Environment Harvard

Volume 6, Issue 1 Environment @Harvard Harvard University Center for the Environment www.environment.harvard.edu Air Pollution’s Invisible Toll Two decades later, pivotal Harvard School of Public Health Six Cities Study key in fight for clean air By Alvin Powell ears before Janice Nolen began keep- State of the Air report, has Ying tabs on the nation’s air quality followed the far-reaching ef- for the American Lung Association, her fects of the Harvard Six Cities mother used to tell her about air pollution Study, including a new suite of in her native Nashville that was so bad U.S. air pollution regulations that people brought an extra shirt to work that has seen the nation’s air so they’d have a clean one to change into. grow cleaner, political contro- By 1993, those days seemed to be in the versy over those regulations past. The major amendments to the U.S. that continues today, and a Clean Air Act that passed in 1970 had new generation of studies in- been at work for decades, and the air was vestigating avenues opened by visibly cleaner. So it was a shock to Nolen Six Cities’ findings. —today the Lung Association’s assistant “It’s a landmark, no ques- vice president of national policy and ad- tion about it,” Nolen said of vocacy—when Harvard School of Public the Harvard study. “[It has] Health researchers highlighted still deadly just absolutely been funda- air pollution in the small city of Harri- mental to the work we’ve been OTO SERVICES SERVICES OTO man, Tennessee that was taking years from doing over the last 20 years H people’s lives. to reduce particle pollution “It was not one of those places you’d across the country…Because P HARVARD think of as having a pollution problem,” of this work showing an asso- HSPH Professor Douglas Dockery, pictured taking air Nolen said. Nolen, who joined the Lung ciation, it was easier to convince people pollution measurements in South Boston in 1999, Association the year after the study was that this wasn’t just an arbitrary health joined the Six Cities Study in the 1970s as a graduate published and who authors its annual effect, it was lives lost.” student and later became its principal investigator. 20 Environmental Fellows IN THIS ISSUE Four new environmental scholars join HUCE The Six Cities Study documented the Six Cities Study Leaves Clean Air Legacy for two years of research with Harvard faculty. health effects of air pollution over nearly Harvard research into deadly effects of air two decades in Harriman; St. Louis, Mis- pollution continues to make an impact two 21 New Secondary Field for Undergrads souri; Watertown, Massachusetts; Steu- decades later. Starting this fall, students will have a new way benville, Ohio; Portage, Wisconsin; and to be engaged in environmental issues. Topeka, Kansas. It broke new ground by 12 China 2035 Lecture Series highlighting for the first time the danger Harvard faculty assess China’s energy, 22 Climate Change Beyond 400 ppm from the smallest particles, no bigger than economic, and environmental challenges. HUCE event marks an alarming CO2 milestone. Harvard University Center for the Environment 1 As industrialization took hold in the early 20th century, factories–including this wire mill in Donora, PA–churned harmful pollutants into the air. In 1948, an atmospheric inversion in Donora trapped the emissions, killing 20 residents and causing respiratory issues in countless more. shrugged at their ailments, believing their sniffles were the cost of progress. It soon became apparent, however, that progress’ price wasn’t just ill health, but potentially life itself. In 1948, an atmospheric inversion over the industrial town of Donora, Pennsylvania trapped emissions from steel and zinc smelters over the town for days. Twenty people died and some 6,000—nearly half the ONGRESS C population—had severe respiratory prob- lems, including chest pains and shortness LIBRARY OF LIBRARY of breath. A few years later, in 1952, a Decem- 2.5 microns in diameter—one fourth lem and the biggest effect to be on the ber fog settled over London, the still air the size in the air pollution standards at lungs,” Dockery continued. “It has be- brewing toxic emissions into a deadly the time. It linked pollution from those come apparent that the lungs and heart stew, causing the worst air pollution di- particles not only to ill health, as other are so intimately connected that if air saster on record. Some 4,000 deaths were studies had before, but directly to deaths, pollution is straining the lungs, it puts a immediately attributed to the episode which were 26 percent higher in the strain on the heart also. The most impor- and its aftermath. A 2004 analysis exam- most polluted city—Steubenville—than tant effects we see are cardiovascular.” ined excess deaths later that winter and in the least. put the number several times higher, at The nature of those deaths was a sur- From killer smoke to concerted action about 12,000. prise as well. The biggest cause was not Six Cities got its start in 1974, four Even as public concern was mount- respiratory disease, as seemed logical, years after the Clean Air Act of 1970 ing over industrial pollution in the East, but rather stroke, heart attack, and other and at a time when public pressure was another problem arose in the clear skies coronary conditions. building and action was already begin- of Los Angeles. Though little coal was Perhaps most important for federal ning to clean up skies over the U.S. burned in L.A., residents were periodi- regulatory officials, Six Cities also That pressure resulted from a shift in cally afflicted by an eye-burning haze, illustrated that some 23 years after the the public’s attitude toward air pollu- first noticed in 1943. Investigations modern regulatory scheme was adopted tion and economic development. But in found a new kind of pollution, ozone, in the Clean Air Act amendments of the early decades of the 20th century, a which was not emitted directly from 1970, air pollution was still killing thou- different kind of pressure was on: to in- smokestacks, but instead was produced sands of Americans annually. novate and modernize. Ever bigger fac- in the atmosphere by the reaction of auto “We were surprised by this very strong tories churned out new products result- exhaust, industrial emissions, and sun- unexpected effect on mortality,” said Douglas Dockery, chair of the Harvard “[The Six Cities Study] is a landmark, no question School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental Health. Dockery, a fac- about it...Because of this work, it was easier to con- ulty associate of the Harvard University vince people that [particle pollution] wasn’t just an Center for the Environment (HUCE), joined Six Cities as a graduate student in arbitrary health effect—it was lives lost.” the 1970s and later became the study’s principal investigator. “There’d been lots ing from wave after wave of innovation. shine, trapped and simmering in the Los of papers on respiratory illness and asth- New cars packed the roads, adding their Angeles basin. ma and chronic obstructive pulmonary own emissions to the air. Radios and Frank Speizer, professor of environ- disease and lung function and so forth, televisions, washing machines, and a mental science at the Harvard School of but it was the mortality paper that got dizzying array of goods were demanded Public Health, Kass distinguished pro- the most attention and really galvanized by the burgeoning consumer society. fessor of medicine at Harvard Medical the political debate. The fumes that poured from smoke- School (HMS), and principal investiga- “When you think about the routes of stacks, darkening the skies, made people tor of the Six Cities Study, worked on exposure, you expect a respiratory prob- cough and wheeze, but many just early air pollution studies in the 1950s 2 Volume 6, Issue 1 Letter from the Director Dear Friends: The health impacts of Chinese air pollution are best understood in the context of classic work in environmental epidemiology that After a long, cold winter in the Northeast, spring has finally ar- was done here at Harvard over the last many decades. This is the rived. In the midst of the glorious flowers and our lush, green subject of our other feature, focusing on the legacy of the Harvard campus, it is easy to think only of our local climate, forgetting Six Cities study, and the continuing work at Harvard on air pollu- about what is happening far away, such as the drought and heat tion and health impacts around the world. wave in California. But when we look globally, the progress of cli- Here at the Center, we are continuing to work to connect the mate change is hard to ignore. different parts of this remarkable university, encouraging fresh Just a few weeks ago, Ralph Keeling from the Scripps Institution ideas and new approaches. More importantly, we are working to of Oceanography returned to Harvard (where he completed his provide our students from all of Harvard’s many Schools and pro- Ph.D. under the supervision of Jim Anderson) to announce that grams with access to the frontier of knowledge, involving them the amount of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa, Hawaii remained in debates, above 400 parts per million for the entire month of April 2014, the discussions, first time this has occurred in all of human history. Of course, 400 and dialogues. ppm is an arbitrary threshold; atmospheric CO2 will continue to This spring, we rise for at least the next 50 years, and probably much longer as we announced continue to burn fossil fuels.

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