From xxxxxx <[email protected]>
Subject Tens of Thousands of Deaths Linked to Weak US Air Pollution Rules – Study
Date November 21, 2019 4:39 AM
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[ Researchers linked nine causes of death with a certain type
pollution when reviewing medical records of deceased veterans]
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TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DEATHS LINKED TO WEAK US AIR POLLUTION RULES –
STUDY   [[link removed]]

 

Emily Holden
November 20, 2019
The Guardian
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_ Researchers linked nine causes of death with a certain type
pollution when reviewing medical records of deceased veterans _

About 200,000 Americans are thought to die from air pollution each
year, but scientists previously couldn’t pinpoint the specific
causes of death for almost half of those people. , Photograph: Jeff
Zehnder/Alamy

 

US air pollution rules could be hugely insufficient in preventing
deaths, experts are concluding from a new study of the likely causes
of death of 4.5 million veterans.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Jama, the research finds that
99% of deaths from illnesses linked to a certain type of air
pollution
[[link removed]] occur
in people who are exposed to lower levels than the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) currently deems acceptable.

But Donald Trump’s EPA could be set to maintain
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current standard – thus leading to continued air
pollution-associated deaths. The agency is also reconsidering the
established science linking particle pollution from fossil fuels and
other sources with a host of illnesses.

About 200,000 Americans are thought to die from air pollution each
year, but scientists previously couldn’t pinpoint the specific
causes of death for almost half of those people.

The new research reviewed the medical records of veterans who died and
compared them with the air pollution levels in their zip codes. They
focused on PM 2.5, or inhalable particulate matter pollution that is
2.5 micrometers or smaller – a fraction of the width of a human
hair.

They linked nine causes of death with the pollution: cardiovascular
disease, cerebrovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease, dementia, type 2 diabetes,
hypertension, lung cancer and pneumonia.

Three of those conditions were newly identified associations: chronic
kidney disease, hypertension and dementia.

Miles Keogh, the executive director of a group that represents state
and local air regulators, said: “We know people are harmed from
exposure levels lower than the [current standards].

“The question is whether the trade-offs for society are worth it. If
only a few people are harmed, maybe society accepts the risk,” Keogh
said. “But when a study shows 99% of death occurring at exposure
levels below that threshold, that should make us look much harder at
whether the threshold protects people effectively enough.”

Because scientists cannot ethically expose subjects to air pollution
and test the results, they must rely on existing epidemiological data.
Veterans offered a massive source of detailed records held by the
federal government.

“The skeptics will always tell you this is correlation and
correlation is not causation, but in environmental epidemiology,
that’s really the best you could do,” said co-author Dr Ziyad
Al-Aly, who directs the clinical epidemiology center at Washington
University in St Louis and is chief of research at Veterans Affairs St
Louis Health [[link removed]] Care
System.

Al-Aly explained that researchers examining only death records could
only see “the tip of the iceberg”. His team reviewed the illnesses
people struggled with before death to get a clearer picture of their
overall health.

The research also confirmed striking inequities in how air pollution
hurts black Americans
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than white Americans. Black Americans were more likely to be exposed
to higher levels of PM 2.5. But they also got sicker than white people
even when they were breathing the same air. That could be because of
socio-economic factors, such as poverty and access to healthcare.

“I went into it thinking pollution is color blind … it turns out
to be it’s not true,” Al-Aly said. “Actually, pollution itself
does discriminate. For the same level of pollution, black people tend
to be affected more. And on top of that, black people get exposed to
more pollution than white people.

“It’s kind of like a double-whammy,” he said. “It’s really
unfair.”

New research is consistently revealing broad health threats from air
pollution. Another study published on Wednesday in Brain
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confirmed the links between air pollution and cognitive problems.
Women in their 70s and 80s who were exposed to higher levels of air
pollution experienced greater declines in memory and more
Alzheimer’s-like brain atrophy, according to researchers at the
University of South Carolina.

“This is the first study to really show, in a statistical model,
that air pollution was associated with changes in people’s brains
and that those changes were then connected with declines in memory
performance,” said Andrew Petkus, an assistant professor of clinical
neurology.

_Emily Holden is an environment reporter for Guardian US. 
Email: [email protected]     Twitter: @emilyhholden
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