cohort studies (German Infant Nutrition Intervention Programme (GINI) and Influences of Lifestyle Related Factors on the Human Immune System and Development of Allergies in Children (LISA)) based in the city of Munich. Geographic information systems (GIS)-based exposure modelling was used to estimate traffic-related air pollutants at the birth addresses of 1,756 infants. Logistic regression was used to analyse possible health effects and potential confounding factors were adjusted for.

To read the entire study, please see This Link