Air Pollution Risks

Seminar in Risk Communication
Communications 553, Fall 1997
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Glynn R. Wilson

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Copyright 1997 Glynn R. Wilson. All rights reserved.

Last updated December 8, 1997

Evaluation of information available in conventional news media

Reporting on Pollution: The History

Public questions about the quality of the air we breath in this industrial era go back to the English poets and philosophers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Newspapers of the time also talked about the noxious smoke and smog from the factories of Europe and early America. Journalist and commentator Walter Lippmann (1922) was perhaps the first to recognize and criticize how the mass media help to perpetuate the "stereotype of progress" and in the process create a culture potentially destructive of the environment. In an unquenchable desire to dominate, conquer, and control nature, he said, humanity has "expanded industry furiously at reckless cost (to) natural resources . . . The habit of thinking about progress as 'development' has meant that many aspects of the environment were simply neglected." While Lippmann has been quoted extensively on a number of subjects and in a variety of formats, this warning issued in Public Opinion has gone largely ignored. He wrote:

There comes a time when the blind spots come from the edge of vision into the center. Then unless there are critics who have the courage to sound an alarm, and leaders capable of understanding the change, and people tolerant by habit, the stereotype (of progress), instead of economizing effort . . . may frustrate effort and waste men's energy by blinding them. (p. 108)

Beginning in the 1960s, the environment went mainstream when the New York Times and a few other news organizations began covering it as a beat (Wilson, 1995).

The Clean Air Act of 1970 was the first major piece of legislation passed by the Nixon administration during the heyday for environmental activism. Coverage in the news media was largely positive, in part because of the bipartisan nature of the debate, and due to public support from business leaders such as Henry Ford III.

According to examples provided by Singer and Endreny (1993), backed up with agenda-setting theory, public knowledge about risks, and attitudes about hazards, are "influenced by press coverage" (p. 3). But the media also reflect public and interest group pressures.

In contemporary society, we believe the media both reflect and influence public perceptions of what constitutes a hazard and how serious the associated risks are. The do this both by selecting certain issues for attention, and by the kind of information they provide about them (p. 10).

The attitude and influence of big business in Washington changed with Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, and his appointment of James Watt as Secretary of the Interior. Amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1990 were largely supported by a Bush administration, however. George Bush came into office on a promise to be the "environmental president." Yet he went back on one major environmental campaign promise, "no net loss of wetlands" (Riechert, 1996). In 1992, Bill Clinton catipulted to the White House along with Al Gore, in part due to support from a preponderance of Americans who support public policy in favor of a clean environment. Environmental attitudes and behavior in the nation's capital changed in 1994, however, when the Republican's took control of both houses of Congress, and the press coverage reflected this trend.

Proposed changes to administrative rules on public health standards under the Clean Air Act in 1996 and 1997 came under fire from the right, and the press covered the drama with some depth.[2].

Yet an analysis of this coverage reveals that the debate on ambient air quality standards reflects coverage based on the traditional news values of timeliness, prominence, releveance, and conflict (Bowles and Borden, 1997, p. 12). And as Singer and Endreny, and other scholars, have pointed out, this coverage relied primarily on sources from the extremes on both sides, which may not mean greater enlightenment for the reader (Singer & Endreny, 1993).

On the contrary, it may simply reinforce the sense of uncertainty and confusion unless readers or viewers are given some guidance about the credibility of the various sources cited by the journalist (p. 135).

The Latest on Smog Sickness

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Schools of Public Health and Medicine have discovered inherited traits that might explain why some people are resistant to the effects of pollution while others are vulnerable, even if they are breathing the same air, according to a story published in the Sunday Los Angeles Times, (March 9, 1997). A person's genetic makeup is fixed at birth and, perhaps more than physical fitness or overall health, could dictate whether we are likely to suffer during bouts of heavy smog.

While environmental factors such as diet, vitamins and lifelong exposure to air pollution are also likely to influence who winds up sensitive, according to Steven Kleeberger, an environmental health scientist who led the Johns Hopkins research, he believes genetics plays a key, often overlooked role.

Still, the link in humans remains questionable. No one knows how many people might fit the genetic background, how strong the tie runs in families, or how big an influence the gene-caused inflammation has on symptoms.

"Almost certainly we think there is a genetic component to people's response to ozone," said Dr. Robert Devlin, EPA's chief of clinical research. "There is good reason to think that's true, but there is not what I would call compelling evidence yet."

Next to the Smoky Mountains, the Los Angeles Basin--with its tons of emissions baked by sunlight, blocked by mountains and trapped near ground by stagnant weather conditions--has the nation's worst concentrations of ozone. Formed when hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides react with the sun's rays, the colorless ozone often mixes with particles and other gases to form the region's notorious whiskey-brown haze.

Reduced lung function--which means people have trouble inhaling deeply--is the most common symptom during exertion on smoggy days. In the long term, ozone exposure seems to age the lungs prematurely. Ozone also might weaken natural defenses against bacteria and viruses, bringing on colds and flu. Breathing it aggravates respiratory diseases such as asthma, but whether long-term exposure causes lung cancer and other chronic disorders is unknown.

Some Olympic cyclists suffered chest pain, shortness of breath and reduced exercise performance when cycling while breathing small amounts of ozone in smog chamber experiments at Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center in Downey. Others had no symptoms at all.

"It was very clear that some of these people, even though they are very fit athletes, were very susceptible to a low concentration of ozone, and they stayed very sensitive," said Dr. Henry Gong, the medical center's chief of environmental health, who heads one of the most experienced teams testing people in smog chambers. "But others were probably genetically gifted," Gong said, "with genes that either protected them from ozone somehow, or the susceptibility genes were gone."

However, as in a study of identical twins in North Carolina, Gong said the differences in the Olympians might not have been genetic, but instead due to antioxidants in their diet such as beta carotene and vitamins C and E, or some other factor. Isolating the smog-sensitive genes is part of a fledgling field called eco-genetics, which seeks to discover how inherited traits influence people's response to pollution. Genes are believed to influence who gets cancer, asthma and many other diseases, so it is reasonable to assume that they play a role in injuries and illnesses linked to the environment.

Perhaps some day a genetic test can identify who is vulnerable to smog. But even if gene therapy works in the future, it doesn't mean that the EPA and local officials will abandon their decades-long, costly efforts to clean the air. In most urban areas, air quality is improving due to regulations targeting cars, factories, consumer products and other sources. Yet EPA this year set a tighter health standard for ozone, which could add billions of dollars to the cost of smog cleanup. The EPA says the current limit, set 20 years ago, fails to safeguard all sensitive people. The agency deems asthmatics and others with respiratory diseases the most susceptible group, and sets its smog standard to protect them, as it is required to do under the Clean Air Act.

As the tools of eco-genetics improve, science may be able to help officials understand more fully who is at risk among the 70 million Americans who are breathing levels of ozone considered unhealthful, according to the L.A. Times.

Reactions to ozone in smog can be vastly different, and evidence is emerging that genetic factors may play a key role. Here are some research results related to breathing various amounts of ozone. For comparison, the Los Angeles Basin surpassed the current health standard of 0.12 parts per million on 87 days last year.

Health Effects from Smog:

Research

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