Research Hub

Coal-fired power plants release substantial air pollution, which included over 60% of US sulfur dioxide emissions in 2014. Such air pollution may exacerbate asthma, but direct studies of the health impacts linked to power plant air pollution are rare. Here we take advantage of a natural experiment in Louisville, Kentucky, where one coal-fired power plant was retired and converted to natural gas, and three others installed SO2 emission control systems between 2013 and 2016. Dispersion modelling indicated that exposure to SO2 emissions from these power plants decreased after the energy transitions. We used several analysis strategies, which include difference-in-differences, first-difference and interrupted time-series modelling to show that the emissions control installations and plant retirements are associated with a reduced asthma disease burden related to hospitalizations and emergency room visits at the ZIP-code level, and to individual-level medication use as measured by digital medication sensors.

Published Apr 13, 2020

Casey, J. A., Su, J. G., Henneman, L. R. F., Zigler, C., Neophytou, A. M., Catalano, R., Gondalia, R., Chen, Y. T., Kaye, L., Moyer, S. S., Combs, V., Simrall, G., Smith, T., Sublett, J., & Barrett, M. A. (2020). Improved asthma outcomes observed in the vicinity of coal power plant retirement, retrofit and conversion to natural gas. Nature Energy, 5(5), 398–408. https://doi.org/10.1038/S41560-020-0600-2;SUBJMETA

On December 22, 2008, more than a billion gallons of highly toxic coal ash burst from an impoundment and spilled into the Emory River channel in Kingston, Tennessee, covering approximately 300 acres. A by-product of coal-fired power plants, coal ash contains pollutants such as arsenic, mercury, and lead, and its particles can travel deep into lungs. More than 10 years after the Kingston spill, workers who cleaned up the coal ash at the Kingston site are still suffering the after-effects of exposure, including brain cancer, lung cancer, and leukemia, and are pressing their claims in court. (See Joel K. Borune, Coal’s Other Dark Side: Toxic Ash that Can Poison Water and People, National Geographic (Feb. 29, 2019)) The impacts of this spill, however, stretch far beyond the town and those involved in the cleanup efforts, affecting the lives of hundreds of people across state lines in Uniontown, Alabama, a low-income, predominantly African American community. Ultimately, the fate of this coal ash would demonstrate the failure of environmental and civil rights laws to protect vulnerable communities.

Published Apr 13, 2020

Marianne Engelman-Lado, Camila Bustos, Haley Leslie-Bole, P. L. (2020). Environmental Injustice in Uniontown, Alabama, Decades after the Civil Rights Act of 1964: It’s Time For Action. American Bar Association Human Righst Magazine. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/vol--44--no-2--housing/environmental-injustice-in-uniontown--alabama--decades-after-the/

To investigate potential changes in burdens from coal-fired electricity-generating units (EGUcfs) that emit fine particulate matter (PM2.5, defined as matter with a nominal mean aerodynamic diameter of ≤ 2.5 µm) among racial/ethnic and economic groups after reduction of operations in 92 US EGUcfs.

Published Apr 8, 2020

Jennifer Richmond-Bryant, Ihab Mikati, Adam F. Benson, Thomas J. Luben, and Jason D. Sacks, 2020: Disparities in Distribution of Particulate Matter Emissions from US Coal-Fired Power Plants by Race and Poverty Status After Accounting for Reductions in Operations Between 2015 and 2017. American Journal of Public Health 110, 655_661, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305558

The increasing intensity, duration, and frequency of heat waves due to human-caused climate change puts historically underserved populations in a heightened state of precarity, as studies observe that vulnerable communities—especially those within urban areas in the United States—are disproportionately exposed to extreme heat. Lacking, however, are insights into fundamental questions about the role of historical housing policies in cauterizing current exposure to climate inequities like intra-urban heat. Here, we explore the relationship between “redlining”, or the historical practice of refusing home loans or insurance to whole neighborhoods based on a racially motivated perception of safety for investment, with present-day summertime intra-urban land surface temperature anomalies. Through a spatial analysis of 108 urban areas in the United States, we ask two questions: (1) how do historically redlined neighborhoods relate to current patterns of intra-urban heat? and (2) do these patterns vary by US Census Bureau region? Our results reveal that 94% of studied areas display consistent city-scale patterns of elevated land surface temperatures in formerly redlined areas relative to their non-redlined neighbors by as much as 7 °C. Regionally, Southeast and Western cities display the greatest differences while Midwest cities display the least. Nationally, land surface temperatures in redlined areas are approximately 2.6 °C warmer than in non-redlined areas. While these trends are partly attributable to the relative preponderance of impervious land cover to tree canopy in these areas, which we also examine, other factors may also be driving these differences. This study reveals that historical housing policies may, in fact, be directly responsible for disproportionate exposure to current heat events.

Published Jan 13, 2020

Hoffman JS, Shandas V, Pendleton N. The Effects of Historical Housing Policies on Resident Exposure to Intra-Urban Heat: A Study of 108 US Urban Areas. Climate. 2020; 8(1):12. https://doi.org/10.3390/cli8010012

The recent shift in the United States from coal to natural gas as a primary feedstock for the production of electric power has reduced the intensity of sectoral carbon dioxide emissions, but—due to gaps in monitoring—its downstream pollution-related effects have been less well understood. Here, I analyse old units that have been taken offline and new units that have come online to empirically link technology switches to observed aerosol and ozone changes and subsequent impacts on human health, crop yields and regional climate. Between 2005 and 2016 in the continental United States, decommissioning of a coal-fired unit was associated with reduced nearby pollution concentrations and subsequent reductions in mortality and increases in crop yield. In total during this period, the shutdown of coal-fired units saved an estimated 22,563 (5%–95% confidence intervals (CI), 1,697–43,429) lives and 329 million (169–490 million) bushels of corn in their immediate vicinities; these crop estimates increase when pollution transport-related spillovers are included. Changes in primary and secondary aerosol burdens also altered regional atmospheric reflectivity, raising the average top of atmosphere instantaneous radiative forcing by 0.50 W m−2. Although there are considerable benefits of decommissioning older coal-fired units, the newer natural gas and coal-fired units that have supplanted them are not entirely benign.

Published Jan 6, 2020

Burney, J. A. (2020). The downstream air pollution impacts of the transition from coal to natural gas in the United States. Nature Sustainability, 3(2), 152–160. https://doi.org/10.1038/S41893-019-0453-5;SUBJMETA

Dr. Robert Bullard is credited as the “Father of Environmental Justice” for his work in the late 1970s on the siting of toxic facilities and landfills in the American South. He is the author of Dumping in Dixie and is currently a Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University. The Journal of International Affairs
spoke with him about the roots of environmental racism and how governments can address it.

Published Jan 1, 2020

Addressing Environmental Racism. (2020). 73(1), 237–242. https://doi.org/10.2307/26872794

Objective: To assess how environment and race may impact childhood asthma prevalence. Methods: I analyzed data from CDC WONDER (www.wonder.cdc.gov). I performed descriptive statistics on average fine particulate matter for various states, as well as descriptive statistics on childhood asthma prevalence for various states. I determined if there was a correlation between states with higher prevalence of childhood asthma and states with higher levels of fine particulate matter using Pearson correlation. I used ANOVA with post hoc test to determine childhood asthma prevalence based on race/ ethnicity in the various states.

Results: The mean fine particulate matter in the 49 states was 11.653 μg/m³ (standard deviation = 1.559). The state with the lowest level of fine particulate matter was New Mexico with 9.09 μg/m³ and the state with the highest level of fine particulate matter was Indiana with 14.36 μg/m³. The mean asthma prevalence in the 29 states was 8.821% (standard deviation 2.67). The state with the lowest level of asthma prevalence was Minnesota 4.5% and the state with the highest asthma prevalence was Massachusetts with 15.8%. There is no correlation between the 27 states as it relates to asthma prevalence and fine particulate matter level. The correlation strength was 0.027 and the p value = 0.893. Blacks had the highest asthma prevalence compared to White Non Hispanic (NH), Other NH, and Hispanics and there was a statistically significant difference between blacks and the other races as it relates to asthma prevalence (Figure 1).

Published Jan 1, 2020

McKnight, S. (2020). The Relationship between Asthma, Race & Fine Particulate Matter in the United States. Scholarship in Medicine - All Papers. https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/scholarship_medicine_all/39

As one of the nation’s more populous cities, Denver experiences substantial traffic-related congestion, making its air quality one of the worst in the nation. In 2018, the City and County of Denver conducted a series of anti-idling campaigns to educate Denver school communities on their idling behaviors. Three Denver Public School campuses were selected to undergo three weeks of data collection and behavior change intervention experiments. Volunteers collected data during afternoon school pick-up by recording how many vehicles idled. After a week of baseline data collection, Denver introduced different idling reduction methods, first by placing anti-idling signs in pick-up lanes and then by sending home anti-idling pledges to parents through their child’s take-home folders. As a result, the school sites noticed a reduction in vehicle idling and idling duration from the first week of the study to the last. The results of this study support additional research planned by the City to measure the reduction in fine particulate matter due to behavioral interventions at schools.

Published Dec 9, 2019

Burgess, A. (n.d.). Limiting Exposure to Traffic-Related Air Pollution Near Denver Public Schools Through Anti-Idling Campaigns. North Carolina State University Libraries. Retrieved March 24, 2020, from https://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/handle/1840.20/37205

We estimate the causal effects of acute fine particulate matter exposure on mortality, health care use, and medical costs among the US elderly using Medicare data. We instrument for air pollution using changes in local wind direction and develop a new approach that uses machine learning to estimate the life-years lost due to pollution exposure. Finally, we characterize treatment effect heterogeneity using both life expectancy and generic machine learning inference. Both approaches find that mortality effects are concentrated in about 25 percent of the elderly population.

Published Dec 1, 2019

Deryugina, T., Heutel, G., Miller, N. H., Molitor, D., & Reif, J. (2019). The mortality and medical costs of air pollution: Evidence from changes in wind direction. American Economic Review, 109(12), 4178–4219. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20180279

You would be hard‐pressed in 2019 not to be aware of the worldwide social movement and protests relating to climate change. In September this year, millions of school children and adults around the world took to the street demanding urgent action in response to escalating concerns relating to the environment. Furthermore, the United Nations Climate Summit in New York described climate change as the defining issue of our time and the Australian Medical Association recently declared climate change as a health emergency following the lead of many international medical bodies. Clearly, our climate is changing; we are experiencing weather events that are more frequent and intense, and last longer (Jackman et al. 2018). As a result, all health professionals have an important role to play in this regard in the future.

Published Nov 14, 2019

Usher, K., Durkin, J., & Bhullar, N. (2019). Eco‐anxiety: How thinking about climate change‐related environmental decline is affecting our mental health. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 28(6), 1233–1234. https://doi.org/10.1111/inm.12673