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Re: Emissions Cuts Save Lives, New Study Says
In a message dated 8/17/01 1:16:48 PM Mountain Daylight Time, loc@ICX.NET
writes:
The researchers examined health effects of reducing greenhouse gas
emissions in New York City; Mexico City; Santiago, Chile; and Sao Paulo,
Brazil. They found that using readily available technologies to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions would also cut emissions of pollutants, because
both are released when fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas
are burned. Those reductions would prevent 64,000 premature deaths,
65,000 cases of chronic bronchitis and 37 million person-days of
restricted activity in just those four cities over the next 19 years,
the report said. A "person-day" refers to one day of activity for one
person.
The air in New York is generally cleaner than in the other three cities,
said George Thurston, a co- author of the paper and an associate
professor of environmental medicine at New York University School of
Medicine. However, the city's pollution is proportionally more toxic, he
said, because it contains a greater proportion of smaller pollutants,
which
tend to cause more health damage.
I really will have to read the SCIENCE article, but on its face this makes no
sense at all. it sounds like another application of a linear non-threshold
theory to pollutants with known thresholds. and is uncomfortably reminiscent
of Biwer and Butler RISK ANALYSIS 1999 which correlates deaths with
particulate emissions raised by vehicle traffic (including road dust). If
one believes that article, a person driving 10,000 miles a year mostly in
urban areas will produce 0.002 latent cancers each year. Or, multiplying
this by the number of cars on the road, we have a few thousand latent cancer
fatalities each year JUST from exposure to road dust and particulate car
exhaust.
Any way, I probably shouldn't comment before reading SCIENCE, but...
Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.
ruthweiner@aol.com