Trouble in the Air, Dallas Morning News
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Trouble in the air
D-FW is on track to meet EPA pollution standards, but experts say that's not enough to protect public
08:29 AM CST on Sunday, December 3, 2006
By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News
Texas' new smog-fighting plan would seem to offer hope of health to the 6 million North Texans who have wheezed through decades of dirty air.
State officials promised last month that by 2009, federal, state and local measures would combine to help protect people from breathing unsafe levels of lung-scarring ozone. For the first time, the region would meet one of the nation's most important public-health goals.
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07/11: Political winds favor coal, not N. Texas air
10/21: Regional leaders call for pollution cuts
11/12: Coal war: The lines are hazy
11/22: Smog plan to miss goal
But a mountain of medical evidence shows that even if the plan achieved the promised pollution cuts, it would still allow pollution levels that researchers know to be unhealthy. That is because the plan is based on a federal standard for ozone that experts say doesn't protect the public.
Medical studies have found that ozone reduces lung functions and causes long-term health damage even when levels are at or below the current federal limit.
In October, the EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, a group of independent science and medical experts, urged the agency to slash the standard, which dates from 1997, by as much as 25 percent to safeguard people, especially children and the elderly.
"It is the unanimous opinion of the CASAC that the current primary [standard] for ozone is not adequate to protect human health," the committee wrote to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson on Oct. 24. "There is no scientific justification" for keeping the current standard, the experts wrote.
While the EPA considers whether to scrap the current standard, Texas and other states can continue to base their clean-air plans on it. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality did so when it issued proposed smog plans for North Texas and greater Houston on Nov. 21.
The current ozone standard is 80 parts per billion – that is, out of every billion molecules a person breathes in, no more than 80 of those may consist of ozone. Because of imprecise measurement, the EPA does not count a violation until ozone reaches 85 parts per billion.
The Dallas-Fort Worth plan predicts that by 2009, most North Texas communities would have ozone levels just below 85 ppb. Frisco and Denton would still have ozone levels higher than 85.
A review of ozone records for 2004-06 shows that levels in some North Texas communities must come down by as much as 11 percent just to meet the current standard. In all cases, even with the plan in place and working as promised, the region's ozone levels would be far higher than the EPA science advisers said is needed to protect people's health. The advisers said the standard should be as low as 60 ppb and no higher than 70.
The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to consider only medical findings, not the cost of compliance, in setting federal air pollution standards – just as a doctor is supposed to base a diagnosis only on the medical evidence, not on the cost of treatment or the amount of insurance the patient has.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the health-only approach to clean-air standards.
The EPA's science advisers noted that the medical evidence for ozone's harm at or below the current federal limit came from studies of healthy volunteers. People with increased risks – especially children with asthma – face even greater danger, they wrote.
They felt so strongly about the medical need for dramatically lower ozone levels that when they sent their findings to the EPA's Mr. Johnson, they put their conclusions in italics.
The official in charge of Texas' state plans, TCEQ chief engineer David Schanbacher, said the agency doesn't plan to revise its plans in light of the advances in knowledge about ozone's health risks.
"I'm not going to speculate on what they [EPA officials] might do with the standard in the future," Mr. Schanbacher said.
He called the North Texas plan "a pretty aggressive program that addresses all the NOX [nitrogen oxides, a component of ozone] sources that we can control in the D-FW area."
The plan relies heavily on upcoming federal rules on vehicles and fuels along with some state-ordered industrial emissions cuts – not as deep as environmentalists wanted – and voluntary local steps such as van-pooling and HOV lanes.
Critics say planners have erred by focusing narrowly on meeting the federal standard, the minimum required by the Clean Air Act, instead of making a strong statement about protecting public health.
"I think that's one of the things we really have to concentrate on, is letting people know what the cars, automobiles are doing, what the power plants are doing, what the cement kilns are doing," said Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck, a physician and a vice president of Arlington Memorial Hospital.
"They're killing people," Dr. Cluck said.
Other pollutants
Ozone isn't the only air pollutant in North Texas with greater potential health impacts than government standards might suggest.
In September, the EPA took action on its standard for fine particulate matter, or tiny particles of soot, emitted by vehicles, industry, fireplaces and other sources. Medical researchers have linked particulates to heart attacks, lung cancer and premature death.
The EPA lowered the maximum particulate level allowed on any single day by nearly half, from 65 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 35 micrograms. But it kept intact the maximum annual average of 15 micrograms – a measurement with greater health implications because it tracks long-term exposure.
If the agency had adopted the most protective annual standard that its science advisers recommended – 13 micrograms – Dallas and Harris counties would have been in violation. Dallas County's average in recent years has been about 13.8.
Violator status could have triggered mandatory reductions in particulates from local businesses and industries. It also might have added pressure for more stringent measures to control local vehicles' pollution.
Just as significantly, a violator designation would have alerted North Texans that local air pollution levels the federal government labeled as safe might actually pose a health risk.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas pointed to just such a risk.
The study compared the rate of lung cancer in all 254 Texas counties to industrial emissions of particulates that contain metals. Although the EPA says that no Texas county has harmful levels of particulates, the study found a correlation between air emissions of metals and the incidence of lung cancer.
The highest lung-cancer rates were in the most industrialized areas of greater Houston and the nearby Gulf Coast counties, and metropolitan Dallas-Fort Worth.
The study's chief author, Dr. Yvonne Coyle, said she was looking for a possible explanation of rising rates of lung cancer among people who don't smoke, especially women. About 10 to 15 percent of people who get lung cancer have never smoked.
The study, published in September in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology , suggests but does not prove that the particulate pollution is responsible for lung cancer, said Dr. Coyle, a physician and associate professor at UT-Southwestern. Further research will look at the environmental exposures of individual lung cancer patients.
However, there are suspicions that in some patients, particulates are interacting with other cancer-causing environmental factors or are suppressing the body's natural ability to fight off tumors.
"We clearly have decreasing amounts of men smokers, and the [number of] women smokers is leveling off," Dr. Coyle said. "It's not all tobacco smoke. There's something else going on. ... It gets back to the environment."
Political concerns
Ozone and particulates are both byproducts of the way the region's economy is structured. Urban growth has canceled out much of the benefit of tighter vehicle emissions rules; cars are cleaner, but there are more of them, being driven longer distances.
Cars remain the biggest local pollution source, although their share of the total has dropped in recent years. Cement and power plants and other industries are also big sources.
In the proposed smog plan, regional and state planners rejected any restrictions on driving as being unenforceable. The plan does not call for tighter vehicle pollution rules, although several bills filed for the 2007 Legislature would require Texas to adopt California's emissions standards, the nation's strictest.
State environmental commission officials decided not to require the 80 percent to 90 percent emissions cuts for cement kilns that environmentalists wanted, opting for cuts of 35 percent to 50 percent. And they chose not to demand reductions from power plants outside North Texas, although the state's biggest generator, TXU, has promised voluntary reductions from its existing plants as part of its request for permits to build 11 new coal-burning units.
Mike Eastland, the region's chief planner, said he believes the state plan is a good one, given the complexity of controlling big industries as well as millions of motorists. Still, he said, dramatically lower ozone levels might be achievable, but not right away.
"If you're talking about 10 or 15 years from now, maybe 60 or 70 [ppb] isn't an impossible thing," said Mr. Eastland, executive director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which provided staff support to a local committee that worked on the plan. "But if you're talking about in another four or five years, there's just no way the public would tolerate" the drastic steps that would be required, he said.
Dr. Richard L. Wasserman, a Dallas pediatric allergist and immunologist, rejected the idea that achieving healthy air is impossible. Dr. Wasserman, who has a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences in addition to his M.D., said "specific political decisions" have blocked progress.
"The lobbying of the breathing public," he said, "is not as well-funded as the lobbying of the ozone producers."
E-mail rloftis@dallasnews.com
Trouble in the air
D-FW is on track to meet EPA pollution standards, but experts say that's not enough to protect public
08:29 AM CST on Sunday, December 3, 2006
By RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News
Texas' new smog-fighting plan would seem to offer hope of health to the 6 million North Texans who have wheezed through decades of dirty air.
State officials promised last month that by 2009, federal, state and local measures would combine to help protect people from breathing unsafe levels of lung-scarring ozone. For the first time, the region would meet one of the nation's most important public-health goals.
Also Online
Tell Us: What are your suggestions for improving air quality in North Texas?
Graphic: The bad air we breathe
Rural Texans debate coal plants
07/11: Political winds favor coal, not N. Texas air
10/21: Regional leaders call for pollution cuts
11/12: Coal war: The lines are hazy
11/22: Smog plan to miss goal
But a mountain of medical evidence shows that even if the plan achieved the promised pollution cuts, it would still allow pollution levels that researchers know to be unhealthy. That is because the plan is based on a federal standard for ozone that experts say doesn't protect the public.
Medical studies have found that ozone reduces lung functions and causes long-term health damage even when levels are at or below the current federal limit.
In October, the EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, a group of independent science and medical experts, urged the agency to slash the standard, which dates from 1997, by as much as 25 percent to safeguard people, especially children and the elderly.
"It is the unanimous opinion of the CASAC that the current primary [standard] for ozone is not adequate to protect human health," the committee wrote to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson on Oct. 24. "There is no scientific justification" for keeping the current standard, the experts wrote.
While the EPA considers whether to scrap the current standard, Texas and other states can continue to base their clean-air plans on it. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality did so when it issued proposed smog plans for North Texas and greater Houston on Nov. 21.
The current ozone standard is 80 parts per billion – that is, out of every billion molecules a person breathes in, no more than 80 of those may consist of ozone. Because of imprecise measurement, the EPA does not count a violation until ozone reaches 85 parts per billion.
The Dallas-Fort Worth plan predicts that by 2009, most North Texas communities would have ozone levels just below 85 ppb. Frisco and Denton would still have ozone levels higher than 85.
A review of ozone records for 2004-06 shows that levels in some North Texas communities must come down by as much as 11 percent just to meet the current standard. In all cases, even with the plan in place and working as promised, the region's ozone levels would be far higher than the EPA science advisers said is needed to protect people's health. The advisers said the standard should be as low as 60 ppb and no higher than 70.
The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to consider only medical findings, not the cost of compliance, in setting federal air pollution standards – just as a doctor is supposed to base a diagnosis only on the medical evidence, not on the cost of treatment or the amount of insurance the patient has.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the health-only approach to clean-air standards.
The EPA's science advisers noted that the medical evidence for ozone's harm at or below the current federal limit came from studies of healthy volunteers. People with increased risks – especially children with asthma – face even greater danger, they wrote.
They felt so strongly about the medical need for dramatically lower ozone levels that when they sent their findings to the EPA's Mr. Johnson, they put their conclusions in italics.
The official in charge of Texas' state plans, TCEQ chief engineer David Schanbacher, said the agency doesn't plan to revise its plans in light of the advances in knowledge about ozone's health risks.
"I'm not going to speculate on what they [EPA officials] might do with the standard in the future," Mr. Schanbacher said.
He called the North Texas plan "a pretty aggressive program that addresses all the NOX [nitrogen oxides, a component of ozone] sources that we can control in the D-FW area."
The plan relies heavily on upcoming federal rules on vehicles and fuels along with some state-ordered industrial emissions cuts – not as deep as environmentalists wanted – and voluntary local steps such as van-pooling and HOV lanes.
Critics say planners have erred by focusing narrowly on meeting the federal standard, the minimum required by the Clean Air Act, instead of making a strong statement about protecting public health.
"I think that's one of the things we really have to concentrate on, is letting people know what the cars, automobiles are doing, what the power plants are doing, what the cement kilns are doing," said Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck, a physician and a vice president of Arlington Memorial Hospital.
"They're killing people," Dr. Cluck said.
Other pollutants
Ozone isn't the only air pollutant in North Texas with greater potential health impacts than government standards might suggest.
In September, the EPA took action on its standard for fine particulate matter, or tiny particles of soot, emitted by vehicles, industry, fireplaces and other sources. Medical researchers have linked particulates to heart attacks, lung cancer and premature death.
The EPA lowered the maximum particulate level allowed on any single day by nearly half, from 65 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 35 micrograms. But it kept intact the maximum annual average of 15 micrograms – a measurement with greater health implications because it tracks long-term exposure.
If the agency had adopted the most protective annual standard that its science advisers recommended – 13 micrograms – Dallas and Harris counties would have been in violation. Dallas County's average in recent years has been about 13.8.
Violator status could have triggered mandatory reductions in particulates from local businesses and industries. It also might have added pressure for more stringent measures to control local vehicles' pollution.
Just as significantly, a violator designation would have alerted North Texans that local air pollution levels the federal government labeled as safe might actually pose a health risk.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas pointed to just such a risk.
The study compared the rate of lung cancer in all 254 Texas counties to industrial emissions of particulates that contain metals. Although the EPA says that no Texas county has harmful levels of particulates, the study found a correlation between air emissions of metals and the incidence of lung cancer.
The highest lung-cancer rates were in the most industrialized areas of greater Houston and the nearby Gulf Coast counties, and metropolitan Dallas-Fort Worth.
The study's chief author, Dr. Yvonne Coyle, said she was looking for a possible explanation of rising rates of lung cancer among people who don't smoke, especially women. About 10 to 15 percent of people who get lung cancer have never smoked.
The study, published in September in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology , suggests but does not prove that the particulate pollution is responsible for lung cancer, said Dr. Coyle, a physician and associate professor at UT-Southwestern. Further research will look at the environmental exposures of individual lung cancer patients.
However, there are suspicions that in some patients, particulates are interacting with other cancer-causing environmental factors or are suppressing the body's natural ability to fight off tumors.
"We clearly have decreasing amounts of men smokers, and the [number of] women smokers is leveling off," Dr. Coyle said. "It's not all tobacco smoke. There's something else going on. ... It gets back to the environment."
Political concerns
Ozone and particulates are both byproducts of the way the region's economy is structured. Urban growth has canceled out much of the benefit of tighter vehicle emissions rules; cars are cleaner, but there are more of them, being driven longer distances.
Cars remain the biggest local pollution source, although their share of the total has dropped in recent years. Cement and power plants and other industries are also big sources.
In the proposed smog plan, regional and state planners rejected any restrictions on driving as being unenforceable. The plan does not call for tighter vehicle pollution rules, although several bills filed for the 2007 Legislature would require Texas to adopt California's emissions standards, the nation's strictest.
State environmental commission officials decided not to require the 80 percent to 90 percent emissions cuts for cement kilns that environmentalists wanted, opting for cuts of 35 percent to 50 percent. And they chose not to demand reductions from power plants outside North Texas, although the state's biggest generator, TXU, has promised voluntary reductions from its existing plants as part of its request for permits to build 11 new coal-burning units.
Mike Eastland, the region's chief planner, said he believes the state plan is a good one, given the complexity of controlling big industries as well as millions of motorists. Still, he said, dramatically lower ozone levels might be achievable, but not right away.
"If you're talking about 10 or 15 years from now, maybe 60 or 70 [ppb] isn't an impossible thing," said Mr. Eastland, executive director of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which provided staff support to a local committee that worked on the plan. "But if you're talking about in another four or five years, there's just no way the public would tolerate" the drastic steps that would be required, he said.
Dr. Richard L. Wasserman, a Dallas pediatric allergist and immunologist, rejected the idea that achieving healthy air is impossible. Dr. Wasserman, who has a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences in addition to his M.D., said "specific political decisions" have blocked progress.
"The lobbying of the breathing public," he said, "is not as well-funded as the lobbying of the ozone producers."
E-mail rloftis@dallasnews.com
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