Robert Phalen has spent a life studying air pollution.
Here he provides a commentary on the issues that continue to trouble us.
I admire Dr. Phalen, who is an icon in the study of air pollution, camped out at U California Irvine.
From a fine man of integrity, grit and intelligence–Robert Phalen:
I was surprised that my comment below on “Particulate Matter Matters”
(Science April 18, 2014 V.344, Issue 6181) passed editorial review and
is attached at the end of the article. Hopefully, someone who needs to
see it will see it.
Bob Phalen
—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: Your comment for “Particulate Matter Matters” has been approved
From: no-reply@aaas.org
Date: Tue, April 22, 2014 5:27 am
To: rfphalen@uci.edu
————————————————————————–
Your comment on Particulate Matter Matters has been approved and is now live
at http://comments.sciencemag.org/content/10.1126/science.1247348,
The article makes several good points related to the use of particulate air
pollution epidemiology data in protecting public health. Most striking are:
1) the small strengths of and variability of the associations of PM exposure
with adverse health measures; and 2) the indication that PM “mass” alone is
not a cause of the associations. These points can be explained by the minute
levels of PM in our air (If PM2.5 is breathed 24 hours per day for 70 years
at 15 micrograms per cubic meter of outdoor air, the total deposition in the
lungs is less than 1 gram.), and the fact that PM chemistry is radically
different in various regions of the United States.
But there are also other concerns related to ambient PM control that
must
be addressed. Foremost might be the potential adverse health offsets (e.g.,
availability of affordable food, power, and transportation) that accompany
meeting tighter regulations. Such tradeoffs are clearly not dollar “costs” of compliance, but they are real adverse “health effects” that must be subtracted from the health benefits that follow regulatory compliance.
Another way of making this point is that a “risk assessment” should be made on the “decision” related to the substance (e.g., PM2.5), not just the substance itself. After all, the public must live with “all” of the health consequences of an air standard, not just those selected from the extensive epidemiology literature.
These topics can be explored further in several references including:
1) “Risk vs. Risk: Tradeoffs in Protecting Health and the Environment”, Harvard
University Press, 1995:
2) “Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk
Assessment”, The National Academy Press, 2009: and 3) “The Particulate Air Pollution Controversy: A Case Study and Lessons Learned”, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002 (hard copy) and 2013 (paperback).
THANK YOU BOB PHALEN, a man’s man in the jungle of enviro science research.