American Lung Association Faults Environmental Protection Agency for Ignoring Deadly Particle Pollution in Five U.S. Cities in List Released Today

/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Lung Association faults the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for leaving five U.S. cities off its list of those required to take immediate action to reduce particle pollution in the air. This deadly omission puts public health in the following metropolitan areas at considerable risk: Houston, Texas; Augusta, Georgia; Columbus, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; and Fairmont, West Virginia. In addition, EPA left many individual counties off the list despite the impact of emissions from those counties on pollution in metropolitan areas.

Particle pollution is typically a mixture of ash, soot, diesel exhaust, chemicals, metals and aerosols. It can trigger heart attacks and strokes, and cause irregular heartbeats, lung cancer and premature births. Breathing particle pollution year-round can shorten life by one to three years. The five cities omitted from the EPA's list all showed unhealthy year-round levels of fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5. In its list released today, the EPA only identified counties and metropolitan areas that experience unhealthy spikes in particulate matter pollution over the course of a 24-hour period.

The Clean Air Act requires that the EPA officially notify all localities with documented unhealthy levels of particulate air pollution so that leaders can begin to make necessary changes.

"The Clean Air Act plainly requires the EPA to identify all the places where air pollution poses a threat to public health," said Paul G. Billings, Vice President, National Policy and Advocacy of the American Lung Association. "This process is essential to reducing the burden of air pollution in these communities, because it triggers critical protective measures to reduce air pollution and protect public health."

According to EPA records, year-round particulate matter levels in Houston and Columbus, Georgia, have worsened and people in these communities are at risk. Particle pollution harms people in many ways, even when the particle levels are very low. Particle pollution worsens serious respiratory disorders, including asthma and causes wheezing and coughing. People most at risk include children and teens, seniors, people with asthma and other lung diseases, people with cardiovascular diseases and diabetics.

In 2006, the EPA set new limits, called standards, for unhealthy levels of PM2.5, triggering a two-year process to identify which counties fail to meet the standards. In today's official action, the EPA formally determines, or "designates" counties that fail to meet, or "attain," the standards. Those counties then fall into a classification of "nonattainment" that triggers specific measures to be put in place to reduce emissions. Other counties do not have to comply with these requirements.

EPA misses many individual counties, limiting clean-up in larger cities

The Lung Association also found that EPA's official "nonattainment" list omitted many counties that are part of larger metropolitan areas with recognized unhealthy levels of particle pollution. Large sources of particle pollution, such as highways, railroads and industries are usually spread throughout a metropolitan area. To tackle the complex clean up of these widespread sources, the planning area needs to include all the counties where sources exist. Omitting these counties makes it harder for the rest of the metropolitan area to meet the standard. The American Lung Association previously advised EPA that all the counties should be included in any metropolitan area that monitored unhealthy levels.

"It's naive to act as if air pollution is trapped by the invisible lines that define our counties' borders," said Billings. "The EPA has a responsibility to do more to protect public health when it comes to air pollution."

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Urbanization Causes Concrete Jungle to Grow

Each day, more of Georgia gets covered in concrete. This development affects traffic and eats up agricultural land. Now, in North Georgia especially, it’s affecting the water system, says a University of Georgia expert.

“It’s the 800-pound gorilla in North Georgia,” said Liz Kramer, who works jointly with the departments of agriculture and applied economics and engineering in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “We really have to be thinking of that in issues of water quality and quantity. North Georgia is getting gobbled away by those housing density numbers.”

Between 2001 and 2005, approximately 13,410 acres of impervious surfaces were put down in Gwinnett County. The metro Atlanta area averaged 55 acres a day, the equivalent of about 41 football fields. Georgia in total covered 38 million acres.

When an area is covered in pavement, sidewalks, rooftops or buildings, rainwater can’t get into the ground. Instead, it rushes across the solid surfaces, picks up pollutants and washes into streams. This can cause an artificial spike in water levels, which quickly returns to the levels before the rain. Streams don’t stay as full as they did before housing growth.

“We’re no longer recharging our groundwater, and we’re reducing the amount of available water we can use to dilute the pollutants going into the streams,” Kramer said.

And it’s all because less and less water flows through the dirt, cleaning itself as it seeps through the ground and back into aquifers and streams.

Urban pollution sources

Ten years ago, streams in metro Atlanta had much more pesticides than those in agricultural areas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. This was due to solid surfaces and improper pesticide use.

“Farmers understand pesticides and use them properly,” Kramer said. “If someone in an urban area is working on their two-acre lot and using pesticides, they’re going to go to a home-improvement store and pick up the first thing off the shelf. And we’re Americans. If a little is good, a lot is better.”

Farmers are often blamed for pollution, particularly North Georgia poultry farmers. But in urban areas, people pollution is a bigger problem.

“Tires produce a lot of zinc,” Kramer said. “Parking lots have a lot of heavy metals, a lot of oils, anything that drips out of your car.”

Changing landscape

The population boom in North Georgia has sent many farmers looking for cheaper land or out of the industry altogether. “As we develop, we’re pushing these guys out of the watershed,” Kramer said.

By raising chickens, poultry farmers also produce chicken litter, which contains nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other minerals important for crop growth. Farmers sometimes spread it for fertilizer. Near urban areas where less water is absorbed before it hits a stream, farmers have to be careful where they put chicken litter and how much they spread, she said.
“If someone’s applying chicken litter, even the same amount as they have in the past, any runoff would be magnified,” Kramer said.

"Pollution is a problem," she said, "but losing farmland and forests is a bigger problem because agricultural land helps maintain air and water quality and ecosystems."

"The challenge", she said, "is to keep agriculture in North Georgia. (It) provides so much value, and that value is not being accounted for because we just look at houses.”

By Stephanie Schupska
University of Georgia

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