Re: Deaths from fossil fuel burning air pollution

[Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>]

On Wed, 29 Nov 2000, Jerry Cohen wrote:

> I believe this tells us that those in seriously poor health may be
> "pushed over the brink" a little sooner than might otherwise occurred. 

	--How did these people reach "the brink"? Why do you not think
that air pollution brought them there? Do you not believe that air
pollution weakens peoples cardiopulminary systems and makes people sick?
What does this? Is it only things we eat and not things we inhale? There
are lots of data showing increased hospital admissions and mortality
during air pollution episodes. Studies show decreased function of
pulmonary systems when air is polluted. There is a sizable scientific
community studying these issues -- why do you doubt their findings
without studying their work?

> I don't know how you would judge the significance of all this, but I would
> question whether "pollution" has any significant effect on a healthy
> population.

	--Of course air pollution doesn't kill healthy people suddenly. It
slowly degrades their health until they reach "the brink" and then the
next episode may kill them.
 > 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>
> To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
> Date: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 7:46 AM
> Subject: Re: Deaths from fossil fuel burning air pollution
> 
> 
> >
> >On Tue, 28 Nov 2000, ruth_weiner wrote:
> >>
> >> This type of conversion factor is now being applied to inhaled air
> >> pollutants (and this is in fact an application of the LNT theory), which
> is
> >> quite a stretch, and which I myself do not agree with.
> >>
> >> An air pollutant is defined in a number of laws and regulations as a
> >> substance other than nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, water vapor,
> ozone,
> >> and argon, or a significant quantities of a  substance like CO and some
> >> terpenes that may in very small quantities be constituents of clean air.
> >> Particulate matter is a pollutant whether it comes from a stack, is
> crustal
> >> dust, or comes from a volcanoic eruption.
> >
> > --Here I define air pollution as things emitted from fossil fuel
> >burning, with very fine particulate (<1.5 miicron) serving as a surrogate.
> >How do you explain the fact that there is a statistically robust tendency
> >for areas with high air pollution to have higher mortality rates than
> >areas with low air pollution, after considering other factors that may be
> >relevant? No linear-no threshold assumption is involved; these are
> >straightforward data. Also, how do you explain the fact that in a given
> >city, mortality rates are higher when pollution is higher? Dozens of
> >studies have corroborated these findings.
> >
> >
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