A woman at Tiananmen Square wears a protective mask amid heavy smog after the
city issued its first ever 'red alert' for air pollution, in Beijing, December
9. (photo: Damir Sagolj/Reuters)
2015
in Pollution: A Toxic Roundup
By Zoë Schlanger, Newsweek
01 January 16
There’s
no subtle way to say this: 2015 was a garbage year for our air and water. A
river in Colorado turned a bright mac-and-cheese orange with mining waste.
Photos of the streets of Beijing, thick with air pollution, looked downright
apocalyptic. Parents in Flint, Michigan can look forward to a 2016 living in
fear for their children’s brain development after learning their water is full
of too much lead. One of the biggest automakers in the world admitted to
rigging its vehicles to pass emissions tests, even when they were spewing out
as much as 40 times the legal limit of the harmful pollutant NOx. It’s a mess
out there, fam.
But
amid the muck was a few bright spots: Obama’s Clean Power Plan made it through
several Republican challenges mostly unscathed , and the federal
government rolled out itsfirst-ever rule limiting ozone emissions this
year, putting a cap on the amount of the harmful pollutant (which is linked to
asthma, heart disease, premature death, and an array of pregnancy
complications) that states are allowed to emit. But—sorry, there’s a “but”—the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set the cap at the upper limit of what experts recommended ,
which many health advocates say amounts to a weak rule that still leaves plenty
of room for ozone to damage human health. According to The New York Times , the EPA had sought
public comment on a more restrictive cap, but industry lobbyists then “waged an
all-fronts campaign” to urge the agency to publish as weak a standard as
possible.
Meanwhile,
a report found that the U.S.’s regulations on fine particulate matter (linked
to asthma risk and a range of other health problems) isn’t nearly adequate,
and still leaves Americans at risk for early death .
So even if you live in a place that complies with the EPA’s fine particulate
matter rules (many places—where about 44 percent of Americans live—do not) the air
you breathe could still lead you to die sooner than you
should.
Also,
sadly, this article is not going to get any cheerier.
And
now! Here’s a roundup of the most spectacularly awful pollution stories from
2015. This list is by no means exhaustive. It could go on forever. Sorry! But
it’s true. Happy New Year.
Children
of Flint, Michigan Might Be Permanently Damaged by Lead in the Water
The
lead-tainted water supply in Flint, Michigan has spiked the levels of lead in
children’s blood at such a scale that Mayor Karen Weaver announced she was
preparing the city to need more special education programs in
the near future to deal with the “irreversible” effects on children’s brain
development. Weaver declared a state of emergency, the head of Michigan’s
environmental regulation agency resigned, and Michigan Governor Rick
Snyder apologized for the disaster this week.
Lead
exposure “affects children’s brain development resulting in reduced
intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioral changes such as shortening of attention
span and increased antisocial behavior, and reduced educational attainment.
Lead exposure also causes anemia, hypertension, renal impairment,
immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs,” according to the World
Health Organization. “The neurological and behavioral effects of lead are believed to
be irreversible.”
Volkswagen
Emissions Cheating Scandal May Have an Actual Death Toll
This
year, we learned that automaker Volkswagen cheated on emissions tests on a massive scale,
rigging 11 million of its cars worldwide with “defeat devices” to pass
emissions tests, while in reality they were pumping far more toxic pollution
than was legal. Scientists have established that, statistically, exposure to
air pollution correlates with earlier-than-normal death. MIT and Harvard
researchers applied those statistical models to the Volkswagen scandal, and
concluded in a recent study that the roughly 500,000 rigged cars sold in the
U.S. alone would emit enough excess NOx by the end of 2016 to cause
roughly 60 people to die 10 to 20 years prematurely .
All
that excess pollution will also “contribute directly” to 31 cases of chronic
bronchitis, 34 hospital admissions for heart and respiratory conditions,
120,000 “minor restricted activity days” (like missing work or school) and
roughly 210,000 days of lower-respiratory symptoms, such as coughing. They
calculated that all those sick people, from 2008 through the end of 2015, will
cost the country $450 million. That’s in the United States alone—another 10.5
million rigged cars, or more than 20 times the amount sold in the US, were sold
abroad.
Beijing’s
Air Pollution Problem Turned the City Post-Apocalyptic
In
December, Beijing twice issued an air pollution “red alert,” the
highest level warning, which triggers the shutdown of schools and factories,
and restricts traffic. The smog was expected to rise above 500 micrograms per
cubic meter. For perspective, levels above 25 are considered unsafe by the
World Health Organization.
One
resident described the pollution during that time as so
thick she could “taste the bad air” through her facemask.
Beijing’s
dire problem, linked to China’s dependence on burning coal, has produced
headlines that read like post-apocalyptic speculative fiction. People in
Beijing are rapidly buying up cans of clean air from Canada for
$14 a pop, before shipping. A Beijing restaurant startedcharging extra for clean air .
LA’s
Methane Leak May be the Biggest Environmental Disaster Since the BP Spill
For
about two months straight, a vast amount of methane gas has been spewing out of
a natural gas facility 25 miles north of Los Angeles, and no end is in sight.
The company responsible, Southern California Gas Co., has said that it might take several months to plug the leak.
The
latest estimates, from the Environmental Defense Fund, show that 74,500 metric tons of methane gas have been
released so far. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas: It absorbs heat so
effectively that it can be as much as 80 times more potent in terms of global
warming than carbon dioxide is in its first two decades in the
atmosphere. Gizmodo reports that, in terms of overall emissions, that’s the
equivalent of putting seven million more cars on the road.
EPA
Turned a River Bright Orange. Oops
Earlier
this year, the EPA managed to cause an environmental disaster. The agency says
it was using heavy machinery to investigate pollutants at an abandoned gold
mine in Colorado when it accidentally released an estimated 1 million gallons
of built-up mining waste into the nearby Animas River—turning it a
spectacularly unnatural orange hue. In short, the agency poked a hole in the
wrong place.
The
waste contained lead, arsenic, cadmium and aluminum. To be fair, the mine, like
many mines left abandoned and unremediated by companies across the West, had
been slowly releasing such contaminants for years—the EPA was there to try to
stop the leak.
“This
is a huge tragedy. It’s hard being on the other side of this. We typically
respond to emergencies, we don’t cause them,” David Ostrander, EPA’s director
of emergency preparedness for the region, said at the time. “But this is just
an unanticipated situation that didn’t quite come out as planned.”
C 2015 Reader Supported News
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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