Concerns About Airby Krag Unsoeld The theme of this month's issue is air. Air that is all around us. Air that provides the oxygen we all depend upon. Air that transports various chemicals and toxins. Haze Factor Air quality can be measured in many different ways. Perhaps the most striking is simply in terms of visibility. How far can you see on a clear, sunny day? For me, the most striking measure of visibility probably occurs in the mountains. When I was younger, I distinctly recall the view from the slopes of Mt. Rainier. One could easily make out Mt. Hood and Mt. Jefferson in Oregon. Nowadays, Hood is often smudgy, if visible at all, and Jefferson is almost always eclipsed by the haze. On some clear days it is impossible to even discern Mt. Rainier from places in Olympia and Lacey from which it would normally be visible. One cause for this haze is the Centralia coal-fired electricity plant. Data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency shows that the Centralia coal plant is the largest single source of sulfur dioxide, a component in the haze ringing Mt. Rainier, in the region. It emits almost nine million tons of carbon dioxide, 64,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and 16,100 tons of nitrogen oxides a year. Particles in the Air This haze, otherwise known as smog, does not just create difficulty in seeing. According to a national study financed by the PEW Charitable Trust and conducted by Abt Associates, particles in the air from coal-fired plants, automobiles, and other sources of combustion, are responsible for an estimated 30,000 deaths per year. This is more deaths annually than from drunk driving or homicides. People living in polluted areas can also have several years shaved off their lives due to the adverse health effects (cta.policy.net/fact/). These ozone particles can also inhibit plant respiration (www.enn.com/enn-news-archive/1999/12/120899/ozone_7989.asp). This can pose difficulty for agriculture as crop productivity drops even in the absence of visible damage to the plants (www.enn.com/enn-news-archive/2000/06/06272000/ozonecrops_14233.asp). Global Warming, Too Besides these human and plant health effects, air emissions are also responsible for what international scientists now accept as the inevitability for global warming caused by humans (www.nytimes.com/2000/10/26/science/26CLIM.html). Here in the Northwest we can expect global warming to result in: worse winter flooding; forest fires intensifying; lower river flows; and disappearing glaciers (www.tidepool.org/books/ryan.html#impacts). World Without Borders What makes air quality particularly challenging is its ability to transcend political borders, watershed boundaries, and to easily travel around the world. A recent international environmental study, released by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, pinpointed the sources of the cancer-causing dioxin found in the breast milk of Inuit women in the northern regions of Canada. The study tracked dioxin releases from 44,000 separate sources. It found that the U.S. accounted for 70-82 percent of the dioxins arriving at the study's test sites. Another 11 to 25 percent originated in Canada and five to 11 percent came from Mexico. (www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns225925) Ten particular facilities, all but one in the U.S., were identified that contributed one-third of all the dioxin reaching the Nunavat Territory in the Canadian Artic. These sources included waste incinerators, iron sintering plants, copper smelters and cement kilns. "I think the study demonstrates that we should revise our concept of neighbors," said Greg Block of the North American commission. Our Region Locally, as noted above, we breathe air affected by our transportation choices, industrial facilities such as the Centralia coal plant, home heating choices, and outdoor burning. For information on some steps being taken to curb the negative impacts of some of these activities, see the article in this issue from the Olympic Air Pollution Control Authority. For a fresh perspective on the problem and steps to be taken to combat it, check out the article written by two fifth graders who attend Garfield Elementary School. For Better or for Worse No matter what types of regulations we already have, or what types of air quality standards we need to develop and implement, there is one single factor that will make the difference: political will. We cannot hope to retain healthy air without taking the necessary actions to prevent unhealthy emissions. This will ultimately require far more public education, political participation and dramatic changes in our everyday lives. Krag Unsoeld is President of the Board of SPEECH.
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