Arden Pope
Arden Pope: Yes, my name is Arden Pope. I'm a professor of economics at Brigham
Young University.
Arden Pope: So what was interesting is here we have the Utah Valley serves as a
natural exposure chamber. Then we have the largest source of pollution, Geneva Steel,
shut down for 13 months and reopen. So this was a very interesting and unique natural
experiment. When we looked at various health outcomes, especially children's
respiratory admissions to hospital -- local hospitals, what we saw is when the steel mill
was operating, the air pollution was much higher.
Many more children were being admitted to the hospitals. When the steel mill shut
down, the admissions for pediatric respiratory hospital admissions dropped, and then
they went back up after the steel mill reopened. After that, we began to look at a lot of
other health end points.
So we looked at respiratory and cardiovascular mortality, school absences, and various
other adverse health outcomes. And many of them, most of them that were related to
respiratory and cardiovascular disease, were also associated with air pollution, much of
it coming from the steel mill but form other sources as well.
Arden Pope: Well, the steel mill is shut down. It no longer exists. And the air pollution
from the steel mill no longer exists. The air pollution in Utah Valley since the steel mill
shut down has been a lot lower.
Clearly, the pollution from the steel mill contributed to the air pollution and adverse
health effects when it was open. And things have improved substantially since it closed.
Arden Pope: Well, air quality is an important topic because air pollution influences our
welfare and our health. In fact, a recent study suggested that breathing contaminated
air, and not only in the United States, but also in other parts of the world, significantly
contribute to global burden of disease.
Arden Pope: So pure air is basically nitrogen and oxygen, and a few other gasses. But
the air we actually breathe is contaminated with pollutants, including: fine particle
pollution, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, ozone,
and various other air toxins.
And so what we've learned is that for many of these pollutants, as we breathe the
pollutants, it contributes to ill health.
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Arden Pope
Arden Pope: So most of the pollution that we have in our air comes from cars, trucks,
and various industrial sources. And generally, you can think of it as burning things, so
burning gasoline, burning diesel, burning coal, having incinerators. It also -- smelters,
like the copper smelter contributes to the air pollution.
Arden Pope: So when we have an inversion, basically what you have is stagnant, cold
air trapped on the valley floor. And it's not just the air that gets trapped. It's the
pollutants that we emit in our valleys. So the concentration of the pollutants goes up.
The inversion layer itself basically is that layer between the high concentrated pollutants
lower in the valley floor versus the cleaner air up above.
Arden Pope: Well, when we have these inversions, the concentrations of the pollutants
go up. And in fact, because it's right on the valley floor, it's right where we breathe them
as well. So were breathing high concentrations of these pollutants. And it's these high
concentrations of pollutants that actually contribute to the adverse health effects.
Arden Pope: The primary health effects are associated with respiratory and
cardiovascular disease. So for example, if you're looking at children, what we see with
children, children exposed to higher levels of air pollution, have reduced lung function.
They have reduced lung function growth over their childhood. They have increased
respiratory systems. They have aggravated symptoms of asthma.
In adults, we see increased symptoms of asthma. We see increased symptoms of
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And we also see increased risk of
cardiovascular disease. In fact, remarkably, over the years, there have been many
studies that observe that short-term and long-term exposure to air pollution actually
increases the risk of dying of both respiratory and cardiovascular disease.
Arden Pope: So there's been a lot of research with regards to the safe threshold issue.
The bottom line is what we do know is that the more pollution we have, the larger risk
we have with regards to respiratory and cardiovascular disease. And we've observed
that even when we clean up in places that are relatively clean already, we see
improvements in health. So there does not seem to be any clear evidence of a
threshold.
It turns out that the cleaner the air, the better.
Arden Pope: So yes, during the winter, the air pollution tends to spike largely because
the winter is the time when we have the conditions that really result in these very bad
temperature inversions. The impact on our health is especially bad for those individuals
that have existing respiratory and cardiovascular disease.
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Arden Pope
Even a few days of high exposure can significantly increase the risk for an adult, for
example, that has underlying coronary artery disease or for children that have asthma,
or other respiratory diseases.
Arden Pope: For children, the evidence suggests that short-term elevated air pollution,
especially fine, particulate air pollution, will aggravate or exacerbate underlying asthma
conditions and can cause children to suffer more from their asthma.
The results also suggest that long-term exposure to fine particulate air pollution actually
reduces lung function growth or the development of lungs.
A number of studies that have come out what's called the Southern California Children's
Health Study demonstrates that long-term exposure to fine particulate air pollution can
contribute to deficits in lung function growth.
Arden Pope: So PM2.5 refers to particulate matter that's smaller than two and a half
microns in aerodynamic diameter. These are very fine particles, and they can penetrate
deeply into the lungs. Also, these particles are almost entirely generated by combustion
processes, the burning of gasoline, diesel, coal, etc.
As such, these particles not only can penetrate deeply into the lungs, but they're made
up of all sorts of nasty, nasty stuff.
Arden Pope: It turns out that these fine particles that come primarily from combustion
sources are relatively toxic. And the reason they're relatively toxic is they're small
enough they can penetrate deeply into the lungs. And they're also made up chemically
of relatively toxic things.
Arden Pope: In Utah, the air quality is usually quite clean. But during inversions, the
pollution can get as high as any place in the United States. That being said, however,
our air quality is much better than many places throughout the world such as many of
the cities in China, India, or elsewhere.
Arden Pope: It’s true that air pollution comes from our cars, from our jobs, from our
industry. It also comes from activities that heat our homes. And so air pollution actually
comes from us doing things that are important to us: driving our cars, heating our
homes, having industry that provides for our needs.
As such, the challenge is we need to try to figure out how to drive cars, heat our homes
in such a way that we don’t seriously pollute our environment.
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Arden Pope
Arden Pope: One of the biggest misconceptions at least has been that air pollution
really isn't that important, and that there's this sort of trade-off between air pollution or
clean air and jobs. It turns out that there's a lot of evidence that we can in fact improve
our air quality, while at the same time having good economic activity, having jobs. And
in fact, when you try to attract industry and business to the area, you want to have clean
air. People want to have environments that look nice and that are healthy.
Arden Pope: Well, the issue of air pollution is often controversial because often, it has
to do with who pays the cost of air pollution and who pays for the cleanup. And it's very
true -- and in economic terms, we often refer to air pollution as an externality, meaning
that those that benefit from producing the air pollution often don’t have to pay the costs.
And as such, this is a very sort of difficult public policy issue, but it's a public policy issue
that's important and that we need to address.
Arden Pope: So over the last 30 years or so, air quality has improved in most areas
throughout the United States. Here in Utah, we've seen some improvements in air
quality, and that's been good.
It seems to be leveling off a little bit more recently. And it's clear that we're going to
have to continue to do everything that we can at least responsibly to make sure that we
keep our air quality good, and that we keep our environment healthy and safe and
attractive.
Arden Pope: So there's actually very good news with regards to the air quality issue in
the United States. And that is a few years ago, some colleagues and I did some studies
where we looked at improvements in air quality in the United States and improvements
in life expectancy. And in fact, what we're seeing is as we improve our air quality, as we
reduce the air pollution that we're exposed to, we see healthier populations, and we see
improved life expectancy.
We don’t want to overstate this. It's just one factor that improves our health. But when
we reduce our air pollution -- and in fact, we've known for a long time that higher
concentrations of air pollution are associated with increased disease. What's amazing
is now that we're learning as reduce our air pollution, we're seeing improvements in
health, improvements in life expectancy that are directly associated with our
improvements in air quality.
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Arden Pope
Arden Pope: I'm actually fairly optimistic. I think that we are starting to understand the
problem. We are bright. We are capable. We can work together. We can make public
policy that will allow us to have jobs, to have clean cars, to have nice homes, and to
have clean air.
Arden Pope: Over the last 25 or 30 years or so, we have been surprised at how much
air pollution contributes to poor health, how much air pollution contributes to respiratory
disease, and especially how much it contributes to cardiovascular disease. And we've
done a lot of work understanding the size of the effects of air pollution on cardiovascular
and respiratory health.
We've done a lot of work trying to understand the pathophysiology, how breathing
particles and other pollutants can contribute to the ill health. And we've learned a lot
about this. What's been amazing and maybe one of the -- you know, which is very good
news.
One of the most important things we've learned is that as we improve our air quality, as
we reduce the pollution that we're exposed to, we actually see improvements in health.
And these are measurable. And so the good news is that we have now one factor. It's
just one. But one factor, one environmental factor that contributes to both respiratory
and cardiovascular disease, and we can control it.
And as we can control it -- or as we control it, we see improvements in health that are
very important for not only Utahans, but people throughout the world.
Arden Pope: Yes, it turns out that living near roads exposes you more to more air
pollution. And as a result of that, we see increased risk of respiratory and
cardiovascular disease. And even in children that live near roads throughout the time
when their lungs are developing, we see that children living closer to the major roads
have more deficits in their lung function growth.
Arden Pope: So what is air? Well, pure air is mostly nitrogen and oxygen and a few
other gases. The air we breathe, however, is usually polluted. And it's polluted with
particles. It's polluted with carbon monoxide. It's polluted with ozone, with sulfates and
nitrates and other pollutants. As such, we don’t actually hardly ever breathe pure air.
But we'd like to have our air as clean as it can be.
When we're breathing air contaminated with these various pollutants, we know that it
contributes to adverse health effects. And that’s the primary reason that we want to
reduce the air pollution and breathe as close to pure air as we can.
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Arden Pope
Arden Pope: I'm the Mary Lou Fulton Professor of Economics at Brigham Young
University. The simple title is I'm a professor of economics at Brigham Young
University.
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