The American Lung Association announced a new TV ad to defend the EPA. The ad is another phony effort to assert that children are harmed by ambient air quality.
The ad features a red baby carriage at several Washington DC locations, including inside a Capitol Hill office building, with a sound track of a coughing/wheezing infant. But Washington, D.C.’s ambient air, of course, is perfectly clean and safe and the EPA does not regulate indoor air.
We have asked the American Lung Association to provide real-world evidence that air quality is adversely impacting anyone. They have yet to respond.
The EPA has paid the American Lung Association $20 million over the last 10 years and, in return, the Lung Association shills for the agency.
Imagine if the BATF paid the NRA to support gun ownership. The libs just don’t get it.
Sam,
You’re going to go there… prove the absence of cause?
Gary, who mentioned anything about CO2? No one said that CO2 pollution directly kills people (though we can get into that if you’d like).
What Steve Milloy has said is that there is no clear evidence that any kind of air pollution — soot and ozone and other traditional air pollutants — kill people. So, sounds like you and I agree that Steve Milloy is full of crap on this point, unless I’m misreading your comment.
BTW, all of the studies referenced above were published since 2000. There are many, many other recent studies that have looked at pollution levels and the link to premature deaths. As posted in so many other comments on this blog, here are just a small sample:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8179653
http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/173/6/667
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060523000408.htm
http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.00108347
http://www.consenseus.org/downloads/health/OzoneHealthEffects.pdf
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(97)01211-7/abstract
You’re completely missing the point. The Clean Air Act now includes CO2, which is why it’s being reconsidered. Not because of obviously dangerous pollutants like carbon monoxide and particulates (soots). That argument happened in the 1960’s and 70’s, and almost everyone agrees that this type of air pollution should have been stopped, and it was.
I skimmed about 1/2 of the studies you posted, and note that the air quality data (and the studies themselves) are skewed to pre-2000 and even the 1970’s.
I did not see even one single mention of CO2 in any of the studies that you posted.
Okay, Ben of Houston. These studies don’t convince you. Instead of going one by one through them, let’s do this. Why don’t you find a study or two showing that air pollution is not a threat to human health.
While you look for one study supporting your theory, here are a few others showing the connection (there are many, many more, but this system doesn’t seem to want to accept my comment with more links):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8179653
http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/173/6/667
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060523000408.htm
http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.00108347
http://www.consenseus.org/downloads/health/OzoneHealthEffects.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231008008558
Mr. Parry, the low correllations in your links do not do credit to your cause, and as far as I can read without paying, they are explainable as being mostly socioeconomic in cause. The Bronx, notoriously poor, has a large rate of asthma while Upstate New York has low incidence? Who would have thought that rich kids with proper nutrition and top-level medical care are healthier?
Also, according to the Mercola study linked, we can attribute 3% of all cancers to air pollution, but smoking, where people give themselves black lungs are only linkable to lung cancer? While they do mention adjustments, I cannot put any weight an epidemiological correlation that small as being anything other than random chance.
That last point, that cigarettes, despite years of continuous and vindictive study, are strongly linked to very few cancers and a surprisingly low death toll (mostly senior citizens dying before their time). These cigarettes are concentrated sources of air pollution hundreds of times stronger than the ambient air. If these absurd numbers of young people were dying due to air pollution, then smokers would be dropping like flies in their twenties and thirties, not living until their sixties. Furthermore, if air pollution is crippling our children’s lungs, how did London have any laborers in the height of the industrial revolution, when air pollution was unimaginably worse than today? The generation that fought World War 1 grew up when London was famous for its yellow smog. That’s pollution to worry about.
These critical thinking questions MUST be answered before we can even consider the effects of air pollution at ambient, historically low levels.
Here we go again. In Steve Milloy world, the literally hundreds of studies over many decades don’t exist. Like a 4-year old pretending not to hear his parents when they ask him to pick up his toys — “Na, Na, Na — I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you.”
It is almost impossible to search the phrase “health threats from air pollution” and not find scores of studies readily available to anyone who cares to actually dig into the science.
You can start here:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/533039
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/health/21soot.html
http://ar.iiarjournals.org/content/29/9/3537.abstract
http://www.icisnyu.org/south_bronx/AsthmaandAirPollution.html
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2002/03/20/air.aspx
http://pubs.healtheffects.org/getfile.php?u=212
Have fun.
These people are educated derilicts
I though it was PASSIVE SMOKE killing the world ?