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“People were dropping like flies,” said Dr Christy Montegut, his voice slowed by exhaustion.

Dr Montegut, the coroner in St John the Baptist parish, recited a scene of devastation similar to the ones seen by coroners in major metropolitan areas of the United States overwhelmed with Covid-19 deaths. But St John the Baptist, a small jurisdiction of 43,000 people in southern Louisiana, is no sprawling metropolis. Here, in this sparsely populated parish 30 miles from New Orleans, the Covid-19 death rate is the highest of any county in America with a population of over 5,000 people.

“We were getting calls almost every hour. The body count was just … amazing. …They all died in the same way. They got to a hospital, were on a ventilator, but the body just couldn’t keep going. They died in spite of full treatment. The virus is overwhelming.”

According to Montegut’s latest count, 30 people have died of Covid-19 in the parish since the outbreak of the crisis, a rate of 68.7 per 100,000 people. By contrast, New York City, the center of the virus in America, has a rate of 29.

The Trump administration is now tracking deaths in the parish along with other major urban hotspots in the country, Dr Deborah Birx, the US government’s coronavirus response coordinator, said at Sunday’s White House briefing.

Louisiana continues its battle with the virus. Governor John Bel Edwards announced on Monday that 512 people have died statewide and acknowledged for the first time that African American residents made up 70% of all deaths, despite being only 32.7% of the population.

The racial disparity was not immediately clear in St John the Baptist. But Montegut warned that if the death rate continues at the pace it has over the past 14 days, the parish will be completely overwhelmed. He has requested a refrigerated truck to store bodies. There is no morgue in St John the Baptist parish, nor are there any ventilators or a hospital, meaning all Covid-19 patients are being treated at facilities in other locations including New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

The coroner confirmed that eight deaths had occurred at a veterans nursing home in the town of Reserve, but fatalities have now been recorded in most towns throughout the parish. Most have been elderly residents with underlying health conditions.

“It gets depressing when you don’t see an end in sight,” Montegut, also a practicing family doctor, said. “And every day is just more bad news.”

Funeral directors in the parish have so far been able to keep up with the surge in deaths, but, said Geri Baloney, the owner of a funeral home in the town of Laplace, a continued outbreak will strain their resources.

Like other funeral homes, she has adjusted services to meet social distancing guidance. Tape on the floors guides mourners to stand eight to 10 feet apart during viewing processions, and she’s also started to offer online video streaming as an option to families unable to gather in person.

“It’s emotionally difficult,” said Baloney of the coronavirus crisis. “It’s a time that I tell everyone to be safe and cautious, but we have to be considerate and compassionate.”

In an indication of the depth of the crisis, the parish sheriff last week issued a nighttime curfew, one of the few jurisdictions in America to do so.

St John the Baptist has already commanded national and international attention due to major air pollution tied to a petrochemical plant operated by the Japanese firm Denka at the centre of the parish. Reserve is the subject of a year-long Guardian series, Cancer Town, and home to the highest risk of cancer due to airborne toxins anywhere in America, according to US government data.

Residents living in Reserve voiced concerns that decades of air pollution places them at a higher risk of coronavirus fatality, since the virus attacks the lungs.

Robert Taylor, the director of the concerned citizens of St John, and a lifelong resident of Reserve, said a number of neighbours on his block, which sits a few thousand feet from the plant, have been hospitalised with Covid-19. One, according to Taylor, has died.

“It’s so hectic right now,” Taylor said. “It feels hopeless for us. People are dying every day and I don’t know what to do to protect myself.”

Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist and community advocate, shared Taylor’s concerns and added that the rest of the heavily polluted area between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, known as Cancer Alley, was primed for a disproportionate impact from coronavirus.

“The Denka facility has been releasing toxic chemicals into the air for 50 years. All the community have some type of respiratory impact, some more than others. But they’re already very vulnerable,” she said. “And then you add the exposure to the virus, which has a huge impact on the lungs, then they are much more apt to get it and then to have very detrimental effects.”

Dr Michael Jerrett, an environmental health sciences professor at the UCLA Fielding school of public health, studies the links between air pollution and disease. He says that since the coronavirus is new, it is too early to draw firm conclusions. But his past research has demonstrated that air pollution increases the risk of pneumonia, a disease similar to Covid-19.

“Being in areas of higher exposure to common air pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter, does increase the risk of acquiring pneumonia. So to the extent that Covid behaves in a similar way to bacterial pneumonia, which is more common, or other viral pneumonias, we have evidence that long-term exposure well increases your susceptibility to acquiring the disease.”

The Denka spokesman, Jim Harris, argued there was no relationship between the plant’s emissions and an increased risk from Covid-19.

“In this time of fear and uncertainty, we are all working hard to help make sure everyone has accurate and necessary information. We are trying to help the people in our community by connecting them with facts. There is no reason to believe that DPE’s operations could contribute to an increased risk from Covid-19,” Harris said.

“State officials are reporting other factors may increase risks from the virus, including diabetes and obesity, both of which Louisiana has higher-than-average rates of,” Harris said.

The company’s words were little comfort to Robert Taylor. “The nature of the disease and our particular situation [with air pollution],” he said. “It makes this thing so frightening.”

Originally published at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/07/cancer-alley-coronavirus-reserve-louisiana

Photo by Andrew Gustar

The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus has many people wondering what environmental factors, beyond age and underlying health problems, make some individuals more vulnerable to COVID-19 than others.

That’s especially true in California, where residents have long struggled with the nation’s worst-polluted air.

So, does air pollution increase your risk?

Probably, experts say.

While health scientists can’t say for sure, they suspect bad air makes people more susceptible to the novel coronavirus. They point to loads of research showing people who smoke or breathe dirty air are at higher risk of contracting pneumonia caused by similar viruses and of developing more severe symptoms once they have it.

“There’s lots of evidence that air pollution increases the chances that someone will get pneumonia, and if they get pneumonia, will be sicker with it,” said Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We don’t have direct evidence of that with COVID, but I would be surprised if air pollution did not affect risk for COVID infection and the severity of illness.”

“The overwhelming majority of studies demonstrate that air pollution matters a lot to whether you are going to get sick with pneumonia and whether you are going to have mild illness or severe illness,” Bernstein added.

That means the virus could be more damaging to people living in polluted areas, because their lungs may already be impaired and their defenses weakened.

There is also evidence from previous outbreaks of similar coronaviruses that people exposed to dirty air are at greater risk of dying. Scientists who studied the SARS coronavirus outbreak in 2003 found that infected patients from regions with higher air pollution were 84% more likely to die than those in less-polluted areas.

Why do scientists suspect this?

Studies going back more than a decade have established that people living in neighborhoods with dirty air from vehicle exhaust and other combustion sources are hospitalized for pneumonia at higher rates than in areas with lower pollution, according to health experts.

That evidence indicates that long-term exposure to pollution makes people more susceptible to acquiring pneumonia in the first place and worsens their symptoms once they have it. It applies both to bacterial infections and those caused by viruses similar to the coronavirus.

“To the extent that it’s behaving like another pneumonia, yes, I think there’s going to be some elevated risk that’s associated with being in higher air pollution, but we don’t know enough about the biology of this particular virus to know how it’s going to respond,” said Michael Jerrett, a professor of environmental health science at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

 

How does air pollution weaken our defenses?

People who live in smoggy areas may be less equipped to fight off the virus to begin with. That’s because air pollution, just like smoking, damages the lungs and makes it harder for them to fight off respiratory infections. Exposure to ozone, fine particulate matter and other components of smog stress and inflame the lungs over the long term.

“When a pollutant enters the lung, the lung treats it like a foreign invader and initiates a whole process of defense,” Jerrett said.

Cells try to remove the pollutant, he said, and over time that depletes energy, causing the lungs to become inflamed.

 

“Once the lung is inflamed, the ability of a virus to penetrate is elevated,” Jerrett said.

That affects the lungs’ response to a virus in the alveoli, the tiny air sacs where oxygen moves into the bloodstream.

“They’re already expending energy to fight air pollution,” Jerrett said. “If another invader comes in, their defense is already diminished.”

What if air quality improves in the short term?

There is robust evidence that even short-term exposure to polluted air can increase lung infections, Jerrett said. Meaning that when pollution goes up, hospitals see an increase in admissions for pneumonia a few days later.

“In that case it’s probably not necessarily contributing to the formation of the disease, but it is exacerbating the severity,” Jerrett said.

But it suggests we also stand to gain an advantage against the virus by improving air quality.

Satellite imagery has revealed dramatic declines in air pollution during quarantines and lockdowns in Italy and China.

In parts of California, residents have already begun to comment on how clean the air has been in the last few days, though air quality officials said it remains unclear if this is due mostly to recent rains and winds that flush out pollution, or the sudden drop-off in motor vehicle traffic.

 

If improved air quality becomes a widespread side effect of the outbreak, it could be a boon during a trying time, bringing health benefits just when people need them most to fight off respiratory infection.

How big of a health problem is dirty air?

Globally, air pollution is the greatest environmental health threat, killing 7 million people each year, according to the World Health Organization. The primary mechanism of harm are fine particles that penetrate deep into the lungs and cause illnesses such as stroke, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory infections including pneumonia.

Most of those deaths occur in developing countries in Asia and Africa where pollution levels remain dangerously high.

But thousands of Americans still die from polluted air each year, despite big improvements in air quality compared to decades ago. In the U.S., the health damage remains worst in California, with its large population exposed to the nation’s highest smog levels.

Experts note a big overlap between the populations most vulnerable during the coronavirus outbreak and those most harmed by dirty air. Unfortunately, that means some of the same underlying health problems that make people more vulnerable to air pollution, such as asthma, heart and lung disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, also appear to be risk factors for the coronavirus.

What about smoking?

Preliminary research on the novel coronavirus outbreak in China suggests that smokers are more susceptible to infection. Men, who smoke at higher rates than women in that country, were more likely to die from the virus, scientists found.

“If you don’t have good reason to stop smoking already, this is a good reason,” Bernstein said. While a definitive link has not been established yet for the coronavirus, he said, smoking has increased risk for most every other respiratory infection studied.

How else can I lower my risk from pollution?

There are other steps you can take to improve your air quality, especially inside your home, where you are likely spending a lot of time during widespread closures and social distancing.

“Make sure that the air filter on your HVAC system is clean,” Bernstein said. High-efficiency air filters — those rated 13 or higher on the 16-point MERV scale — can help remove particles that could inflame your lungs and weaken their defenses.

Don’t have a central air system? Consider using a standalone air-cleaning device, which helps reduce particle pollution levels in individual rooms within your home. Make sure the model you choose is certified by California regulators.

You can also reduce air pollution inside your home by venting your kitchen stove to the outside, if possible.

“If people have gas cooktops in their homes and they have a vent, make sure to use it,” Bernstein said. “You want to do anything you can now to make your indoor air as good as possible.”

By TONY BARBOZA STAFF WRITER 
MARCH 21, 2020

Originally published at: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-21/coronavirus-air-pollution-health-risk

 

Scientists have discovered a possible link between Parkinson’s disease and a gene impacted by a neurotoxin found in blue-green algae.

University of Queensland scientist Dr Jacob Gratten said the findings increased the understanding of the environmental risk factors of Parkinson’s disease.

“We looked for a link between Parkinson’s and changes in the human genome that control how genes are turned on and off, because these changes can be influenced by the environment,” Dr Gratten said.

“We found a gene, previously not known to be linked to Parkinson’s, which displayed reduced activity in people with the disease.

“This same gene is known to be targeted by a blue-green algae neurotoxin.”

Blue-green algae is found in inland waterways and poses a health risk to people, domestic animals and stock that come into contact with the toxic algal blooms.

The research team at MRI-UQ made the discovery in collaboration with Professor George Mellick at Griffith University and colleagues from New South Wales and New Zealand.

Their findings are the culmination of more than a decade of scientific effort.

Neurotoxins released by blue-green algae reduce activity of the gene identified in the study.

Researchers predict this will lead to higher oxidative stress levels in nerve cells associated with Parkinson’s disease, which can lead to cell death.

Dr Gratten said that while the study does not provide a direct link with Parkinson’s, blue-green algae had previously been associated with other neurodegenerative diseases such as motor neuron disease.

“This gives us confidence that we’re moving in the right direction towards understanding the environmental causes of Parkinson’s disease,” Dr Gratten said.

UQ geneticist Professor Peter Visscher, from the the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, who co-led the study, said Parkinson’s disease affects 1 in 100 people over 60-years-old and that figure is projected to double by 2040 as the population ages.

“This disease destroys lives and devastates families, so we’re determined to unlock the mystery behind Parkinson’s,” Professor Visscher said.

“More work is needed to confirm our findings, and to explore other possible explanations for the link between this gene and Parkinson’s disease, such as pesticides.”

Journal Reference:

1. Costanza L. Vallerga, Futao Zhang, Javed Fowdar, Allan F. McRae, Ting Qi, Marta F. Nabais, Qian Zhang, Irfahan Kassam, Anjali K. Henders, Leanne Wallace, Grant Montgomery, Yu-Hsuan Chuang, Steve Horvath, Beate Ritz, Glenda Halliday, Ian Hickie, John B. Kwok, John Pearson, Toni Pitcher, Martin Kennedy, Steven R. Bentley, Peter A. Silburn, Jian Yang, Naomi R. Wray, Simon J. G. Lewis, Tim Anderson, John Dalrymple-Alford, George D. Mellick, Peter M. Visscher, Jacob Gratten. Analysis of DNA methylation associates the cystine–glutamate antiporter SLC7A11 with risk of Parkinson’s disease. Nature Communications, 2020; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15065-7

University of Queensland. (2020, March 16). Parkinson’s disease linked to gene targeted by blue-green algae toxin. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 31, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200316104018.htm

The 2019 list of the world’s most influential scientific researchers includes six Fielding School faculty members:

– Sander Greenland, professor emeritus of epidemiology

– Ronald Hays, professor of health policy and management

– Steve Horvath, professor of biostatistics

– Michael Jerrett, professor and chair of environmental health sciences

– André Nel, professor of environmental health sciences

– Dr. Marc Suchard, professor of biostatistics

In its annual list, the Web of Science Group, which is a Clarivate Analytics company, names the most highly cited researchers — those whose work was most often referenced by other scientific research papers published from 2008 through 2018 in 21 fields across the sciences and social sciences.

“The Highly Cited Researchers 2019 list from the Web of Science Group contributes to the identification of that small fraction of the researcher population that contributes disproportionately to extending the frontiers of knowledge and gaining for society innovations that make the world healthier, richer, more sustainable, and more secure,” according to Web of Science Group.

UCLA researchers on the list have affiliations that include the UCLA College, the David Geffen School of Medicine, the Samueli School of Engineering, the Fielding School of Public Health, the California NanoSystems Institute, the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research.

Beyond the Fielding School, current UCLA faculty members and researchers who were named to the list are:

Matthew Budoff, cardiology

Duilio Cascio, molecular biology

Jun Chen, bioengineering

Bartosz Chmielowski, hematology and oncology

Michelle Craske, psychology, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences

Xiangfeng Duan, chemistry

Bruce Dunn, materials science and engineering

Gregg Fonarow, cardiology

Daniel Geschwind, genetics, neurology and psychiatry

Michael Green, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences

Zhen Gu, bioengineering

Kendall Houk, chemistry and biochemistry

Yu Huang, materials science and engineering

Steve Jacobsen, moclecular, cell and developmental biology and genetics

Richard Kaner, chemistry and materials science

Ali Khademhosseini, bioengineering

Nathan Kraft, ecology and evolutionary biology

Peter Langfelder, biostatistics

Dennis Lettenmaier, geography, and civil and environmental engineering

Zhaoyang Lin, materials science and chemistry

Roger Lo, dermatology and oncology

Aldons Lusis, medicine

Bengt Muthen, health

Ni Ni, physics

Stanley Osher, mathematics, and chemical and biomolecular engineering

Matteo Pellegrini, computational biology

Dinesh Rao, hematopathology and hematology

Steven Reise, psychology

Antoni Ribas, hematology and oncology

Lawren Sack, ecology and evolutionary biology

Jeffrey Saver, neurology

Michael Sawaya, molecular biology

Ali Sayed, electrical and computer engineering

Michael Sofroniew, neurobiology

Terence Tao, mathematics

Kang Wang, electrical and computer engineering

Edward L. Wright, physics and astronomy

Tian Xia, nanobiology

Yang Yang, materials science and engineering

Wotao Yin, mathematics

Jeffrey Zink, chemistry

source: UCLA Newsroom http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-scientists-among-worlds-most-influential-scholars-based-on-citations-2019

Planning a trip abroad? Before you pack, check the air pollution levels

Newswise — A new study by researchers at UCLA shows that even a short-term visit to a severely polluted city can be detrimental to one’s health. The study involved 26 non-smoking, healthy adults (with a mean age of 23.8 years) who traveled from Los Angeles to Beijing during the summers of 2014 and 2015 over a 10-week period. The study participants were split into two groups and blood samples were taken in the first group at eight weeks and in the second group at six weeks after arrival in Beijing. The study was done in collaboration with Peking University in Beijing.

The study participants experienced significant health changes during their time in Beijing, including higher levels of oxidized fats, causing increased heart inflammation; and a change in enzyme function, which is associated with heart disease. The study also found that these individuals had up to an 800% greater concentration of air pollutants in their bodies than they did when in Los Angeles.

The good news is that when they returned to Los Angeles, most of the negative health effects largely reversed within four to seven weeks. The research was just published in the journal Circulation from the American Heart Association.

“It’s widely known that long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with increased cardiovascular disease. But it was unknown whether a short-term visit to a location with severe air pollution could have any significant impact,” said the lead author of the study, Dr. Jesus Araujo, professor of medicine and director of environmental cardiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and professor of environmental health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

Araujo’s interest in this topic stemmed from previous research he conducted on air pollution exposure in animals. His research showed pronounced health effects in animals within just two weeks of exposure to pollution. His new study is the first to look specifically at the cardiovascular health effects of short-term air pollution exposure in humans, and notably, in healthy humans.

“It’s likely that the health effects would be even more prominent after longer exposure to air pollution, repetitive travels, or among individuals with preexisting health conditions,” said Yan Lin, first author of the study and now a postdoctoral associate at Duke University’s Global Health Institute. Neither Beijing nor Los Angeles is known for its clean air, but Beijing’s air quality is significantly worse. The concentration of airborne particles in Beijing was on average 371% higher than in Los Angeles during the time of the study.

“Los Angeles used to be nearly as polluted as Beijing is today,” said Yifang Zhu, co-lead author of the study and professor of environmental health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “A city’s air quality can improve markedly when effective environmental policies are put into place,” Zhu said.

It’s important to note that Beijing is only one of many highly polluted cities that draws millions of tourists and business travelers each year. Several other cities in China and India are among the most polluted in the world. Even London and Paris have pollution levels that exceed the legal limits set by the World Health Organization.

Frequent travelers may find it reassuring to know that the study’s participants returned almost completely to their normal, healthy states after getting back to Los Angeles. However, some might think twice before boarding a plane for an extended visit to one of the aforementioned cities.

There are some ways to mitigate the risk of developing health issues when traveling to polluted cities. Araujo recommends avoiding intense physical activity, such as running outdoors or hiking. For individuals with preexisting cardiovascular health conditions, avoiding travel to these locations for extended periods of time is another consideration, especially around peak times of high air pollution levels. If one must travel for extended periods of time, the doctor recommends staying indoors as much as possible with air purifiers running.

 

SEE ORIGINAL STUDY

 
Originally published on November 25th 2019 by https://www.newswise.com/articles/new-ucla-study-finds-short-term-visit-to-severely-polluted-city-is-bad-for-your-health
 

 

As of Tuesday evening copy deadline, The Getty Fire had burned 656 acres, destroyed 12 homes and forced the mandatory evacuation of nearly 7,100 homes west of the 405 Freeway, north of Sunset Boulevard, south of Mulholland Drive and east of Temescal Canyon Road. Containment was at 15%, with the voluntary evacuation warning zone extending westward to Topanga Canyon Boulevard and continuing school closures throughout Brentwood, Pacific Palisades and Malibu.

Forecasts of “Extreme Red Flag” winds 30 to 50 miles per hour — with gusts up to 70 miles per hour — threatened to create conditions “as dangerous for fire growth and behavior as we have seen in recent history,” according to a Los Angeles Fire Department briefing. More than 760 firefighters, including 123 fire engines, 14 hand crews and two bulldozers, were stationed overnight in vulnerable areas.

All it took to start the blaze, investigators had already determined, was a tree branch falling on powerlines.

On Monday and Tuesday, smoke advisories stretched for miles, including Santa Monica in particular and other parts of The Argonaut’s coverage area immediately south of the evacuation zones.

Impacts of the Getty Fire and others like it — including the Tick Fire in Santa Clarita and the 76,000-acre Kincade Fire that prompted evacuation orders for 200,000 residents of Sonoma County — will be felt for years, said Loyola Marymount University biology professor Eric Strauss, executive director of the LMU Center for Urban Resilience.

“It can take at least 10 years for [trees] to recover and grow again,” Strauss said. “Also in some cases the soil profile could be damaged, and that slows down the recovery time. During a heavy rain a damaged soil profile can lead to mudslides.”

Early 2018 mudflows in Santa Barbara County that followed the Thomas Fire caused 23 deaths and more than $200 million in property damage.

UCLA Fielding School of Public Health professor Michael Jerrett said large fires start impacting the health of those around them immediately.

“Usually within 24 hours we see increases in hospital visits and psychiatric or mental health struggles. We often see these elevations persisting for weeks,” Jerrett said. “Even though atmospheric conditions can clear up quickly, the effects on health can persist.”

— Joe Piasecki and Gary Walker

Originally published by The Argonaut on October 30, 2019 at https://argonautnews.com/california-burning-the-getty-fire/
Photos by Ted Soqui

BY MARKHAM HEID 

 

AUGUST 19, 2019
 
 
 

Most non-electric motor vehicles emit multiple airborne pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide, hydrocarbons, and ultrafine chemical particles. Breathing in these pollutants can cause or contribute to a wide range of health problems, from heart and lung disease to neurological, reproductive and immune system dysfunction.

Studies have repeatedly found that people who live near busy roadways are at elevated risks for these health issues. Young children, the elderly, and people with lung disease are especially vulnerable to vehicle-emitted pollution. But anyone who spends a lot of time commuting and sitting in heavy traffic—especially on hot, sunny days, when heat and sunlight speed up the chemical reactions that produce ozone and other airborne pollutants—faces a heightened risk for air-pollution-related illness.

Rolling up the windows can help keep out some of that noxious air, and a car’s cabin filter and A/C settings can reduce the amount of pollutants that get into the vehicle. Most drivers are familiar with the filter that scrubs the air that’s pulled into a vehicle’s engine. (This is the one a mechanic inspects and offers to replace during a routine oil change.) But a cabin filter is something different. It’s usually located behind the glove box, and its job is to clean the air that the vehicle’s occupants breathe. But not all car cabin filters are created equal.

In 2014, the journal Environmental Health published a study finding that factory-installed cabin air filters remove 46% of particulate pollution, but they do not clean the air of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) or hydrocarbon pollutants. To do that, a cabin filter needs an activated carbon (a.k.a. “charcoal”) filtering element, which can cut down levels of NO2 and hydrocarbons by 75% and 50%, respectively, per the study.

 
 

 

 

U.S. Air Quality Slips After Decades of Improvement
After decades of improvement, America’s air may not be getting any cleaner.

 

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These filters are available online and in auto parts stores, and installation is usually easy. (Search for terms like “cabin air filter,” along with “charcoal” or “activated carbon.” Just be sure you’re choosing the right model for your car.) But finding a good one can be tricky. “Unlike HVAC filters for indoor environments, car cabin filters don’t have ratings to show consumers which ones are really effective,” says Yifang Zhu, a professor of environmental health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Zhu is referring to high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) and minimum efficiency reporting value (MERV) designations, which are regulated standards that make clear an indoor air filter’s ability to clean pollutants in a home or office.

Buying a car cabin filter that’s labeled “high-efficiency” and that includes an activated carbon element should provide an upgrade compared to whatever’s installed in the car by its manufacturer. But there are no guarantees—”high-efficiency” is essentially just marketing copy. In any case, Zhu says changing the cabin filter every six months to a year (depending on how much a person drives) should improve the air quality in that vehicle.

Switching on the A/C system’s “air recirculation” function can also help. “This shuts down the air exchange between the inside of the vehicle and the outside, and instead uses recirculated air,” she says. Some of her research shows that this can cut down the cabin’s levels of particulate pollutants by as much as 90%.

 

 

But it’s important not to recirculate air all the time. Zhu’s study found that, within 15 minutes of turning on this function, exhaled carbon dioxide (CO2) from just one or two people can build up to concentrations of between 2,500 and 4,000 parts per million. At that level, CO2 can cause poor decision-making, as well as drowsiness, headaches, and mild nausea. If you’re stuck in traffic longer than 15 minutes, Zhu recommends turning the recirculation function off for a minute or two so that the CO2 can dissipate, then turning it back on. Taking these measures won’t eradicate your exposure to vehicle pollution. But they can make a big difference.

 

In October 2015, a fragile well casing ruptured at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field in Los Angeles, California—and no one could figure out how to stop it. For 118 days, 100,000 metric tons of methane and other hazardous pollutants seeped into the atmosphere. The single worst natural gas leak in American history was not only a disaster for the climate; it displaced thousands of nearby residents for months. Even after returning home, many complained of headaches, rashes, nosebleeds, and other symptoms they blamed on the lingering airborne chemicals.

And most of these people didn’t see it coming. The majority of residents near Aliso Canyon claimed they had no idea they lived near a natural gas storage field until the 2015 blowout happened. They didn’t know that if any of the wells ruptured, they were at risk of exposure to a host of toxic chemicals, which could cause serious neurological and respiratory problems and even certain kinds of cancer. They could also be at risk of death from a pipeline explosion, like the victims of the Colorado blast in 2017.

The massive Aliso Canyon storage field, which contained more than 110 underground wells, is just a small part of America’s much larger natural gas infrastructure. Approximately 15,000 such wells are active across the United States, and nearly half of them are concentrated in six states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan, New York, and California.

For the many thousands of Americans who live near these wells, as well as federal regulators who are tasked with keeping the public safe, these wells are out of sight, out of mind. And a new study shows their dangers to be far greater than previously believed.

Published Monday in the journal Environmental Health, Drew Michanowicz’s study was directly inspired by Aliso Canyon. After that disaster, he and his research team at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health wanted to get a better idea of just how many people in America live near similar underground gas storage facilities.

After surveying the surroundings of more than 9,000 active wells in those six states, they found 6,000 located in suburban areas. Some 53,000 people live within 650 feet of a well, about 10,000 more people than previously estimated. The researchers found that most of those people had no idea about the threat lurking sometimes directly under their homes. “Because of suburban encroachment, some of these homes are sitting literally on top of these storage fields, especially in Ohio and Pennsylvania,” Michanowicz said. (For context, the closest home to the Aliso Canyon disaster was a mile away.)

This is especially worrying because most wells at underground storage facilities are more than 50 years old, and most were not even designed to store natural gas, Michanowicz said; his 2017 study estimated that one in five of these wells were built for gas production, not storage, and are thus likely to be missing subsurface safety valves and other equipment needed to store gas under high pressure. (Federal data released after that study also showed Michanowicz’s number was too conservative; two-thirds of these wells are being used in ways they were not intended decades ago.)

Failure to properly maintain wells can lead to disasters like the one in Aliso Canyon. The facility’s owner, Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas), was accused in a May report of negligence for not repairing corroded pipes, and for not investigating dozens of smaller leaks dating back to the 1970s. “If there is nobody guaranteeing the safety of these other wells across the U.S., Michanowicz said, “tens of thousands of people don’t realize that they’re one corroded steel casing away from disaster.”

A study published in the June 26 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environment International showed what such disaster looks like: The Aliso Canyon rupture released air pollutants including benzene, toluene, xylene, and other chemicals which can cause neurological problems, respiratory problems, and cancer. Now, many of Aliso Canyon’s neighbors, and Los Angeles County firefighters, are suing SoCalGas for health symptoms they believe were caused by the leak.

But a disaster such as Aliso Canyon’s doesn’t have to occur for nearby communities to be at risk. The June study’s senior author, UCLA Professor Dr. Michael Jerrett, said toxins could be seeping out of gas wells across the country every day, not just during catastrophic well blowouts. The leaks go undetected because few of the wells in the U.S. add mercaptan, a chemical that causes the distinct odor most associate with natural gas.

There are some protections in place. Setback rules, which are enacted by municipalities or states, forbid new oil and gas facilities from being built within a certain distance, typically 650 feet, of existing homes. But old wells are not subject to such rules, and no states, except Texas, have laws mandating that new homes can’t be built within a certain distance from existing wells.

“We are not saying immediately sell your homes if you live near these wells,” said the Monday study’s co-author, Kate Konschnik, director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University. “But these facilities do need greater scrutiny than they’ve been getting. This is a manageable hazard, but that’s not the same as being managed.”

In the U.S. every year, 15 percent of the natural gas produced in the U.S. is injected back into the ground, into depleted oil or gas fields, aquifers, even salt caverns. These storage fields are used to manage fluctuations in customer demand; they inject gas into the wells during times of low demand, and withdraw it when demand spikes. Operators also store gas when the price is low, in the hopes of selling when the price is high.

The oil and gas industry maintains that these storage fields, from California to Pennsylvania, are needed for backup, to maintain energy reliability in the case of low supply or high demand. But the necessity of these fields has been disputed. In 2017, an independent report from a California engineering firm concluded that, in the Los Angeles region, storage fields like Aliso Canyon’s are not necessary to prevent blackouts.

But assuming these fields are necessary to energy security, a lot more could be done to ensure their safety, on both the state and federal levels. In California, for example, regulators haven’t recommended, let alone mandated, the closure of Aliso Canyon or any other gas storage facilities.

Federal protections are lagging, too. New rules issued by the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration at the end of 2016 established minimum guidelines for underground gas storage but have not been finalized. Also in 2016, a Federal Interagency Task Force released 44 recommendations to regulators to help minimize future leaks, including phasing out the “single point of failure” wells like the one that ruptured at Aliso Canyon. But those recommendations don’t carry the weight of enforcement.

The federal Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act specifies natural gas facilities that need to engage with first responders in communities, as well as how to write emergency response plans, and conduct trainings. But only facilities that have “extremely hazardous substances” on site have to do this, and methane, which was released in vast quantities during the Aliso Canyon blowout, is not on that list. The Safe Drinking Water Act requires reporting about what’s injected into a well, but that law excludes underground wells.

And there is no federal regulation requiring monitoring of the air around the wells, nor have there been any studies about the health effects on people living near them. One such facility—Playa Del Rey, in the sprawling Los Angeles basin—contains more than half a million residents within a five-mile radius. It’s also in an area prone to seismic activity, just like Aliso Canyon, which puts the pipes at risk of rupturing. But the facility may already be causing harm. “We know from going door to door that many residents have been getting sick, and some have settled with the operator, SoCalGas, for damages,” said Alex Nagy, Southern California Organizer at the Los Angeles branch of Food & Water Watch. SoCalGas denies its facilities are sickening people.

Konschnik was hopeful that stricter regulations would be enacted after the Aliso Canyon disaster, but said that public pressure on the issue has subsided. “I hope there won’t be another Aliso Canyon to make states and the federal government regulate these structures,” she said. “But we are a country that reacts to disaster.” It may take a calamity much worse than the Aliso Canyon rupture to open public officials’ eyes.

By LARRY BUHL

July 8, 2019

Article original appeared at: https://newrepublic.com/article/154425/natural-gas-disaster-underground-storage-wells-suburban-america

TUESDAY, July 2, 2019 (American Heart Association News) — Pregnant women receive a lot of instructions to ensure the healthiest possible baby: what to eat and drink, what to avoid, which vitamins to take, which activities to avoid and more.

But what about breathing?

Researchers have long been concerned about air pollution’s effects on pregnancy, with possible consequences ranging from premature births and low birth weight to elevated blood pressure later in the child’s life.

“We have just scratched the surface on this research,” said Dr. Beate Ritz, professor of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

Ritz, who is president of the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology, has conducted studies since the 1990s linking air pollution levels in Southern California to mothers delivering babies before full term at below-average birth weight.

“When we started, some people said the fetus doesn’t breathe air, so how would it be affected?” she said. “It has become clear that whatever is happening to the mother is happening to the baby, and what happens in pregnancy can affect the rest of its life.”

Recent studies in the United States and elsewhere have shown correlations between particulate matter in the air and high blood pressure in mothers and babies, gestational diabetes (an increase in blood sugar that affects pregnant women), and high blood pressure in children who were exposed to pollution in the womb.

The possible dangers for babies who develop in a polluted environment extend to an increased risk of autism, asthma and the ultimate risk: miscarriage.

“It’s very hard to measure, because some women might lose the fetus so early they didn’t even know they were pregnant,” Ritz said. “But once you damage a fetus enough, it doesn’t survive.”

Pollution “seems to particularly affect vulnerable populations, such as those who are elderly or predisposed to disease,” said Dr. Sanjay Rajagopalan, chief of cardiology at the Herrington Heart and Vascular Institute of University Hospital in Cleveland. “And pregnancy is a vulnerable state. The fetus is in an environment where it is growing and vulnerable.”

However, Rajagopalan, who co-authored an American Heart Association scientific statement about air pollution and cardiovascular disease, said most studies so far have established only correlations between polluted air and disease rather than a direct cause-and-effect.

One obstacle, Rajagopalan said, is “it’s difficult to persuade pregnant women to partake in research. But this is becoming widely recognized as a field to explore. It’s just a matter of time.”

Meanwhile, pregnant women shouldn’t breathe easy. For expectant mothers and everyone else, Ritz said, the dangers of pollution should fuel campaigns for better air quality everywhere in the world.

But that’s unlikely to change much in nine months, bringing simple precautions and common sense to the forefront.

Indoor air purifiers are a good idea, Ritz said, as is keeping windows closed that face roadways and heeding health warnings on high-pollution days.

Rajagopalan stresses all the healthy behaviors for pregnancy – eating well, physical activity, prenatal care, avoiding alcohol and tobacco, monitoring blood pressure and other health indicators – as well as reducing exposure to bad air.

“Try to visit green spaces and areas that will probably have low levels of air pollution,” he said. “And if you don’t have to make that crazy car ride to downtown Los Angeles in your convertible, don’t do it.”

Last Updated: Jul 2, 2019

American Heart Association News covers heart and brain health. Not all views expressed in this story reflect the official position of the American Heart Association. Copyright is owned or held by the American Heart Association, Inc., and all rights are reserved. If you have questions or comments about this story, please email editor@heart.org.

Original story at: https://consumer.healthday.com/pregnancy-information-29/pregnancy-news-543/aha-news-air-pollution-means-pregnant-women-can-t-breathe-easy-748021.html

June 27, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California regulators on Thursday opened an investigation to consider penalties against Southern California Gas Co. for a massive 2015 natural gas leak blamed for sickening thousands of nearby residents and forcing them from their homes.

The Public Utilities Commission made the decision in the wake of a May investigative report that concluded that the blowout at the Aliso Canyon gas well in Los Angeles resulted from a corroded pipe casing, safety failures by the utility and inadequate regulations.

The gas company failed to investigate previous well failures at the storage and didn’t adequately assess its aging wells for disaster potential before the Oct. 23, 2015, blowout, the report concluded.

SoCalGas has 30 days to submit information to the PUC to show why it shouldn’t be sanctioned, the commission said.

Also Thursday, the PUC opened an investigation against SoCalGas and its parent, Sempra Energy, to determine whether their corporate culture and operations made safety a priority.

“The safety of our employees, the public and the environment is at the heart of everything we do. Safety is not just part of our culture, it is the foundation that has helped our business thrive for more than 150 years,” SoCalGas spokesman Chris Gilbride said in a statement, adding, “We look forward to supporting the Commission’s review and welcome its recommendations.”

The Aliso Canyon blowout lasted nearly four months, led to largest-known release of methane in U.S. history and was blamed for sickening thousands of residents, who moved out of their Porter Ranch homes in the San Fernando Valley to escape a sulfurous stench and a medley of maladies including headaches, nausea and nose bleeds.

In a study that appeared Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Environment International, researchers said air quality samples collected near the site during the blowout showed elevated levels of pollutants “known or suspected to be associated with serious health problems.”

The study was done by the University of California, Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health.

New requirements put into place by state regulators after the blowout led to many of the wells being overhauled and updated and many being sealed. The field is also not allowed to operate at full capacity.

SoCalGas has spent more than $1 billion on the blowout and faces hundreds of lawsuits. It also reached a $120 million court settlement with the state attorney general and agreed to a $4 million settlement with Los Angeles County prosecutors after being convicted in Los Angeles Superior Court of failing to quickly report the leak to state authorities.

Article originally appeared at https://www.apnews.com/7927837ef0df4f66b1669c77ae160da9