April 16, 1999

Smog has been causing health problems for plants, animals and humans for decades, and the Environmental Protection Agency is raising the standards that will govern how much smog is too much from a health point of view.

Ozone is a molecule made of three oxygen atoms linked together.

By itself it is odorless and colorless.

It is not emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes, but forms from pollutants emitted by them.

The pollutants, volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxide, combine in the presence of sunlight and stagnant air to form ozone.  Mix in sooty particles, known as particulates, and you have smog.

High in the atmosphere, the natural ozone layer is good, because it filters  out harmful ultraviolet rays. But it is not meant to be breathed by humans, animals and plants, and it is damaging to all three at ground level.

Because it forms in warm sunlight, it is primarily a summertime problem, but can crop up in affected areas anytime between April and October.

Where does it come from, and who has it?  In most areas, 1/3 to ½ of the emissions that form ozone smog come from cars, trucks and other internal combustion engines.

Ten metro areas, home to 57 million people, are severely polluted,  exceeding EPA standards by 50 percent or more.  They include Los Angeles, Chicago,  Houston, Milwaukee, New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, Philadelphia,  Sacramento and Ventura County, Calif. Seriously polluted areas include Atlanta;  Dallas; Washington, D.C.; Boston; San Diego and nine others.

Why is it harmful?  Ozone is a severe irritant that can cause choking, coughing and stinging eyes. It damages lung tissue, aggravates respiratory disease and makes people   more susceptible to respiratory infections. On days when ozone levels are high, emergency room visits for asthma  attacks have been shown to increase by as much as 36 percent.

Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable to ozone’s harmful  effects, as are adults with asthma and other lung and heart ailments.

People who exercise on high-ozone days may actually be damaging their lungs  by breathing ozone.

Ozone also inhibits plant growth and can cause widespread damage to crops  and forests.

The standards, which are controversial, were revised as the result of a court decision that required EPA to revise its standards. The new standard is based on the theory that prolonged exposure to lower levels of ozone is more harmful than brief exposure to high levels.

In early December 1952, a great mass of cold air moved off the English Channel, draped itself over London like an icy comforter and then simply stayed put.

Trying to keep warm, Londoners piled extra coal into their fireplaces, sending plumes of black, sooty smoke into the air that mixed with clouds of exhaust from factories and coal-burning power plants. But instead of rising into the atmosphere and dispersing, the smoke stayed close to the ground, trapped by the cold air above.

Over the next five days, a city already famous for its smog experienced the worst air pollution it had ever seen. A thick haze hovered over the streets, penetrating homes and offices. Public transportation nearly ground to a halt, and at night the visibility was so poor that some parts of London became unnavigable. Indoor concerts were canceled because the audiences could not see the stage.

And then the smog lifted and the problems were over. Or so it seemed.

"There was no sense of drama or emergency," said Dr. David V. Bates, who at the time had just started work at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. "It was only when the registrar general published the mortality figures three weeks later that everybody realized that there had, in fact, been a major disaster."

Some 4,000 people died of respiratory ailments in those five days, and perhaps an additional 8,000 in the months that followed. Most of the victims were especially vulnerable by reason of age or illness. Now a new study, based on lung tissue samples preserved from the victims of what became known as the Great Smog of 1952, has provided insights into why the smog proved so deadly. It also illustrates the continuing danger of airborne pollutants known as particulate matter, experts said, for which environmental officials in the United States are considering new regulations.

Writing in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, the researchers said they found high concentrations of fine particulate matter in the lungs of 16 people whose deaths were attributed to the smog.

The findings, said the lead author, Dr. Andrew Hunt, confirm the suspicions of the London health authorities from that period.

"The conception was it was the soot in the atmosphere, and coal-burning clearly the obvious culprit," said Dr. Hunt, who led a team of researchers from the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse and the Royal London Hospital. He is now a consultant.

In fact, coal combustion probably was the main factor in the deaths, the researchers said. But a close examination of the victims' lung tissue indicated that Londoners were exposed not just to high volumes of ultrafine carbon materials but also to more than a dozen other fine particulate substances, including metals like lead.

Perhaps more significant, the study found concentrations of particles associated with diesel fuel, which remains a major source of air pollution in Europe and, to a lesser extent, the United States. The mass deaths occurred the same year that London completed its switch from electric trams to diesel buses, so it appears that a combination of factors may have made the smog so deadly, although the role of the metals is not yet understood.

The Great Smog is considered a turning point in environmental history. Although there had been other episodes where air pollution was held responsible for a spike in deaths — notably in the Meuse Valley in Belgium in 1930, and in Donora, Pa., in 1948 — the numbers were much lower than those in London. In the aftermath, British officials passed laws banning the emission of black smoke and requiring industry to switch to cleaner-burning fuels.

"Once London hit, it was no longer deniable that air pollution was a big deal and that a small amount of pollution could have a big effect," said Dr. Devra Davis, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University and the author of "When Smoke Ran Like Water," a history of air pollution.

While the danger of particulate matter has been demonstrated in many studies, the value of the new report, experts said, is the detailed portrait of pollution exposure it draws by using tissue samples. When the Great Smog occurred, health officials did not monitor air quality, as they routinely do now. That is where the lung samples come in.

"It is allowing us to see what they inhaled," said a co-author of the study, Dr. Jerrold L. Abraham of SUNY Upstate.

By looking at samples from different parts of the lungs, the researchers determined what the victims had been exposed to just before their deaths and over the long term. They also found that some potentially dangerous metals in short-term storage parts of the lung were not in long-term storage parts, suggesting that the metals had been absorbed, and supporting current theories about the dangers of inhaled metals.

Still, the findings are of much more than historical interest, experts said. Janice E. Nolen, director for national policy at the American Lung Association, which helped pay for the study, said they reinforced the need to restrict emissions from diesel fuel and older factories that still burn materials like coal.

"We're still killing thousands of people, unfortunately, with fine particle pollution in this country," Ms. Nolen said.

Wednesday, October 6, 1999

Smog sends 53,000 people to the hospital each summer and triggers more than 6 million asthma attacks in the eastern United States, according to estimates released on Tuesday by clean air activists.

Smog created in the summer is called ground-level ozone, the main culprit in what environmentalists believe is a public health crisis generated by coal-fired power plants.

"Despite popular impressions, this is not just a Northeast problem", said Conrad Schneider, technical and policy coordinator for the Clean Air Task Force (CATF).

"From Texas to Illinois and from Georgia to Maine, and everywhere in between, people are admitted to the hospital for serious, prolonged respiratory distress due to ozone smog".

The national campaign against dirty air is a joint project of CATF, the National Environmental Trust and U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

In breaking down the numbers in its report, the groups highlighted the national scope of the problem by noting Texas had 660,000 asthma attacks, New York more than 500,000 and Washington, D.C., 800 hospital admissions due to summer smog.

For years, Northeastern states have sought remedies to cut air pollution drifting into their region from Midwestern and Southern power plants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last year told 22 states to cut smog-forming pollution from the plants by around 85 percent below 1990 levels.

A number of Midwestern states in turn sued the government, winning a court ruling to delay implementation of EPA's plan.

Curbing pollution is at the heart of high-level talks between EPA and eight major coal-burning electric utilities.

In July, EPA said it suspected utility plant operators had expanded generation capacity - and emissions - without seeking new permits required under routine maintenance provisions of the 1990 Clean Air Act.

The eight utilities could face costs running into the billions of dollars to correct the problem, pending the outcome of negotiations.

Separately, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announced in September plans to sue 17 utilities for clean air offenses.

From the Great Smoky Mountains to the Grand Canyon, America's national parks are becoming a health risk for millions of visitors due to pollution from coal-burning power plants, according to an environmental report.

"This summer of 1999 proved to be the worst for our national park system due to the high concentration of air pollution", said a report issued Wednesday by the environmental group Izaak Walton League of America.

The Maryland-based group blamed the acid rain, soot and smog — which can cause lung damage and asthma — on old coal-burning power plants exempt from tough air standards under the Clean Air Act.

"On days with high ozone levels, visitors to our national park's experience reduced lung function and may endure respiratory problems such as asthma", the report said.

National parks recorded 209 days this year when its air quality violated the federal standard for ozone smog blown hundreds of miles from tall smokestacks, the study said.

"This is a very major problem for us", said Chris Shaver, National Park Service Chief of the Air Resources Division. "Visibility in many of the eastern national parks is about half of what it should be on an average day", Shaver said.

The Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee — the country's most visited national park and most polluted — recorded 52 days during which air pollution levels violated the federal health standard, the report said.

Old plants produce 97% of acid rain