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Smog before birth may hurt IQ

EPA to Monitor 62 Schools’ Air

Carbon Permit System Will Pay

EPA may regulate carbon dioxide under Clean Air Act

Environmental Threats to the Latino Community

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Smog before birth may hurt IQ

Researchers for the first time have linked air pollution exposure before birth with lower IQ scores in childhood, bolstering evidence that smog may harm the developing brain.

The results are in a study of 249 children of New York City women who wore backpack air monitors for 48 hours during the last few months of pregnancy. They lived in mostly low-income neighborhoods in northern Manhattan and the South Bronx. They had varying levels of exposure to typical kinds of urban air pollution, mostly from car, bus and truck exhaust.

At age 5, before starting school, the children were given IQ tests. Those exposed to the most pollution before birth scored on average four to five points lower than children with less exposure.

That’s a big enough difference that it could affect children’s performance in school, said Frederica Perera, the study’s lead author and director of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health.

It suggests that you don’t have to live right next door to a belching factory to face pollution health risks, and that there may be more dangers from typical urban air pollution than previously thought, he said.

“We are learning more and more about low-dose exposure and how things we take for granted may not be a free ride,” he said.

While future research is needed to confirm the new results, the findings suggest exposure to air pollution before birth could have the same harmful effects on the developing brain as exposure to lead, said Patrick Breysse, an environmental health specialist at Johns Hopkins’ school of public health.

And along with other environmental harms and disadvantages low-income children are exposed to, it could help explain why they often do worse academically than children from wealthier families, Breysse said.

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“It’s a profound observation,” he said. “This paper is going to open a lot of eyes.”

The study was released in the August edition of Pediatrics.

Author: Lindsay Tanner
Source: Associated Press

EPA to Monitor 62 Schools’ Air

In its most sweeping effort to determine whether toxic chemicals permeate the air schoolchildren breathe, the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to monitor the air outside 62 schools in 22 states. Texas and Ohio have the most schools on the list, with seven each; Pennsylvania has six.
The plan will cost about $2.25 million and includes taking samples outside schools in small towns such as Story City, Iowa, and Toledo, Ore., and in large cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston. It comes in response to a USA TODAY investigation that used the government’s own data to identify schools that appear to be in toxic hot spots.

USA TODAY’s investigation, published in December, used a government computer simulation that showed at least 435 schools where the air outside appeared to be more toxic than the air outside Meredith Hitchens Elementary, an Ohio school closed in 2005. At Hitchens, the Ohio EPA found levels of carcinogens 50 times above what the state considered acceptable.
Children are especially susceptible to toxic chemicals; they breathe more air in proportion to their weight than do adults, and their bodies are still developing. Long exposures to some chemicals can exacerbate asthma, trigger learning disabilities or lead to cancer years later.

EPA spokeswoman Adora Andy said the agency also used computer modeling, information from state and local air agencies, and USA TODAY’s findings to choose the 62 schools.

Based on the model USA TODAY used, 28 of the 62 schools appeared to have air more toxic than the air outside the Ohio school that was shut down. Outside others on the EPA list, the model indicated fewer problems. At Enterprise Elementary in Enterprise, Miss., for instance, the government model shows less exposure to industrial pollution than at 81% of the rest of the nation’s schools.

Some of the schools, such as Soto Street Elementary School in Los Angeles, are in urban areas close to major roadways, where pollution from industries and automobiles might be most pronounced. The Soto Street school lies within a few blocks of three freeways.

Monitoring will begin as early as mid-April and be “phased in over the next three months,” Andy said.  She said regulators will sample for gases such as benzene and particulates such as hexavalent chromium, both of which are carcinogens. Monitoring will last at least 60 days. Based on what is found, Andy says the agency will evaluate the health risks students at each site might face.

Authors: Blake Morrison and Brad Heath

Source: USA TODAY

Carbon Permit System Will Pay

As envisioned by President Barack Obama’s budget proposal, the federal government will soon begin tapping into a huge new source of revenue by requiring companies to pay for the permission to emit so-called greenhouse gasses linked to global warming.

The Obama budget blueprint assumes that by 2012, the Treasury will be collecting $78.6 billion in new revenue from carbon emissions permits. From 2012 to 2019, it envisions that a total of $645.7 billion would be raised from auctioning of such emission allowances.

A “cap-and-trade system” would be created, under which the government would place a cap, or limit, on the total amount of greenhouse gasses that can be emitted. Companies that need to exceed their allotted level must buy offsetting permits from those that emit less.

What impact would the emissions curbs have on consumers?
Congressional Budget Office director Peter Orszag, who is now head of the Office of Management and Budget under Obama, testified last year that the firms that were required to buy permits would pass the costs along to their customers in the form of higher prices. The price increases, he said, would “be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program” because they would be the mechanism by which businesses and households would be forced find ways to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

Won’t that harm consumers, especially the poor?
A recent study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, said, “Low-income consumers are the most vulnerable (under such a system) because they spend a larger share of their budgets on necessities like energy than do better-off consumers.”
They also are “least able to afford purchases of new, more energy-efficient automobiles, heating systems and appliances,” it said.

Obama proposes using about 80 percent of that anticipated revenue — or $526 billion — to pay for tax credits for low- and middle-income people to help offset higher energy costs. The rest of the money would subsidize alternative energy projects and firms.

The New York Times reported  that low-wage and middle-income workers would receive a $500 tax credit, or $1,000 to couples; but the credit would be phased out for single people with incomes above $75,000 a year and for couples with incomes of more than $150,000, it said.

Ultimately it will up to Congress to decide how the money will be used. 

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Author: Tom Curry

EPA may regulate carbon dioxide under Clean Air Act

February 18, 2009

WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday that it would reopen the possibility of regulating carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, tossing aside a December Bush administration memorandum that said the agency would not limit those emissions.

The decision could mark the first step toward the regulation of greenhouse gases emitted by coal plants, an issue that has been contested by the coal industry and environmentalists since April 2007, when the Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide should be considered a pollutant subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.

The industry has vigorously opposed efforts to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, asserting that it should be left to policy set by Congress. Moreover, current technology for capturing such emissions is expensive and virtually untested.

Environmental groups, however, say that building new coal plants with conventional technology locks in new greenhouse gas emissions for the entire 30- to 40-year lifetimes of the power plants, making it difficult to slow climate change. They have been urging the Obama administration and state governments to use the Supreme Court ruling to block air permits for new coal-fired power plants and rely on renewable energy and energy efficiency to meet power needs.

In response to a Sierra Club petition over an air permit for a coal plant in Bonanza, Utah, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency would take a new look at the issue and solicit public comments.

Jackson did not issue a stay on the Bush administration memorandum and coal industry advocates found some hope in that.

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Source: Boston.com

Environmental Threats to the Latino Community

Pollution in the United States poses health risks for everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, language, or country of origin. A large percentage of U.S. Latinos, however, live and work in urban and agricultural areas where they face heightened danger of exposure to air pollution, unsafe drinking water, pesticides, and lead and mercury contamination. These hazards can cause serious health problems, including an increased risk of asthma and cancer; waterborne diseases such as giardiasis, hepatitis, and cholera; and neurological and developmental problems.

Specific examples of pollution threatening U.S. Latino communities include the following:

• 
  Some 91 percent of Hispanics in the United States live in metropolitan areas, where polluted air may increase the risk of illnesses including asthma and cancer.
• One and a half million U.S. Latinos live in colonias (unincorporated communities with substandard housing) along the U.S.-Mexico border, where a lack of potable water and sewage treatment contributes to waterborne diseases such as giardiasis,hepatitis, and cholera.
• More than one-third of U.S. Latinos live in Western states, where arsenic, industrial chemicals, and fertilizer residues often contaminate local drinking water supplies.
• The great majority—88 percent—of farmworkers are Latinos; they and their families face regular pesticide exposure, which can lead to increased risks of lymphoma,prostate cancer, and childhood cancers.

Twice as many Hispanic children as non-Hispanic white children are likely to have lead in their blood at levels higher than the action level established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for risk of lead poisoning.

Read the full National Resources Defense Council report: Hidden Danger: Environmental Health Threats in the Latino Community.