The first-order story today is that air pollution in America is really bad.
“131 million Americans live in areas with unhealthy air pollution: Research”
THEHILL.COM, ZACK BUDRYK - 04/24/24 12:05 PM ET
The same report was cited today in many other outlets. CBS. CNN. Reuters. YahooFinance. USA Today. And of course NPR. (I wish I had their press agent; then again, my press agent wishes I wrote more alarmist climate stuff)
The problem? Severe air pollution is truthy, but it’s not true. The second-order story is a doom narrative (of which this is a microcosm) artfully glossing over progress. Indeed, there’s a line I coined a few years ago that “progressives no longer believe in progress.” The key missing element of the progressophobia (I think that’s what Steven Pinker calls it) narrative is time. If you find yourself reading a story about how awful something is, look hard for any temporal comparison. If the something was really so awful, they should be able to quantify how much worse it got over some time period. Any time period.
Let’s take a deeper dive into Budryk’s story:
More than 131 million Americans are exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution, according to the American Lung Association’s (ALA) 2024 State of the Air report.
The annual report, published Wednesday, found 131.2 million Americans live in areas assigned failing grades for particle or ozone pollution. This number — about 39 percent of Americans — is nearly 12 million more than the total reported last year.
Researchers assigned U.S. counties a grade on three measures: ozone pollution levels, short-term particle pollution levels and year-round particle pollution levels.
The ALA is an advocacy organization. Twelve million more people live in highly polluted areas than a year ago? (dubious). The killer is the methodology : “researchers” assigned a letter grade. A savvy reader knows this is weak tea. Who are the researchers?
At this point, my trustmeter is flashing red. I could spend a half hour digging into the report and its methodology but why should I have to do that? Why isn’t this reporter doing it for me? Why isn’t Zack Budryk interviewing anyone else for commentary on this capital-R Research?
NPR has a much better take:
Since the passage of the landmark Clean Air Act in 1970, the country's air has improved markedly. Measures like adding pollution control to cars, trucks, and fossil-fuel-burning power plants cut down on the amount of fine particles in the air. Those particles can penetrate deep into people's lungs and even cross into the bloodstream, where they contribute to a range of chronic and acute health risks.
Between 1990 and 2020, pollution from those fine particles dropped by about 40% nationwide. The improvements were particularly noticeable in industrial East Coast cities and states.
Well well well. Turns out the bad air pollution the ALA is warning about is mainly driven by wildfires. Not industrial pollution. So where do they get off giving F grades, which gives the impression that urban California air in 2024 is some kind of apocalyptical hellhole like depicted in Blade Runner or a typical summer day in 1977 Los Angeles or a typical winter day in modern Beijing?
As for the rise in millions of people breathing bad air? Here’s what the fine print of the NPR story tells you:
Late last year, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a long-awaited update to its regulatory standard for PM2.5, or fine particle pollution. The agency lowered the allowable pollution from 12 micrograms per meter cubed of air averaged over a year to 9—a major tightening, says Anenberg.
The American Lung Association used the new standard to calculate dangerous exposures. Applying the new value, they found the number of Americans exposed to unhealthy air rose from about 120 million people counted in the previous report to roughly 130 million.
This is garbage science. Metaphor? It’s like saying 12 million more children are obese than last year, but hiding the fact that the body-mass threshold was raised by 33% this year only.
The Truth about Air Pollution
What does the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency say about air pollution? I’m delighted to report that it’s wonderful news. It’s a success story! Here are just some of the many bullet points reported by the EPA website on air pollution in the United States:
Between 1970 and 2020, the combined emissions of the six common pollutants (PM2.5 and PM10, SO2, NOx, VOCs, CO and Pb) dropped by 78 percent. This progress occurred while U.S. economic indicators remain strong.
The emissions reductions have led to dramatic improvements in the quality of the air that we breathe. Between 1990 and 2020, national concentrations of air pollutants improved 73 percent for carbon monoxide, 86 percent for lead (from 2010), 61 percent for annual nitrogen dioxide, 25 percent for ozone, 26 percent for 24-hour coarse particle concentrations, 41 percent for annual fine particles (from 2000), and 91 percent for sulfur dioxide. (For more trends information, see EPA's Air Trends site.)
These air quality improvements have enabled many areas of the country to meet national air quality standards set to protect public health and the environment. For example, all of the 41 areas that had unhealthy levels of carbon monoxide in 1991 now have levels that meet the health-based national air quality standard.
Compared to 1970 vehicle models, new cars, SUVs and pickup trucks are roughly 99 percent cleaner for common pollutants (hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particle emissions), while Annual Vehicle Miles Traveled has dramatically increased.
New heavy-duty trucks and buses are roughly 99 percent cleaner than 1970 models.
Starting in the 2014 model year, locomotives are 90 percent cleaner than pre-regulation locomotives.
Things are better. Cleaner air doesn’t show up in GDP numbers, but I for one think we should value it. By that I mean, the media should not be running alarmist stories that feed negativity when that negativity is fundamentally a lie.
Thanks, as always for adding more clarity to our national discussion.