More #FakeNews from the New York Times.
Obama cleaned the air and Trump polluted it is the #FakeNews from the New York Times this morning.
Here’s the fuller graph of EPA data broken out by pollutant, starting in 2000 rather than the NYTimes’ 2009 start.
Here’s what you need to know:
- US air is clean and safe.
- While US air wasn’t always terribly clean before the 1970s, it was always safe — with the sole exception of the October 1948 Donora, Pennsylvania incident.
- PM2.5 in outdoor air kills no one and causes no other health effects.
- Even if PM2.5 levels are trivially higher now than in 2016, that is likely the product of economic growth.
- I’ll take significant economic growth an a trivial rise in harmless PM2.5 versus the alternative.
- I wouldn’t put it past the EPA resistance to fiddle with air monitoring data so as to give the American-hating left something to squawk about.
- EPA air monitors are located near roads and other high-traffic areas. They are not representative of either actual air quality or what people actually inhale.
JunkScience.com friend Rich Trzupek did a take down of this air-pollution-rising-under-Trump disinformation earlier this year.