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America's Air Quality Is Slipping After Years of Improvement (apnews.com) 144

The Grim Reefer shared this report from the Associated Press: Over the last two years America had more polluted air days than just a few years earlier, federal data shows. While it remains unclear whether this is the beginning of a trend, health experts say it's troubling to see air quality progress stagnate. There were 15% more days with unhealthy air in America both last year and the year before than there were on average from 2013 through 2016, the four years when America had its fewest number of those days since at least 1980...

Air quality is affected by a complex mix of factors, both natural and man-made. Federal regulations that limit the emissions of certain chemicals and soot from factories, cars and trucks have helped dramatically improve air quality over recent decades. In any given year, however, air quality can be affected by natural variations... Air pollution experts agree wildfires likely have had a role, along with random variation, a stronger economy which leads to more consumption of fuels, and a changing climate. Higher temperatures increase the chances for fires and smog.

Even with the recent stagnation, there are far fewer bad air days now than in the early 2000s, 1990s and 1980s.

They also report that "about 100,000 Americans each year die prematurely because of polluted air, studies show."
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America's Air Quality Is Slipping After Years of Improvement

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  • by pgmrdlm ( 1642279 ) on Sunday June 23, 2019 @07:38AM (#58808094) Journal
    Is it because of the forest fires out west? Or anything else like that?

    We are driving way more efficient cars and trucks. Automakers sure have not slid back on emissions. All though, Volkswagen did get caught cheating on the emission tests.

    Coal plants are closing, and new ones are not opening. Electric system is using way more wind and gas plants.

    So, again. I would like to see a break down state by state.
    • by Luthair ( 847766 )
      More diesel trucks perhaps? It may also be the shift to SUVs & trucks over cars.
      • Most goods are shipped by rail over any distance. Then the products are delivered locally truck. I haven't really seen any articles on a major increase in manufacturing. Yes, it has been inching up. But, not by a huge percentage. So, local delivery of goods by truck I would not think would require an increase of more trucks(diesel).

        That is just an personal observation by me, so it means absolutely nothing.
        • by darthsilun ( 3993753 ) on Sunday June 23, 2019 @09:19AM (#58808388)

          Most goods are shipped by rail over any distance.

          The Bureau of Transportation[1] doesn't agree with you.

          Just sayin' [1] https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/2... [bts.gov]

          • by pgmrdlm ( 1642279 ) on Sunday June 23, 2019 @09:27AM (#58808406) Journal
            Thank you for the link. I have no problem shown I am wrong with unbiased(which you used) sources. Again, thanks again for the link.
          • by idji ( 984038 )
            Those statistics our about the value of the goods, not the tonnage. It's likely that the tonnage is still in rail, as coal, gravel, steel, cement is much cheaper than anything else.
            • One guy in this thread already got caught in a lie. Do you want to be next? How about you cite some facts to back up your claim?

              There are gravel pits everywhere. I"m not sure why anyone would ship bulk gravel anywhere by rail. Hell, there's a gravel and cement supplier a couple miles from where I live; no railroad spur to it. Well, that's just one bit of anecdotal evidence.

              Like I said, citations, or you just made it up.
          • To be fair, that report is all about transborder transportation between the US and Canada or the US and Mexico, not about transportation between and within the States. As such, it could be argued that rail may be underrepresented in the report you linked since our neighbors may not have the infrastructure necessary to receive freight by rail at the border (which, given that the US has the largest rail network in the world [wikipedia.org] wouldn’t exactly be surprising).

            So, I went looking for domestic numbers, which I

            • by jbengt ( 874751 )
              To be fair, the charts in your link show that rails carry more tonnage than trucks for distances over 1,000 miles, which seems to be what the post that originally brought this up was clumsily trying to say by writhing "over any distance".
            • ...given that the US has the largest rail network in the world...

              That's kinda deceptive, and isn't really a good apples-to-apples comparison IMO. From the page you cited, Europe, as a whole has a far larger rail network than the US. And I didn't even count countries like Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, etc. Or Turkey.

              If you add those countries then the US really pales in comparison. Even if you lump all of Canada and Mexico in with the US, it still pales in comparison to Europe. Europe uses their rail network for passengers too, much more so than we do.

        • Most goods are shipped by rail over any distance.

          No, that's what happens in Yoorp. It's over that way somewhere ---->

        • by Luthair ( 847766 )
          I was actually referring to diesel pickup trucks by individuals. But it is likely that populations have increased placing more vehicles, including delivery trucks on the road.
      • Or a strong economy means more people working burning electricity and whatever.

        It might be interesting to normalize this to the rate of unemployment, or other business factors.

    • by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Sunday June 23, 2019 @09:05AM (#58808328)

      Is it because of the forest fires out west? Or anything else like that?

      It's vaping . . . definitely . . .

    • Itâ(TM)s coal-fired power plants, if youâ(TM)re curious.

      Theyâ(TM)re responsible for the most soot and Mercury. Many are in the Appalachian corridor, so their plume clouds waft over the mid and upped east coast.

      Not trying to get into politics today, just answering your question. Cleaner cars have had a big impact, but the easiest pickings from that sector have long been gotten.

      Because of exemptions, many of our (older) coal-fires plants have sections that are burning using 70s/80s emissions te

    • by Anonymous Coward

      https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
      https://www.politifact.com/tru... [politifact.com]

      Thats why. Trump is helping US businesses poison americans.

    • Is it because of the forest fires out west? Or anything else like that?

      It's the marijuana smoking. I can smell it from here. Damned hippies.

  • come on maybe at least linking to or stating your sources

    I would really like to know what the instruments that they used and how they calibrated them...

  • by Insanity Defense ( 1232008 ) on Sunday June 23, 2019 @08:06AM (#58808144)

    Couldn't have anything to do with putting the EPA in the hands of a man who thinks it shouldn't exist. Neither could it have anything to do with a President who rolled back every anti pollution measure he has the ability to roll back. Those couldn't have any negative effects on air pollution right?

    • Yeah, keeping a 30MW coal plant operating should be prosecuted for 1 murder per 2 days (low estimate, short-term pollution only). So should blocking or reducing nuclear -- the only currently viable power source that can deliver enough power while being safe (geothermal is good too, but only in some locations), while being also cheapest if you count all externalities. This comparison might change once some new technologies are developed, but for now, hydro and wind are nasty, and solar while promising is n

      • Just to explain that my remark against "renewables" is not an insane diatribe: hydro power, besides large-scale dam failures you hear about so damn often, turn ecosystems reliant of the river into a hydrologic desert. Eg. Egypt had its whole populated-before-20th-century area fed by flooding of the Nile -- which is now shut down completely. Human crops get irrigated artificially, but no one irrigates wildlife areas or natural wetlands. And affected areas are huge: to get big enough power-generation capac

        • Don't forget that the sound the turbines make causes cancer! rrrrrr! rrrrrrr! rrrrrrr!

          • To pee on your "holy renewables" parade: around here, the law says you can't build a turbine within 10x(turbine's height) from a human dwelling, because of that sound. And then, I heard the nuclear reactor powering your hot winds will render Earth unhabitable in 1ba, then destroy it completely in 4.5ba. So that's how unsafe your power is. :)

            • To pee on your "holy renewables" parade: around here, the law says you can't build a turbine within 10x(turbine's height) from a human dwelling, because of that sound.

              I've talked to people in the industry and they say this distance from dwellings requirement is because of in cases of ice building up on the blades, or a catastrophic failure of the windmill, there could be big chunks of debris flung into the air and come down to kill someone.

              There's always been some kind of no-go zone around windmills once they get to a certain size. Maybe it got larger over this noise issue but I haven't seen this applied widely.

              • According the calculations from the Netherlands there is a 95 percent probability that for of every 4000 windmills, one will loose some part of a blade during one year period. And then there is ice as you point out. So there is certainly a need for a safety zone, but from what I have read that zone is smaller than the noise zone.
      • How do you count all externalities when we haven't figured out long term storage of nuclear waste?

        • Oh look! We figured out how to store the waste!
          http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]

          Now can we have more nuclear power?

          • "Until such time as this or some other innovation is developed, on-site storage of the spent fuel in dry casks remains a perfectly viable option."

            Sounds like we're not quite there yet, but I hope we can get a bunch more nuclear power.

            • Why didn't you quote the entire paragraph in the article?

              "Storing the spent fuel in deep geological wellbores is technically feasible. As demonstrated in Finland there are no technological barriers to deep well storage, although there remain political barriers. In the United States, Yucca Mountain in Nevada was proposed as a repository, but after years of back and forth, the plans were abandoned. No politically acceptable site has yet been identified. To get around the political deadlock, Deep Isolation

            • So we have a way to store spent nuclear fuel that might or might not be fully safe. We have no such way to store spent coal fuel.

    • The article specifically discusses the potential impact of regulation changes:

      Scientists say that it is too early to see the effects of changes in environmental policy of the Trump administration, which took office in January 2017.

      Instead, it appears the most significant variable that changed is the massive amount of wildfires last year.

      In an email, the EPA told The Associated Press the increase in unhealthy air days in 2017 “is largely associated with wildfires” in the west and it is studying 2018 before officially announcing its annual air trend data.

      Air pollution experts agree wildfires likely have had a role, along with random variation, a stronger economy which leads to more consumption of fuels, and a changing climate. Higher temperatures increase the chances for fires and smog.

      For the first time in recent memory, for example, WA state actually had some severely smoggy days, bad enough to affect people with sensitive lungs. I can't even recall when that has happened before, and it was directly caused by the wildfires in British Columbia. I'm betting California similarly had skewed results because

    • California has a waiver [epa.gov] to set its own air quality standards. Trump has been threatening to withdraw that waiver [fresnobee.com], but hasn't thus far. 13 states and DC automatically adopt California's air quality regulations [autoweek.com].

      Despite setting air quality standards independently of Trump, most of the bad air quality violations were in California [nytimes.com] (there's a map in the middle of that article). Whatever the reason for the uptick, it's unlikely to be due to Trump's policies. If it were, you'd have expected the air quality v
      • Maybe California needs to reconsider their policies on natural gas vehicles and nuclear power plants.

        If anyone goes looking for them on YouTube they will find 30 year old recordings of California Democrats talking about the benefits of natural gas and nuclear power. Just look how times have changed.

        What they do is fine by me. Facts don't care about your feelings. The Democrats will warm up again to natural gas and nuclear power. It's that, the lights going out, or more pollution. Take your pick. I kno

  • Precision! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Sunday June 23, 2019 @08:18AM (#58808176)

    "Air quality is affected by a complex mix of factors, both natural and man-made. "

    Orange-man-made to be precise.

  • Trump is slipping (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday June 23, 2019 @08:34AM (#58808222)

    His team must have overlooked the people that produce this data. Otherwise they would have been fired and replaced with people that will lie for Trump, no matter how many people that kills.

    • he's moving large numbers of Gov't oversight jobs to the deep south. It's surprisingly hard for even a president to do a mass firing for the purposes of stacking the deck with toadies. There's a ton of rules about firing public workers and they have a strong Union. So he just moves the work to where he know they can't/won't move. It's actually a pretty common practice in business when you want to shed a lot of employees fast without the cost or legal problems of outright firing them.
      • he's moving large numbers of Gov't oversight jobs to the deep south

        Cite?

        (Not arguing, but I'd like to see a source for the assertion.)

        • He's talking about the move of NIFA and ERS to Kansas City (not the deep south).

          ERS has been especially embarrassing for this admin, given the negative impact of the trade war. Economists have been quitting left and right since there move was announced, and analysis is already showing the move will cost a lot more money than it saved.

    • Not replaced. Trump seems to have found it easiest to just shut down their programs and destroy all of the data.

      I guess it would be bad for his routine claims of omniscience if he had any need for science or history.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Ah, yes. He is a "stable" "genius" after all. One that has trouble reading, but I guess from his perspective his statements all make sense.

    • I don't like you, you don't like me, that's blindingly obvious, but on this subject, we agree.
      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Isn't is nice how statements made based on facts have no connection to whether the people making them and recognizing them like each other?

        Incidentally, I currently have marked you as "friend", an that basically means "is at least worth disagreeing with".

    • His team must have overlooked the people that produce this data. Otherwise they would have been fired and replaced with people that will lie for Trump, no matter how many people that kills.

      Why? You only get fired if you advocate for something he doesn't like (action against climate change) or tell him something he doesn't want to hear (your poll numbers are terrible).

      But he doesn't really care about air quality, nor does his base, so they're more or less free to report.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        But he doesn't really care about air quality, nor does his base, so they're more or less free to report.

        You may have a point. After all, incapability to understand and look after their own affairs is a characteristic of his voter base.

  • 15% more means what exactly? If there were 6 days last year and this year there were 7, that's a 15% increase in the number of days or a 0.3% increase annually.

    It could be a statistical anomaly, well within the margins of error or it could be very impactful.

    Also, how does this compare with population growth (including the unofficial mass migrations which haven't been quantified) and what are the correlations. Per capita it seems like this has been a negative trend so it could really be a 125% decrease compa

    • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

      15% more means what exactly? If there were 6 days last year and this year there were 7, that's a 15% increase in the number of days or a 0.3% increase annually.

      It's like you can't even be bothered to read the article in a quest to be wrong

      "Five hundred and thirty-two American metro areas reported a total of 4,134 days in 2018 when the official air quality index passed 100, which means it is unhealthy for people with heart and lung disease, the elderly and the very young. Thatâ(TM)s about 15% more bad a

  • The rules will change after the Orange Menace is gone. Air quality in my area is much better than it was in the 1950's and 60's. When I was young my family drove from San Diego to Los Angeles and my eyes burned and there was visible smog.
  • by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer@@@earthlink...net> on Sunday June 23, 2019 @11:48AM (#58809056)

    What's this feeling I'm having? I think it's "schadenfreude".

    We had a POTUS that tried to make legislation by executive order. The Democrats cheered because it was their guy signing the orders. Then another POTUS comes in and removes those legislative orders. Now the Democrats are all upset, complaining on how "he can't do that!"

    He can do that. He did do that. And if you wanted him to not do that then you should have kicked your Democrat senator's ass for not making this a law when Democrats held both houses of Congress and the White House.

    You can take your leftist tears and go to hell. Consider this a civics lesson. If you want to your policies last beyond the next election then next time do it the right way and put it into law.

    Had the Paris Accords been ratified by the Senate then that "bad orange man" could not have withdrawn the USA from it. Had the new EPA standards been made law by Congress then they'd likely still be in effect. Had the Democrats allowed for more fracking for natural gas then we'd see coal be priced out of existence.

    I blame the Democrats for this. Had they set up a lasting energy policy when they had the chance then President Trump could not be tearing it apart with his phone and a pen.

    • what there not saying to as always make someone look bad is its not the usa increasing in pollution its Asian countries garbage drifting over hear,
    • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 23, 2019 @01:08PM (#58809432)

      I blame the Democrats for this. Had they set up a lasting energy policy when they had the chance then President Trump could not be tearing it apart with his phone and a pen.

      Of course you're wrong in lots of ways: Both GWB and DJT used executive power much more aggressively, and weren't dealing with a congress whose express goal was to make them one-term presidents. But executive agencies exist because congress members do not have the expertise to regulate food and drugs, or the environment, or the use of radio spectra. So they delegate that regulation to the executive with a guiding principle and the assumption that the law as written will be faithfully executed by the agency.

      Trump's appointees are too busy enriching themselves and hippy-punching to faithfully execute the law, . With the environmental rollbacks, judges have repeatedly found that the governmental action fails to satisfy the Chevron Doctrine, which holds that agency action is lawful as long as it isn't "arbitrary or capricious."

      Our federal system gives Wyoming as many senators as California. Put simply, the Paris accords will never pass while the Republican Party makes climate denial an article of faith. So I get it, you blame Democrats for not Green-Lanterning the government into sanity. This is one of many positions you should reassess.

    • Thank you for your opinion, Mr. Putin.

      When Trump has finished sucking your Kokov, do you think he will want to have a go at Kim Jung Un's little lemon lollipop?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, fuck those lefty commie bastards using executive privilege to get round an obstructionist congress and trying to make life better for you and everyone else! A fascist bastard using executive privilege to make your life and everyone else's life worse will sure show them the error of their ways!

      Executive orders are not a good way to run a country, but cheerleading their abuse because it highlights a "civics lesson" isn't very civic minded of you. Maybe if you spent more time helping your fellow man than

      • Executive orders are not a good way to run a country, but cheerleading their abuse because it highlights a "civics lesson" isn't very civic minded of you.

        Cheerleading? I'm not liking Trump's executive orders either. If Congress was doing their jobs then we wouldn't have this problem. Instead they just handed it off to the executive, only to complain when the executive didn't do things "correctly". If they didn't want the executive to take this option then they should not given that option in the law.

        Maybe we'll see both the Democrats and the Republicans fix this the right way. That fix includes not letting the executive write laws.

  • We will not replace all fossil fuels any time soon. Not by 2030. Not by 2050. Probably not by 2100 or even 2120. We know this because some very smart people looked at the numbers.

    https://business.financialpost... [financialpost.com]

    University of Colorado scientist Roger Pielke Jr. did some of the rough numbers. âoeThere are 11,161 days until 2050. Getting to net zero by 2050 requires replacing one mtoe of fossil fuel consumption every day starting now.â On a global basis, such a transition would require building the equivalent of one new 1.5-gigawatt nuclear plant every day for the next 30 years.

    If not nuclear, then maybe solar? According to a U.S. government site, it takes about three million solar panels to produce one gigawatt of energy, which means that by 2050 the world will need 3,000,000 X 11,865 solar panels to offset fossil fuels. The wind alternative would require about 430 new wind turbines each of the 11,865 days leading to 2050.

    I've heard people say we need to address the problem of global warming like we did with the Manhattan Project, or the Apollo Program. So far we've been about as effective in solving this problem as the "nuclear boy scout" in trying to make a nuclear power plant in his parent's garage.

    First we

  • Two years ago is about when China stopped accepting most recycling, and a lot of the "recycled" waste was redirected to being burnt in waste-to-energy facilities. Could that be a factor in increased air pollution?

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