To Air… Err… is Human

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. 

Preamble to the US Constitution 

The build-up of pollutants in our air and water is incomprehensibly huge. From the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and near-major-harbor dead zones to the battle for pure drinking water from India to Flint, Michigan, the consequences to humanity are staggering and terrifying. As we shall see, air pollution carries its own litany of horribles. That’s without looking at the impact of global climate change. The rising natural disasters, the resulting conflicts and migration from the impact of climate change on farming and daily life, are potential planet destroyers. Generally, the impact of toxins in the air is slowly taking our life breath away.

Aside from the devastation of the airborne novel coronavirus, looking at the impact of air pollution on life expectancy immediately prior to the outbreak, the global numbers are getting worse: “Fossil fuel-driven particulate air pollution cuts global average life expectancy by 1.8 years per person, according to a new pollution index and accompanying report produced by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. The Air Quality Life Index establishes particulate pollution as the single greatest threat to human health globally, with its effect on life expectancy exceeding that of devastating communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, behavioral killers like cigarette smoking, and even war. Critically, the AQLI reports these results in tangible terms that are relatable for most people. 

“‘Around the world today, people are breathing air that represents a serious risk to their health. But the way this risk is communicated is very often opaque and confusing, translating air pollution concentrations into colors, like red, brown, orange and green. What those colors mean for people’s well-being has always been unclear,’ said Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics and director of EPIC.” UChicago News, November 19, 2018. In heavily polluted urban areas, infant mortality rates can skyrocket, and even adult life expectancies can fall by as much as five years… or more.

OK, that’s “old news,” right? But now that we are in the beginning of a second wave of this horrific pandemic, where the infection and mortality rates threaten to rise even beyond the worst months we have already experienced, there is another big question: How does air quality impact the spread of this diabolical contagion? A research study, reported in the October 26th FastCompany.com, suggests the connection between bad air and COVID-19 infections:

“Even before the spread of COVID-19, scientists had declared we were in the midst of an air pollution pandemic, with bad air responsible for 8.8 million premature deaths every year. Now, researchers better understand how these two crises are converging. Across the world, more than 1.1 million people have died of COVID-19, and 15% of those deaths, researchers estimate, could be attributed to long-term air pollution exposure.

“The study, conducted by experts at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, the German Center for Cardiovascular Research, and more, builds on a previous report from Harvard University that found that someone living in an area with high pollution levels for decades is 8% more likely to die from COVID-19 than someone living with less pollution.

“That Harvard study accounted for other mortality factors, such as the number of hospital beds available or comorbidities such as obesity and smoking, and looked at more than 3,000 counties across the U.S, comparing air pollution levels and coronavirus deaths in each area. The authors of this most recent study, published in the journal Cardiovascular Research, applied that same relationship to the rest of the world, using satellite data on global particulate matter exposure and epidemiological data gathered up to June 2020.

“Globally, the study found that air pollution exposure may account for 15% of COVID-19 deaths. At the country level, the impact is even more pronounced. In the Czech Republic, researchers estimated that air pollution contributed to 29% of coronavirus deaths; in China, 27%; and in Germany, 26%. In the U.S., 18% of all COVID-19 deaths could be attributed to air pollution. In countries with lower levels of air pollution, the effect was smaller; in Australia, for instance, only 3% of COVID-19 deaths could be attributed to air pollution, researchers estimated.

“This doesn’t mean there’s a direct cause-and-effect relationship between air pollution and COVID-19 deaths, the researchers write; rather, there is some relationship between the two that affects health outcomes. ‘People that have a precondition in terms of lung diseases or heart diseases have a much higher risk of dying from COVID-19. Air pollution affects the same types of mortality and the same diseases,’ says Jos Lelieveld, an atmospheric chemist at the Max Planck Institute and one of the authors of this latest study. ‘It’s not coincidental that these effects are sort of enhancing each other.’” It’s about priorities and irresponsible human behavior, much of it resulting from misguide and misinformed governmental policies. 

If millions and millions of deaths, a consistent reduction in life expectancy and the trillions of dollars of economic damage annually are to be subordinated to corporate profitability, exactly how do you justify governmental policies that not only defy scientific common sense but equally appear to defy the very basis of our entire government as the above constitutional quote requires. It seems to be little more than a rear-guard action of incumbent wealth battling against new economic opportunities for the next generation of successful businesses.

I’m Peter Dekom, and not only does “fixing the problem” generate millions of new jobs for us, it also just might save our nation… and our planet.