Steubenville, Steel and Standards

Abstract

S18: Landmarks of Air Pollution Epidemiology: Legacy of Douglas Dockery, Beatrix Theater, August 27, 2019, 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM Around 1980, many of us were led to believe by a major AJE review that air pollution levels were no longer harmful to health in the US and Europe.Then Doug published the Steubenville Alert study (JAPCA 1982;32:937-42), showing transient changes in lung function in kids exposed to time-varying TSP levels which were supposedly safe. Steubenville air pollution was dominated by steel mill emissions at the time. In 1985 we, by coincidence, found transient changes in lung function in kids related to particle mass near a steel mill in the Netherlands. That same year I at a WHO workshop met Les Grant and Judy Graham from EPA who were preparing the first ever mass and physiology based standard for PM – PM10 being the mass fraction that can actually be inhaled. Coffee break chats made Les and Judy aware of our still unpublished data – and both jumped on me to get this out in the public domain a.s.a.p. The Dassen paper was published (JAPCA 1986;36:1223-7), and then I spent my sabbatical in 1986/1987 at Harvard, working closely with Doug. In the fall of 1986, Doug dragged me to a public CASAC hearing in DC to present our studies to a critical audience. Most critical of all was dr. Landau from the Iron and Steel Institute, who presented a systematic review of our studies, using 14 different criteria. Doug’s study did not meet 12/14; ours 13/14…..Regardless, EPA pressed ahead in promulgating the PM10 NAAQS in 1987, explicitly quoting the two studies. The rest is history. The PM10 standard led to massive expansion of PM10 measurements, first in the US, later in Europe and elsewhere. With these new PM mass data becoming available, hundreds of new epidemiology studies changed our field forever to support air pollution control measures everywhere.