Louisiana’s Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act Protects Industry while Restricting the Rights of Affected Communities

Addressing the Burden of Disease Attributable to Air Pollution in India: The Need to Integrate across Household and Ambient Air Pollution Exposures

Ambient concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) have dropped in recent years as a result of regulations set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the agency anticipates this trend will continue.1 But hundreds of studies conducted since the regulations were last reviewed indicate that stricter rules still might be warranted to adequately protect the U.S. population against adverse cardiovascular, respiratory, and possibly other health effects associated with PM2.5.2 In December 2012 the EPA reduced the annual primary National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for PM2.5 to a level it anticipates will protect public health with an adequate margin of safety when combined with the existing 24-hour standard.3 The new primary annual standard of 12 µg/m3, down from the previous 15 µg/m3, falls at the low end of the 12- to 13-µg/m3 range the EPA proposed in June 2012.4 With the new standard, more than 44 million U.S. residents live in counties that would violate the standard if it were fully in effect today, based on 2009–2011 monitoring data.5,6 However, by 2020—the deadline for implementation—only seven monitored counties are expected to be in violation as a result of ongoing implementation of other regulations already in place, such as those targeting diesel engines, other onroad and offroad vehicles, waste incinerators, and coal-fired power plants. It’s plausible that ambient concentrations of PM will be generally lower nationwide in 2020 than they are today, says Lorraine Gershman, director of environment, regulatory, and technical affairs with the American Chemistry Council (ACC), which represents some of the industries affected by the regulation. That, along with inconsistencies in findings on the health effects of particulate pollution, is why the ACC opposed lowering the standard.7 Primary standards are set to protect human health against acute and chronic effects, whereas secondary standards are intended to address a range of environmental impacts, such as climate effects, damage to materials, and visibility impairment. The previous annual primary PM2.5 standard of 15 µg/m3 was set in 1997.8 It was retained by the Bush administration in 2006, but in 2009 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit remanded the standard to the EPA and directed the agency to explain how it would protect public health with an adequate margin of safety as required under the Clean Air Act.9 The EPA attempted to address the court-identified shortcomings with this new 2012 regulation. The 24-hour primary standard remains unchanged from the Bush administration concentration of 35 mg/m3, a threshold that wasn’t challenged in court. Also unchanged are the annual and 24-hour secondary standards, which remain at 15 mg/m3 and 35 mg/m3, respectively (although both were challenged in the post-2006 legal actions by various parties). The primary and secondary 24-hour standards for coarse particulate matter (PM10), established in 1987 and upheld by the court in its 2009 ruling, also remain unchanged at 150 µg/m3. The agency estimates the only localities that will need to take action to meet the new set of PM standards will be seven counties in California, and possibly all or parts of some nearby counties. For these counties, which include some of California’s most heavily populated, the agency estimates the updated standards will lead to annual benefits of $4–9.1 billion in avoided health problems and premature deaths, with estimated implementation costs of $53–350 million.10 In other words, the cost of compliance is 11–172 times less than the health costs that individuals and health programs would likely bear if the standard were not tightened.11 One of industry’s greatest concerns about the new regulations is the uncertainty in getting permits for new or expanded facilities in counties that are barely compliant, Gershman says. Partly because of limitations with current modeling efforts, that uncertainty could linger through 2014, when the EPA, working with state, tribal, and local governments, is expected to finalize decisions on which counties violate the standard. “Our focus will be on working with the EPA to get more comprehensive modeling guidance,” she says. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, would like to have seen all the other PM2.5 and PM10 standards made more stringent, too, but he speculates the agency won’t go that route, despite existing scientific support for doing so, until pollution control technology improves in capability and/or cost. “You can’t ask industry to do something impossible,” he says. “There’s a tradeoff there.”

Particulate matter (PM) is one of six criteria pollutants regulated by National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). These standards are twofold: a primary standard protects human health, and a secondary standard protects crops, ecosystems, and other forms of “public welfare.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last revisited the PM standards in 2006. Now, in response to a court order mandating action on the overdue review of these rules, the agency has proposed a stricter set of new standards.1 PM can be emitted directly from sources such as vehicles, power plants, burning biomass, and various industrial operations, or it can form as a reaction product. PM can contribute to a wide range of adverse health effects in people, with effects varying with the size and composition of the particles. Health damage occurs even in localities that meet current PM standards;2 the EPA’s advisory panel of independent experts, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), noted in its correspondence with the agency regarding the proposed rules that “Although there is increasing uncertainty at lower levels [of PM exposure], there is no evidence of . . . a level below which there is no risk for adverse health effects.”3 For long-term effects of fine PM (PM2.5 ), CASAC recommended the primary health standard be tightened from a current annual average of 15 µg/m3 to somewhere in the range of 11–13 µg/m3.3 The EPA is proposing a standard in the range of 12–13 µg/m3 and is accepting public comments on levels down to 11 µg/m3. To address short-term effects, CASAC recommended a range of 30–35 µg/m3 averaged over 24 hours; the agency proposes to retain the current standard of 35 µg/m3. Particle size is an important factor in how PM affects human health. Larger PM10 is deposited mostly in the nose and throat. Because PM2.5 can penetrate much deeper into the lung, it poses a greater health threat. For coarse PM (PM10), the CASAC recommended the agency change not just the level of the standard but also its “form”—the air quality statistics used to determine whether an area is in compliance. The committee recommended adopting a level of 65–75 µg/m3 as the 98th percentile 24-hour concentration averaged over three years. The agency is proposing to keep the standard at the current 150 µg/m3 based on a so-called one-expected exceedance form—the 24-hour limit is not to be exceeded more than once a year averaged over three years. The agency estimates that at any point in the proposed ranges the dollars saved from avoided health costs, sick days, and deaths would far outweigh costs paid by affected states, tribal lands, and counties to achieve the lower standards.4 With PM2.5 standards of 13 µg/m3 (annual) and 35 µg/m3 (24-hour), the EPA calculates annual health benefits of $88–220 million, with costs of $2.9 million.5 Substituting an annual standard of 12 µg/m3, annual health benefits are estimated at $2.3–5.9 billion, with implementation costs of $69 million. At an annual standard of 11 µg/m3, annual health benefits would be an estimated $9.2–23.0 billion, with costs of $270 million. The agency also calculated a scenario with an annual standard of 11 µg/m3 and a 24-hour standard of 30 µg/m3. Both the benefits and implementation costs are estimated to be roughly 50% higher than the configuration of 11 µg/m3 (annual) and 35 µg/m3 (24-hour). About 30% of the U.S. population lives in the 191 counties or parts of counties designated as “nonattainment” for the current annual PM2.5 standard. Attainment status is based on a rolling three years’ worth of PM data for those counties with air monitors; for the rest, state and EPA officials must estimate each county’s contribution to the larger area’s PM pollution. In figures published with the proposed standards, the EPA estimated 33 counties with monitors (with total populations of more than 27 million) would violate an annual standard of 13 µg/m3, an additional 49 counties (with more than 27 million additional people) would violate 12 µg/m3, and an additional 86 counties (with tens of millions more people) would violate 11 µg/m3.6 These figures were based on 2008–2010 monitoring data. Ted Cromwell, senior principal for environmental policy at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, questions the wisdom of further tightening the standards without knowing which specific chemical constituents of PM2.5 are responsible for associated health effects.7 He’d prefer to continue implementation of the current standard until research more definitively pins down those substances, and then target them specifically. The EPA is reviewing public comments on the proposal and is required by the court-approved consent decree to issue final rules by 14 December 2012. Mitigation measures are supposed to begin by 2015 and must be fully implemented by 2020.

This study comprehensively characterizes hourly fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations measured via a tapered element oscillating microbalance (TEOM), β-gauge, and nephelometer from four different monitoring sites in U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA) Region 5 (in U.S. states Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin) and compares them to the Federal Reference Method (FRM). Hourly characterization uses time series and autocorrelation. Hourly data are compared with FRM by averaging across 24-hr sampling periods and modeling against respective daily FRM concentrations. Modeling uses traditional two-variable linear least-squares regression as well as innovative nonlinear regression involving additional meteorological variables such as temperature and humidity. The TEOM shows a relationship with season and temperature, linear correlation as low as 0.7924 and nonlinear model correlation as high as 0.9370 when modeled with temperature. The β-gauge shows no relationship with season or meteorological variables. It exhibits a linear correlation as low as 0.8505 with the FRM and a nonlinear model correlation as high as 0.9339 when modeled with humidity. The nephelometer shows no relationship with season or temperature but a strong relationship with humidity is observed. A linear correlation as low as 0.3050 and a nonlinear model correlation as high as 0.9508 is observed when modeled with humidity. Nonlinear models have higher correlation than linear models applied to the same dataset. This correlation difference is not always substantial, which may introduce a tradeoff between simplicity of model and degree of statistical association. This project shows that continuous monitor technology produces valid PM2.5 characterization, with at least partial accounting for variations in concentration from gravimetric reference monitors once appropriate nonlinear adjustments are applied. Although only one regression technically meets new EPA National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) Federal Equivalent Method (FEM) correlation coefficient criteria, several others are extremely close, showing optimistic potential for use of this nonlinear adjustment model in garnering EPA NAAQS FEM approval for continuous PM2.5 sampling methods.

Air Pollution and Coronary Risk in Kidney Transplant Recipients

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for six principal air pollutants (“criteria” pollutants): carbon monoxide (CO), lead (Pb), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate matter (PM) in two size ranges [< 2.5 μm (PM2.5) and < 10 μm (PM10)], ozone (O3), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) (U.S. EPA 2010b). Although associations have been identified between these pollutants and adverse health effects, considerable uncertainty remains regarding a) methods and approaches to understanding relationships between air pollution and health effects; b) which components (gas and/or aerosol) and sources are most toxic; c) the mechanisms of actions of the pollutants and causal relationships; d) effect of confounding factors, and e) which populations are susceptible {U.S. EPA 2006a (Pb), 2006b (O3), 2008a [NOx Integrated Science Assessment (ISA)], 2008b (SOx ISA), 2009 (PM), 2010 (CO)}. This holds true especially for PM, because it is composed of many components with significant spatial and temporal variation (U.S. EPA 2009). Air pollution and health research continues to reduce these uncertainties across the source-to-health effects paradigm as described by the National Research Council (NRC) Research Priorities for Airborne Particulate Matter, volumes I–IV, (NRC 1998, 1999, 2001, 2004) and the U.S. EPA (2006a, 2006b, 2008a, 2008b, 2009b, 2010a). Linking air pollution and adverse health effects is complicated and requires expertise across a range of scientific disciplines—from atmospheric to exposure to health sciences, as well as inclusion of air quality managers and policy makers who implement and develop policy to reduce risk from air pollution. Interaction among these groups at different points in time helps to identify gaps in knowledge and suggest future research directions. One such opportunity was the international specialty conference “Air Pollution and Health: Bridging the Gap from Sources to Health Outcomes,” sponsored by the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR 2010). The conference, chaired by myself and Maria Costantini (Health Effects Institute), was designed to help disseminate and integrate results from scientific studies that cut across the range of air pollution– and health-related disciplines of the source-to-health effects continuum. The conference addressed the science of air pollution and health within a multipollutant framework, focusing on five key science areas—sources, atmospheric sciences, exposure, dose, and health effects—as identified by the NRC (1998). Eight key policy-relevant science questions that integrated across various parts of these science areas formed the basis of the meeting, and a ninth question addressed the policy implications of the findings (see Appendix). This was the AAAR’s third international specialty conference and extended the findings presented at the AAAR’s first specialty conference “Particulate Matter: Atmospheric Sciences, Exposure, and the Fourth Colloquium on PM and Human Health,” held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2003 (Davidson et al. 2005). Results from the 2010 AAAR Air Pollution and Health conference are being published in Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP); Air Quality, Atmosphere and Health; Aerosol Science and Technology; Atmospheric Environment; and Inhalation Toxicology (Solomon 2010). This issue of EHP includes conference papers on the importance of a multipollutant approach and of individual components of particulate matter to understanding linkages between sources and adverse health outcomes, including respiratory and/or cardiovascular diseases (Ito et al. 2011; Lall et al. 2011; Rohr et al. 2011; Spira-Cohen et al. 2011; Zhou et al. 2011), associated effects, such as inflammation (Alexeeff et al. 2011), and birth outcomes associated with exposures to traffic-related pollution during gestation (Malmqvist et al. 2011). Several air pollution components and sources were evaluated, including elemental carbon and secondary organic aerosol, traffic, local industrial sources, and residential oil and wood burning. Where studied, some effects varied by season and location over sufficient time (specifically, Detroit, MI; Seattle, WA; New York, NY), likely due to the influence of different source impacts. In addition, this issue includes a review of population characteristics related to susceptibility (Sacks et al. 2011), and an accountability study of the feasibility of hybrid regional–local modeling to assess health improvements in small communities (Lobdell et al. 2011).

Field evaluation of portable and central site PM samplers emphasizing additive and differential mass concentration estimates

Brain Fog: Does Air Pollution Make Us Less Productive?

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Objectives: National ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) are critical tools for controlling air pollution and protecting public health. We designed this study to 1) gather the NAAQS for six classical air pollutants: PM2.5, PM10, O3, NO2, SO2, and CO in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) countries, 2) compare those with the updated World Health Organizations Air Quality Guidelines (WHO AQGs 2021), 3) estimate the potential health benefits of achieving annual PM2.5 NAAQS and WHO AQGs per country, and 4) gather the information on air quality policies and action plans in the EMR countries. Methods: To gather information on the NAAQS, we searched several bibliographic databases, hand-searched the relevant papers and reports, and analysed unpublished data on NAAQS in the EMR countries reported from these countries to the WHO/Regional office of the Eastern Mediterranean/Climate Change, Health and Environment Unit (WHO/EMR/CHE). To estimate the potential health benefits of reaching the NAAQS and AQG levels for PM2.5, we used the average of ambient PM2.5 exposures in the 22 EMR countries in 2019 from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) dataset and AirQ+ software. Results: Almost all of the EMR countries have national ambient air quality standards for the critical air pollutants except Djibouti, Somalia, and Yemen. However, the current standards for PM2.5 are up to 10 times higher than the current health-based WHO AQGs. The standards for other considered pollutants exceed AQGs as well. We estimated that the reduction of annual mean PM2.5 exposure level to the AQG level (5μgm-3) would be associated with a decrease of all natural-cause mortality in adults (age 30+) by 16.9%-42.1% in various EMR countries. All countries would even benefit from the achievement of the Interim Target-2 (25μgm-3) for annual mean PM2.5: it would reduce all-cause mortality by 3%-37.5%. Less than half of the countries in the Region reported having policies relevant to air quality management, in particular addressing pollution related to sand and desert storms (SDS) such as enhancing the implementation of sustainable land management practices, taking measures to prevent and control the main factors of SDS, and developing early warning systems as tools to combat SDS. Few countries conduct studies on the health effects of air pollution or on a contribution of SDS to pollution levels. Information from air quality monitoring is available for 13 out of the 22 EMR countries. Conclusion: Improvement of air quality management, including international collaboration and prioritization of SDS, supported by an update (or establishment) of NAAQSs and enhanced air quality monitoring are essential elements for reduction of air pollution and its health effects in the EMR.

Compressor stations maintain pressure along natural gas pipelines to sustain gas flow. Unfortunately, they present human health concerns as they release chemical pollutants into the air, sometimes at levels higher than national air quality standards. Further, compressor stations are often placed in rural areas with higher levels of poverty and/or minority populations, contributing to environmental justice concerns. In this paper we investigate what chemical pollutants are emitted by compressor stations, the impacts of emitted pollutants on human health, and local community impacts. Based on the information gained from these examinations, we provide the following policy recommendations with the goal of minimizing harm to those affected by natural gas compressor stations: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and relevant state agencies must increase air quality monitoring and data transparency; the EPA should direct more resources to monitoring programs specifically at compressor stations; the EPA should provide free indoor air quality monitoring to homes near compressor stations; the EPA needs to adjust its National Ambient Air Quality Standards to better protect communities and assess cumulative impacts; and decision-makers at all levels must pursue meaningful involvement from potentially affected communities. We find there is substantial evidence of negative impacts to strongly support these recommendations.

I. IntroductionThe elusive interaction between science and policy has dominated riskbased standard setting since the dawn of the environmental era. This is attributable in part to the fact that the regulatory agencies operate on the frontiers of scientific and in part to Congress's choice of vague language to describe the level of expected protection. This interaction is especially apparent in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) efforts to promulgate and revise national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) under § 109 of the Clean Air Act-where the EPA has navigated the boundaries between science and policy in ways that sometimes appear arbitrary or inconsistent to outside observers. The history of the EPA's most recent revision and attempted rerevision of the NAAQS for photochemical oxidants (ozone), in which two EPA Administrators from different political parties reached different conclusions on the same administrative record, offers a unique perspective on the roles of science and policy in environmental decision making.Drawing on the ozone rulemakings as a case study, this Article will explore how science and policy interact in promulgating NAAQS. After providing introduction to the NAAQS standard-setting process in Part II, Parts III and IV describe the EPA's 2008 revision to the ozone NAAQS and its reconsideration of the 2008 standard in 2009 through 2011. Part V then draws on the case study and the relevant academic literature to explore the roles of science and policy in environmental decision making. Part VI examines the critical question of what policy should guide the EPA's resolution of science-policy questions in NAAQS standard setting. Part VI also addresses arguments that the EPA's approach to NAAQS standard setting is incoherent because it does not provide a rational approach to determining how much risk is too much in the context of nonthreshold pollutants like ozone. This Article concludes that the EPA's traditional approach to NAAQS standard setting is neither incoherent nor irrational, and it is easily adaptable to nonthreshold pollutants.II. Promulgating and Revising Ambient Air Quality Standards Under the Clean Air ActThe Clean Air Act requires the EPA to promulgate and periodically revise national and secondary ambient air quality standards for pollutants that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public or welfare and that derive from numerous or diverse mobile or stationary sources.1 For each of the pollutants, the Agency must first prepare a criteria (now called integrated science (ISA)) that accurately reflect[s] the latest scientific knowledge on the effects of the pollutant.2 It then establishes primary NAAQS for each pollutant at a level that is requisite to protect the public health while allowing margin of safety.3 The legislative history of the statute makes it clear that the goal of the standards is to ensure an absence of adverse effect on the of a statistically related sample of persons in sensitive groups . . . .4 The statute directs the Agency to conduct a thorough review of the existing document every five years and, if necessary, revise the document and the corresponding standards to reflect scientific information that has become available since the last revision.5 To assist the Administrator in her assessment of the scientific evidence, the statute creates independent sevenmember Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC).6The Supreme Court elaborated on the roles of cost, risk, and uncertainty when it reviewed the 1997 revisions of the ozone and particulatematter standards in the seminal case of Whitman v. American Trucking Assn's.7 The Court carefully interpreted that section's operative phrases, requisite to protect the public health and adequate margin of safety, to conclude that the statute unambiguously bars cost considerations from the NAAQS-setting process . …

ABSTRACTCanadian wildfire smoke impacted air quality across the northern Mid-Atlantic (MA) of the United States during June 9–12, 2015. A multiday exceedance of the new 2015 70-ppb National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for ozone (O3) followed, resulting in Maryland being incompliant with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) revised 2015 O3 NAAQS. Surface in situ, balloon-borne, and remote sensing observations monitored the impact of the wildfire smoke at Maryland air quality monitoring sites. At peak smoke concentrations in Maryland, wildfire-attributable volatile organic compounds (VOCs) more than doubled, while non-NOx oxides of nitrogen (NOz) tripled, suggesting long range transport of NOx within the smoke plume. Peak daily average PM2.5 was 32.5 µg m−3 with large fractions coming from black carbon (BC) and organic carbon (OC), with a synonymous increase in carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations. Measurements indicate that smoke tracers at the surface were spatially and temporally correlated with maximum 8-hr O3 concentrations in the MA, all which peaked on June 11. Despite initial smoke arrival late on June 9, 2015, O3 production was inhibited due to ultraviolet (UV) light attenuation, lower temperatures, and nonoptimal surface layer composition. Comparison of Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model surface O3 forecasts to observations suggests 14 ppb additional O3 due to smoke influences in northern Maryland. Despite polluted conditions, observations of a nocturnal low-level jet (NLLJ) and Chesapeake Bay Breeze (BB) were associated with decreases in O3 in this case. While infrequent in the MA, wildfire smoke may be an increasing fractional contribution to high-O3 days, particularly in light of increased wildfire frequency in a changing climate, lower regional emissions, and tighter air quality standards.Implications: The presented event demonstrates how a single wildfire event associated with an ozone exceedance of the NAAQS can prevent the Baltimore region from complying with lower ozone standards. This relatively new problem in Maryland is due to regional reductions in NOx emissions that led to record low numbers of ozone NAAQS violations in the last 3 years. This case demonstrates the need for adequate means to quantify and justify ozone impacts from wildfires, which can only be done through the use of observationally based models. The data presented may also improve future air quality forecast models.

The Air Quality Index (AQI) in historical and analytical perspective a tutorial review

In recent decades, the combination of growth of major cities across the country, increased use of vehicles, rapid industrialization, and deficiencies in both planning and environmental regulations, has led to increasing the levels of air pollution and consequent health and environmental impacts. The observed levels of criteria air pollutants (CAPs) and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) often reach magnitudes that are considered to be a threat to human health. Ambient concentrations of gaseous pollutants and fine particles are stable or even increasing over time.Being a responsible key organization in Sri Lanka, Central Environmental Authority has been engaged with an urban air quality monitoring program across the country since 2014 under financial sponsorship of the vehicle emission trust fund of the department of motor traffic. In this program, the criteria air pollutants such as PM2.5, PM10, SO2, NOx, CO, O3 and Non methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs) are monitored in major cities. The 24-hour continuous monitoring for seven days in each and every city are accomplished by using fully automated mobile ambient air quality monitoring station.As observed, the recorded average concentrations of each parameter, in major cities are maintained below the National ambient air quality standards. But it was found that there is a little increasing trend of PM2.5 and PM10 in major cities compared to other pollutants. It is also notable that the average concentrations of other parameters such as SO2, NO2, CO and O3 have been recorded below the National ambient air quality standards. However, these values are defined to 24-hour continuous monitoring for 07 days and it is an instant situation on ambient air quality in the cities considered.These pollutant concentrations have been given for 24-hour consecutive 07 days for a particular city and once a year monitoring for a particular season. Hence the data is very limited and not representative for the entire year. A large set of continuous monitoring data representing all seasons in Sri Lanka is also requires in order to introduce a standard methodology at the data processing. Further an improvement of current ambient air quality monitoring program is recommended in Sri Lanka taking into account the drawbacks identified.Keywords: Ambient air quality, Criteria air pollutants, Hazardous air pollutants, National ambient air quality standards