What You Need to Know About Air Pollution Around the World
Air pollution results in the premature death of 7 million people around the world each year. It is a major global killer harming people in nearly every corner of the globe.
My guest today, Beth Gardiner is a journalist who traveled the world examining the impact of air pollution. Her new book is called Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution.
In our conversation she shares stories from her reporting, which includes not only detailing the harmful impact of air pollution but also an examination of policies that are working toward cleaner air for all.
Get the Global Dispatches Podcast
iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Play Music | Radio Public
What’s up first?
The nastiest air Gardiner has ever breathed is not in her book. Gardiner took a trip to the capital of Mongolia, where their pollution is horrendous, though very seasonal, as a result of people burning coals in winter to cope with the freezing weather. You could smell the coal smoke from indoors or out. She interviewed the UNICEF representative in Mongolia, and mentioned the term public health crisis. The representative asserted that air pollution is more than that – it is an existential crisis. The pollution that has already occurred is impacting people’s future health, which affects the future of the country and the overall human experience in Mongolia.
Air pollution may not be visible every day, but has serious long term impacts.
In Mongolia, it is extreme, so you can see it because hospitals are overflowing with kids getting pneumonia. If you go further into other parts of Asia or Western countries it is not as bad or visible, however it is still severe. You will often hear about this notion of invisibility. That could mean the pollution itself is invisible or it could be the connection between cause and effect is invisible. There is strong evidence supporting the connection between air pollution to heart attacks, strokes, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and the biggest being premature death ultimately. Nonetheless, it is difficult to link air pollution to individual cases.
You have written about the mother of Ella Kissi-Debrah. Can you tell this story?
Ella Kissi-Debrah, based in London, died in 2013 at nine years old. She was healthy until she was six, when she developed a severe case of asthma. Europe has a real issue with air quality because they use more diesel rather than gas, which is more common in the US. Debrah was hospitalized about thirty times during her last three years. Now her mother, Ms. Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, wants to put air pollution on Ella’s death certificate, which is really important. One human face can be more powerful than a million statistics. With that being said, global air pollution cuts short seven million lives annually.
Your book takes readers to Poland whose causes of air pollution are different.
The Poland chapter is about coal, thought the issue of coal is not unique to there, it is one place to expand a larger story. They get almost all of their electricity from coal and further, many people burn coal for heat in their homes. If you are in a power plant, burning coal is done under a regulatory regime and there is filtering equipment. However, if you are in a home, people use low-tech stoves and cheap coal. This is absolutely choking.
Indoor air pollution is not something that may be typically associated with industrial Europe.
Scientists have stopped using the terms “indoor and outdoor pollution” because they are totally intertwined. Now it is referred to as ambient and household. In India for example, indoor pollution lends itself more to cooking than heating. People burn wood and cow dung for heat because they don’t have gas or electricity. This is now thought to account for 25% overall outdoor ambient air quality problem. Wood burning is still a major contributor to air pollution in developed countries including the US and Europe. Log burning stoves are really trendy and people buy them thinking they are more eco-friendly. This is a catastrophic mistake as the health effects are terrible. A wood fire seems cozy and safe to people, unlike coal, but it is really full of harmful toxins.
@TedxLondon asks – what is the most surprising approach to dealing with pollution you came across while doing your research?
The answers to air pollution are more boring as they are more technical, but they are non-boring in the sense that they are at the crux of our biggest political debates. This is referring to regulation. People discuss personal choice when it comes to air pollution, but learning from experience between China, Washington, and London – it is our governments who have the power to restrain polluting companies. It comes down to corporate power, money, and regulation.
Where are there interesting government regulations happening?
The US is a type of success story, specifically in Los Angeles, though it still has America’s worst air. It shows slow progress over several years of systematic, scientific regulation that cracks down on cars, trucks, and ships. Ships run on dirty fuel, and then trucks come in to collect the goods, which provides the backbone of our consumer economy. There are new innovations like plug in power at the dockside so ships do not need to run their engines when being loaded or un-loaded. These things make a difference, but fundamentally we need government power.
This brings us to the Clean Air Act. Can you discuss its impact?
The act is one of the most consequential laws in modern American history, though it may be under-celebrated. Trillions of dollars and millions of lives have been saved as a result of this act. The monetary benefits have been thirty or forty times the costs. The health benefits outweigh the costs by a great deal. When the EPA sets its standards, there is only one consideration – public health. It does not consider cost, but rather prioritizes public health over money and corporate profit.
How much of China’s activity affects global statistics around air pollution?
It matters a lot. They serve as a poster example of air pollution, though there is a positive story here too. China has sent people over to LA to see how they achieved their clean up, and are now experiencing double digit declines in pollution levels which has immediate health benefits. They are rolling out the world’s largest investment in solar power, putting more money towards electric vehicles, and they are decreasing their coal consumption. China is so huge that they have these economies of scale that can move global markets. When China started manufacturing solar panels, this brought the cost down by 90%, meaning it is competitive with coal now. Very soon, we may see the cost of electric vehicles go down as well and move the technology forward faster.
To listen to this podcast:
Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Radio, Radio Public.
Shownotes by Lydia DeFelice