Glynn R. Wilson

Air Pollution Risks

Seminar in Risk Communication
Communications 553, Fall 1997

Glynn R. Wilson

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Copyright 1997 Glynn R. Wilson. All rights reserved.

Last updated December 8, 1997

Problem Definition

Smog in Ole Smoky

Take a look up in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park on a bad pollution day, especially during hot summer months. You can see smog vividly. It obscurs the mountains in the background. We know some animals and plants are adversely affected by it. But is it a harmful environmental health risk for humans? Where do the air pollutants originate? What are they made of, their chemestry? What are the prospects and potential solutions for reducing smog levels nationwide and in East Tennessee? What are prevailing public sentiments about air pollution? Does the public understand the key issues related to air quality, mired as they are in the technological jargon of scientists, who don't agree, and communicated by journalists, who are not scientists?

These questions provide the focus for this study. If the chronic and long-term problems associated with air pollution risks are to be addressed in an informed way by the press, the public, government, and industry, it seems important for communications specialists to understand the issues involved. Specialists who should benefit by this discussion include the more theoretical academic in communications and sociological circles, to the practicle journalist and public relations practitioner.

Flora and fauna effects will not be discussed at length in this paper, which primarily focuses on air pollution as a human health risk issue. Societal concerns are considered strongly, such as communicating in the vacuum between economic and environmental pressures. But it's worth mentioning at the outset that studies show health effects from air pollution on tall milkweed, a food source for many insects, sassafras trees, and black cherry, a food source for Black Bear. Yellow poplar are also being lost, and scientists worry that white pines are suffering, although studies at this point are inconclusive. At least 90 species of plants show some damage.

The Air Pollution Problem

Jim Renfro, air resources specialist and an expert in biological processes for the National Park Service, co-author on several studies of air quality in Knoxville and the Smokies, sees smog every day on this job. He measures and studies it. A critical issue for him comes straight from public opinion surveys completed by park visitors each year. A majority of people say they come mainly for the scenery, to get away and spend time in nature. In the case of the Smokies, and other national parks, it is a nature marred by the presence of industrial pollution.

They come by the car, truck, van, RV, and bus load, and some notice when it's hazy, and wonder if this is how the Smokies got their name. For the record, the haze is not why the Smokies are called the Great Smoky Mountains. The Cherokee Indians called this "the land of blue mist," which was due to the "ethereal blue mist that once surrounded the mountains like a transparent veil," writes John Nolt (1997), a philosophy professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and author of a book on pullution problems in East Tennessee.

The original blue mist consisted of water vapor and organic compounds released by trees.

"Today, most often in the summer months, the 'smoke' of the Smokies is supplanted by white, brown, or grey haze," Nolt says. This haze consists of smoke, sulfate particles from the burning of coal at power plants, "and the more noxious volatile organic compounds that billow from the exhaust pipes of the millions of cars and trucks moving ceaselessly through the lands below" (p. 22).

Pollution problems in the national park come in three forms: visibility, ozone, and acid deposition.

  • Acid rain was addressed in the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act and is on the way down, although its effects will be with us well into the next century.

  • The visibility problem is getting worse and probably won't get much better anytime soon, no matter what happens in Washington. It used to be, in the 1940s, that on an average day in the Smokies, you could see for 90 miles. In five decades that has gone down 80 percent, to an average of 22 miles and only 12 in the summer. When the haze is at its thickest a mountain peak a mile away can be nearly invisible.

  • The ambient air quality rules promulgated by EPA and the Clinton Administration this summer, to be implemented over the next few years, mainly concern ozone and particulates, major contributors to the visibility problem. Yet even if the new standards are met by the deadlines set, 2004 and 2007, they will not completely solve either problem, experts say.

    • Regulatory History, 1970-1997

    The latest proposed changes to the Clean Air Act, passed in 1970 and updated in 1990, were adopted this summer primarily as a result of a lawsuity filed by the American Lung Association in Arizona. The ALA claimed the Reagan and Bush administrations were not doing air quality reviews required by the law, and a federal judge agreed. He ordered the EPA to conduct the required review and issue new standards. Studies cited in the review show an apparent link between high levels of ozone and particulates in the air, and emergency room admissions for asthma symptoms.

    The report was embraced by EPA chief Carol Browner under the "environmentally friendly" administration of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. The EPA issued its proposal last fall, setting off a firestorm of opposition from industry, cities, and pro-business politicians in state houses and Congress.

    The thrust of the new rules set more stringent standards for permissible levels of fine particulates and ozone. Not stratospheric ozone, which forms a shield against the sun's radiation, but the tropospheric ozone, the kind that chokes the life out of plants, animals, and people when it concentrates in levels considered dangerous, primarily in cities and mountains during the summer. The Clean Air Act received bipartisan support in 1970, but came under attack in 1990 from the corporate community and Republicans in congress.

    Competing Costs

    The argument had to do with competing costs. Those in the manufacturing industry and local governments talked about costs such as taxes, higher power bills, and the loss of jobs and economic development. Doctors, environmentalists, and health advocates, focused on the price of pollution in terms of health care costs, work loss, special care services, anxiety about the future, quality of life, and early mortality, as well as other costs to society (such as restricted leisure, pain, and suffering, which is where the lawyers come in).

    Respiratory Relief

    To understand why the new standards were passed, consider what smog does to people with asthma and other resperatory problems. Ozone and fine particulates, primarily from coal-fired power plants, and automobiles, reduce lung capacity in humans, and can exacerbate asthma and severe allergies, according to the American Lung Association and other health and environmental groups. Studies show that young children, the elderly, and those with respiratory problems are most at risk from air pollution, although active healthy adults can suffer, especially on the hottest of summer days when ozone levels reach their peak.

    Asthma deaths have doubled in the United States and Tennessee since 1979, and the number of children suffering from asthma has gone up 72 percent since 1982. Studies estimate that as many as 70,000 children and 130,000 adults with asthma live in areas of the state where ozone and particulate levels are considered unsafe. Another 750,000 children, 500,000 seniors, and 218,000 adults with other chronic lung disorders run a significant risk of lung damage because of high air pollution levels, according to studies cited by the American Lung Association.

    People with respiratory problems would have trouble breathing on a hazy day in the Smokies, especially in the high elevation areas, or a bad pollution day in cities. In one of America's most cherished and visited national parks, the dangerous kind of ozone is relentless. Cooler air carries it out of Knoxville at night while nitrous oxide eats it out of the air. Yet the highest points in the mountains suffer year round, day and night. Studies show the primary pollutants present in the East Tennessee/Western North Carolina area are nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, which contribute to the fine particulates regulated in the new ambient air quality standards, and combine with ozone to create smog. While some nitrogen oxides occur naturally in the environment, numerous studies show they can be toxic to humans and biota and also perturb the chemistry of the global atmosphere.

    Where NOx emissions come from:

  • 45 percent from cars and trucks, from internal combustion engines;
  • 35 percent from power plants;
  • 25 percent from industry, primarily boilers.

    • Eighty-two percent of the sulfur dioxide, the most prevalent and harmful of air pollutants, is produced from burning fossil fuels. Of that,

  • Electric utilities are responsible for 39 percent locally, mostly TVA plants in Bull Run and Kingston;
  • Automobiles account for 33 percent;
  • Industry accounts for 13 percent. According to studies, the worst local industrial polluters are Lenzing Fibers in Lowland, Eastman in Kingsport, and Champion in Canton, North Carolina.
  • Another 12 percent comes from off-road vehicles and small motors, including planes, trains, boats, lawnmowers, chain saws, weed-eaters, leaf blowers, which are largely unregulated.

    • The levels of human-made pollutants have declined 60 percent overall for the past 50 years, yet sulfur dioxide levels have gone up. By the peak year for all air pollution in 1970, 2.2 million tons of sulfur made its way into the air in the U.S., up from 400,000 tons in the late 1940s. In the Southeast, the level today is about 10 million tons a year from all sources and is especially troublesome to humans, animals, and plants in the summer, when the highest pollution levels of the year coincide with bad weather conditions. Humidity, heat, and sunlight combine to create a chemical reaction, transforming sulfur dioxide into sulfates. The summer average sulfate concentration in the park is now 42 times higher than natural levels.

    Public Concern for Clean Air

    Public concern for the environment in the United States became a major issue in the 1960s and early 1970s, some say as a partial result of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" (1962). Gallup was the first national survey research organization to pick up significant numbers on concern for the natural environment, including clean air (Gallup, 1970) Four percent of the American public sampled by Gallup named the environment, including air pollution, as the number one problem facing the country on an open ended question. The number jumped to 5 percent in 1972. Extrapolating to the entire population, this represents about 2 million people who said the environment represented more of a problem than the war, the economy, education, crime, or anything else at the time. Knowing what we know today about the agenda-setting role of the mass media, and how to analyze media coverage, this number is not surprising (McCombs and Shaw, 1972, 1992). The Clean Air Act passed Congress in 1970 at the behest of Republican President Richard Nixon, in a rare bipartisan effort. It was one of the big media stories of the year, along with the Vietnam War (check AP top 10?).

    As the energy crisis gripped the nation in 1974, the shortage of oil and the price of gas became the issue, and the environment plummeted from the list. It did not make it's way back again until 1988, and peaked with 8 percent in 1990. With the U.S. population now at 260 million, this represents almost 25 million people, plus or minus 3 percent.

    The most important problem question is the best long-term predictor provided in survey research today, although it's not without its critics. To buttress the obvious fact that the American public now shows high levels of concern for the environment, Gallup again provides the data (1991). On the twenty-first anniversary of Earth Day, and in the midst of a recession, most Americans said they were concerned about environmental threats to the planet, and that they were taking active steps to conserve resources. Seven in ten (71 percent, plus or minus 3 percent) said they favored protecting the environment, including the air, even at the risk of curbing economic growth. Seventy-eight percent considered themselves "environmentalists" (p. 6). People in the eastern part of the country were more concerned than the South, with the West in the middle. Folks over 50 were more concerned than the young. Women were more concerned than men, although not significantly.

    The number dropped to 3 percent in 1992, 2 percent in 1994, then leveled out at 3 percent again in 1996 (Gallup, 1996). [1]

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