Drive by a paper mill or a steel mill or a sugar mill, and you’ll notice a couple of things.
First, the vista won’t be pleasant. Smoke will be billowing out at untold volumes in unpleasant hues.
Then there’s the smell in the air, which will be akin to rotting organic material of the unspeakable variety.
If you’re exposed to these facilities over time, like St. Petersburg resident Karen Lieberman was over the decades she lived in Gary, Indiana, a major U.S. steel hub, another sensation may gradually come about: difficulty breathing.
“There were times when I couldn’t stop coughing even to say a few words,” Lieberman said.
But no one knew what was wrong. “At times it was thought that I had a bad heart, and at other times I was told there was nothing wrong.”
In the mid-’80s, she was finally diagnosed with asthma, which she said developed because of her proximity to the mills.
“The air quality in Gary, Indiana was off-the-charts nasty more often than not,” she said. “We lived downwind from steel mills, and whatever they pumped into the air or dumped into the water was not meant for humankind, or animals either.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that air pollution, whether it’s from a car-choked highway or a smokestack, can worsen symptoms or trigger attacks. The study compared various metro areas to determine which ones had higher-than-normal smog or soot in the air, which can make it tough for people with asthma and related illnesses to function if any aspect of their day involves being outside.
Nationwide, according to the study, Western cities in areas like Southern California fared the worst. Major metro areas in the east weren’t too far behind.
And Tampa Bay? Our air pollution record was the worst in Florida. Compared to other metro areas in the state in 2015, Tampa Bay experienced the highest number of days showing excessive levels of smog (56 days) and soot (86 days).
We may not live in a landscape dotted with smokestacks. But our region is home to urban (and suburban, and exurban) sprawl, and the immeasurable auto emissions that come with it. It’s also home to a few power plants. And although some electric utilities are slowly bringing solar and other renewables into the fold, they use fossil fuels to generate the vast majority of the electricity they sell to consumers.
hile regulations on corporate polluters have helped clean up the air we breathe, the study noted, the frequency of asthma and other environment-related illnesses suggests that conditions could be a lot better. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics show a steady increase in the rate of asthma cases among the U.S. population; between just 2001 and 2009, for example, they went from 1 in 14 (7 percent of the population, or about 20 million) to 1 in 12 (8 percent of the population, or about 25 million).
“When our air is polluted, we can’t just choose not to breathe it. Exposure to air pollution increases our risk of suffering health problems ranging from premature death to asthma attacks to respiratory illness,” said Turner Lott, an organizer with Environment Florida. “Burning dirty fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas threatens our health. It’s time to shift to 100 percent clean, renewable energy.”
Chances are, air quality is only going to get worse in the coming years.
The Trump administration has already begun to unravel President Obama’s ambitious Clean Power Plan, which would have significantly reduced carbon emissions in the coming decades. The plan’s aim was to ease the impacts of climate change, but the benefit to public health is obvious. Meanwhile, the president’s budget would kneecap the EPA’s ability to enforce the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Trump and Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt claim their efforts to strip environmental regulations are meant to cut back on regulations that allegedly stifle major industries’ abilities to function and thus employ people.
Environmental advocates say they’re afraid that jettisoning regulations will lead to many more terrible-air-quality days, which will lead to more people getting sick. (But hey, at least they’ll still be able to have insurance — for now.)
Environment Florida estimates that Trump’s gutting of environmental regulators and regulations, like cutting the EPA budget by 31 percent and abolishing the nascent Clean Power Plan, could lead to 3,600 premature deaths, 90,000 cases of asthma in children, 300,000 missed work and school days by 2030 — things, notably, that would likely cost corporations money, what with sick leave and bereavement and all.
And as these rollbacks ensue, there is little that environmental and public health advocates can do, aside from trying to move the needle on public perception of the economics of a clean environment.
With practically no will to even consider the benefits of environmental protection among Congressional leaders in Washington — even, probably, if you were to show them the stats on asthma — the best that environmentally conscious legislators can do is file D.O.A. laws that, when voted down, at least create a record that shows which elected leaders are unconcerned about the health of their constituents.
Former Governor and now-Congressman Charlie Crist (D-St. Petersburg) recently filed the C.L.I.M.A.T.E. Act (HB 1812), “The Congressional Leadership in Mitigating Administrative Threats to the Earth.” The inverse of a bill Republicans tried to pass in order to block Obama’s executive orders extending environmental protections, the idea here is to block Trump’s orders that could reverse decades of bipartisan efforts to restore air and water quality. Crist must know the bill doesn’t have a shot in this Congress, but its languishing can serve as yet another example of how elections have consequences.
So, to, does ignoring the science.
“Why shouldn’t the public have clean air? Why should asthmatics and others with lung diseases have to stay inside for days at a time? How can we even consider loosening air quality regulations?” Lieberman said. “How can we not consider regulating industry emissions? Allowing polluted air and not controlling air quality is unfair to everyone. Polluted air causes lung problems. I often wonder what air those legislators plan to breathe.”
This article appears in Apr 13-20, 2017.