— Environmental Protection Agency administrator Stephen Johnson, June 21, 2007.
| Pollution and smog standards
are "too weak to protect people from the air they breathe."
— Environmental Protection Agency administrator Stephen Johnson, June 21, 2007. |
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| Consider the
evidence that mankind has already polluted the air, water and soil in
every region of the world enough to damage the health of every living
thing. Burning coal releases microscopic particles containing lead, sulfur, mercury, arsenic, uranium, etc. that endanger your health. Air pollution chokes rain, but may temper greenhouse warming. Pollutants dumped into the air can eventually get into your body when you eat, drink and breathe. Pollutants in the air fall to earth with the rain drops and snow flakes. The pollutants then become more and more concentrated by biomagnification as they move up the food chain to you.
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Microscopic particles suspended in the lower atmosphere.
West coast of Lake Michigan |
The American Lung Association estimates that more than 64,000 Americans die prematurely each year due to inhalation of microscopic particles that are legally emitted by Americans into the atmosphere from factories, electric power plants, diesel engines, etc...
Pollution from the burning of coal is a major factor in smog, deadly soot, global warming, climate change, mercury contamination of fish, polluted estuaries, etc.
Fossil fuel combustion produces noxious gases and a wide range of toxic pollutants that are the largest source of atmospheric pollution. The releases are responsible for a wide range of respiratory disorders and illnesses including cancer. The World Health Organization estimates that annual deaths due to indoor and outdoor air pollution from energy use account for 6% of the total 50 million annual global deaths. Ingestion of heavy metal pollutants, including lead, arsenic, and mercury from the burning of coal and oil can cause a wide variety of health disorders.
Millions of Americans suffer from increased frequency and severity of asthma other diseases due to inhalation of microscopic particles that damage the respiratory and immune systems.
About half of the non-toxic microscopic dust particles are typically removed from the lungs within thirty days by macrophages (part of the immune system). When toxic particles kill the macrophages, the particles can become permanently trapped within fragile lung tissues.
Pollution makes it more difficult for you to maintain or regain your health. The burning of fuels releases most of the toxic pollution of our air, water and soil.
When you use electricity from your local utility, how much pollution is produced? Find out by using the Pollution Calculator.
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Web Sites: |
Notes: |
| State of the Air: 2003 | American Lung Association |
| Toxic Air Pollutants | About Air Toxics, Health and Ecological Effects — U. S. Environmental Protection Agency |
| Scientists Track Contaminants, Inside the Body and Out | Columbia University's environmental testing program. |
| Pollution Prevention | "Pollution prevention pays", say several of the nation's leading corporations. Increasingly, the nation is coming to understand prevention's value — as an environmental strategy, as a sustainable business practice, and as a fundamental principle for all our society. |
| How Inhaled Dust Harms the Lungs | As many as 60,000 U.S. residents die each year from breathing federally allowed concentrations of airborne dust. |
| Save Our Environment | A national coalition for the environment. |
| Air Quality Index | View air quality reports for any state in the USA. |
| American Lung Association | The American Lung Association has been fighting lung disease for nearly 100 years. |
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To industry's chagrin, epidemiologist Joel Schwartz has argued that particulates in the air shorten human life. His research has helped set tougher air-quality standards. |
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| Air Quality Planning and Standards | EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning & Standards directs national efforts to meet air quality goals, particularly for smog, air toxics, carbon monoxide, lead, mercury, particulate matter (soot and dust), sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. |
| Pollution Quotations | An incredible resource on quotations related to pollution. |
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No element of the natural world is more essential to life than air, and no environmental task more critical than keeping it clean. Air pollution weakens our immune systems and makes us more vulnerable to attack by bacteria, viruses and parasites. |
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The Chemical Scorecard from the Environmental Defense Fund makes it easy to find information fast: where these chemicals come from in your community, what their known or suspected effects are, and what actions you can take. |
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| Health Effects Notebook for Hazardous Air Pollutants | The fact sheets available on this Web page from "EPA Health Effects Notebook for Hazardous Air Pollutants-Draft", EPA-452/D-95-00, December 1994, describe the effects on human health of substances that are defined as hazardous by the 1990 amendments of the Clean Air Act. |
| Health, Environment & Work | This site provides many academically based educational resources, a search facility, and updated links relating to Occupational and Environmental Health and Medicine. |
| Save Our Environment Action Center | A collaborative effort of the nation's most influential environmental advocacy organizations harnessing the power of the internet to increase public awareness and activism on today's most important issues. |
| Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) | An agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, with a mission to prevent exposure and adverse human health effects and diminished quality of life associated with exposure to hazardous substances from waste sites, unplanned releases, and other sources of pollution present in the environment. |
| Energy Efficiency | Coal, oil and other fossil fuels release pollution when burned. You can help to reduce pollution by using energy very efficiently. |
| Chem-Tox | Research reports about the effects of chemicals and pesticides upon health. |
| EPA's OPPT Lead Page | Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics |
| HUD's Lead Hazard Control Page | U.S. Housing & Urban Development Agency's Office of Lead Hazard Control |
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About 64,000 people die prematurely in the USA annually (175 each day) from cardio-pulmonary diseases linked to particulate air pollution, mainly the toxic particles that are emitted by smoke stacks and exhaust pipes. |
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| What are the Major Effects of Common Atmospheric Pollutants on Water Quality, Ecosystems, and Human Health? | Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Water |
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The Natural Step (TNS) is a non-profit environmental education organization working to build an ecologically and economically sustainable society. |
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Internet sites containing information that may be useful to environmental journalists. |
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To industry's chagrin, epidemiologist Joel Schwartz has argued that particulates in the air shorten human life. His research has helped set tougher air-quality standards. |
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Environmental and other information about facility-level profiles for five industry sectors (petroleum refining, iron and steel production, primary nonferrous metal refining and smelting, pulp manufacturing, and automobile assembly). |
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Prevention of pollution related illness is usually much less painful and expensive than treatment. |
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Ozone is harmful to people, plants and animals. |
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Describes diseases resulting from damaged genes. Some pollutants in our air, food, and water can cause genetic damage to present and future generations. |
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An in-depth look at environmental problems and solutions. |
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Professionally researched and written articles about a wide variety of environmental problems and solutions. |
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A Special Moment in Time: The fate of humans will be determined in the next few decades, through our technological, lifestyle, and population choices |
We've been hearing about the dangers of overpopulation, climate change, and pollution for years, and yet doomsday still hasn't come. But what if we have already inflicted serious damage on the planet? And what if we have only a few decades left in which to salvage a stable environment? These questions, Bill McKibben argues, are not hypothetical. |
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Audio and video files that inform and entertain. Practical tips on how you can help to make our world a better place to live. |
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| Encarta Encyclopedia | Impacts, types, history and control of pollution. |
| Pollution Prevention and Recycling | List of sites offering information about pollution prevention and recycling. |
| Pollution and Climate Change | Dramatic weather patterns in the past few years are convincing even determined skeptics that something is happening to global climates. |
| Pollution Prevention Regional Information Center | Pollution Prevention Regional Information Center(P2RIC) provides access to pollution prevention (P2)information from and about EPA Region 7 (Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri). |
| Clearing the Air on Smog | |
| Weather and Your Health | |
| Our Stolen Future |
Visit this website to follow the emerging science and debates about new advances in toxicology that challenge basic assumptions about which chemicals are safe and what exposures are tolerable. |
| The Bush Administration's Air Pollution Plan |
To enlarge an image, click on it. |
The argument persists that environmental protection is some kind of a job-killer and shortcut to the economic doldrums. Early on, it was said that tough pollution rules would drive industries out of business. Then, when the cost of cutting emissions turned out to be a few percentage points of overall operating costs, it was said that companies would surely relocate to other cities or states that take a more relaxed approach to regulation.
First, environmental protection efforts create their own companies, products and jobs.
Second, plenty of employers, employees and customers prefer to be in places where they can safely breathe the air, swim in the lakes and take a walk in a nearby woods.
Sept. 27, 2003
The White House office in charge of reviewing federal regulations has reported that the benefits of some major environmental rules appear to exceed the costs by several times and that the net benefits may be even larger than previously acknowledged.
In its annual review of the Costs and Benefits of Federal Regulations, the Office of Management and Budget examined a sampling of major rules and found that the total benefits, to the extent they can be measured, were at least triple the costs.
In a summary of this report,
published in The
In one change, the budget office expanded its review by looking back 10 years. This meant the latest report included the effects of the successful efforts of the 1990's to rein in the pollution that causes acid rain.
The report included only a handful of the 4,135 final rules published in the Federal Register during the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2002. Its principal focus was on three rules issued by the Energy Department, the Transportation Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. They imposed estimated annual costs of $1.6 billion to $2 billion, but produced estimated annual benefits of $2.4 billion to $6.5 billion.
September 9, 2004
In the first long-term study of the effects of air pollution on children, researchers reported Wednesday that children and teenagers in Southern California communities with higher levels of air pollution were more likely to have diminished lung function.
In their study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, James Gauderman of the University of Southern California and his colleagues followed 1,759 children ages 10 to 18 in a dozen Southern California communities. The pollutants they considered came primarily from car exhaust, they said.
The investigators found that 7.9 percent of the 18-year-olds in the highest pollution areas had lung capacities that were less than 80 percent of what they should have been. Among those subjected to the least-polluted air, 1.6 percent had underperforming lungs.
The investigators added that the lung effects were similar to those that occur when children live in the home of a mother who smokes.
"This is some of the most convincing evidence that air pollution has chronic effects," Dr. Gauderman said. "We see the effects in all kids. And it's an unavoidable exposure. It's not like smoking, where you can advise people to stop."
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. C. Arden Pope III noted that the air quality in Southern California and elsewhere had improved considerably since the 1990's, when the study was done. There will be debate, Dr. Pope said, over the costs and benefits of making additional improvements, but "continued efforts to improve our air quality are likely to provide additional health benefits."
Air pollution is increased when energy subsidies are given use of coal, oil, and other fuels that emit pollution an unfair advantage in the marketplace.
Fuel subsidies make the consumption of fuel more attractive by making them seem less expensive for consumers than they really are.
Fuel subsidies make energy conservation and renewable energy systems less able to compete in the marketplace, since most consumers consider only the costs they pay directly and ignore the costs they pay through the increased taxes they pay to fund fuel subsidies.
Besides the air pollution problem, please consider mankind's risk of running very short of energy if we do not adequately prepare for the coming severe shortages of fossil fuels. I believe that a large quantity of our remaining fuel supplies should be used to construct renewable energy systems and improve of energy efficiency so that we can all survive and live decent lives after the fossil fuels become too scarce and expensive for most of us.
"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest
— a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
"Whether or not life exists elsewhere in the universe, all we know now is
that here on Earth, life is both utterly amazing — and
utterly endangered. That is why I believe that nobody is really more pro-life
than an environmentalist.
~ T. A.
Barron
Air Pollution Fatalities Now Exceed Traffic Fatalities by 3 to 1
The Coming Global Oil Crisis may force U.S. to burn more coal
