Answers to (some of) Your Questions

Thanks for writing in to our State of the Air website. As has happened every year, we’ve managed to make some people very unhappy about how we characterized the air in their community (we hear you, Pittsburgh!) and left others wondering about our data—or lack of data—in their community. I’ll try to answer some of the early ones and respond to the Pittsburgh questions tomorrow.

Is there proof that air pollution can cause diseases?
This came from a long question about Pittsburgh (which I promise to respond to in a separate posting). Well, the American Lung Association shares the questioner’s concern about claims that specific things cause specific diseases.  We are very careful when we draw conclusions about causation, as are most scientists. Researchers are still studying the question of causation for various diseases and air pollution, including asthma, lung cancer, and heart diseases. However, just because the jury is still out on whether air pollution causes a specific disease doesn’t mean that we aren’t sure that these pollutants can cause serious harm and even premature death. For a longer discussion and citations of the evidence, see our fact sheets on ozone and particle pollution or our longer discussion of the health effects of these pollutants in the full report.

Why is there no grade in Sublette County, WY despite having ozone monitors since 2005?
Our report analyzes data for counties that have three full years of completed data during 2004-2006. Since the ozone monitors were installed in Sublette County in 2005, there were only data for 2 years, so we didn't calculate a grade yet. However, next year, assuming all goes well with the monitors, we’ll have a grade for you because we’ll cover 2005-2007. We don’t include 2007 in this year’s report because the states and EPA have until July 1, 2008 to quality check the data and we only use data that have completed that process.

What’s the air in Northern Essex County in MA really like, since we get an F and ten miles away Rockingham gets a B? 
Both counties are part of the Boston-Worchester-Manchester, MA-RI-NH metropolitan area, which ranked 38th in our most polluted cities list.  The monitors in Essex County show that this Boston suburban area has too many days of unhealthy levels of ozone. The monitors are in both the north and southern parts of the county, so your northern section shares in the F grade for the county.  However, the ozone formed by sources in the big cities doesn’t just show up in the urban areas.  Because of the chemistry and the wind, often the highest readings show up in monitors in the suburban counties. The prevailing wind patterns may then dilute some of the ozone by the time it reaches the monitors in Rockingham, NH. Overall, both counties share in the ozone problems created by the sources in the greater Boston metropolitan area.  People in the entire metropolitan region share in the risk from that pollution as well.

Nickname
Comment
Enter this word:	Change