Compared to some cities in the U.S., Boston does not have a bad air pollution problem. But there are issues. Studies of the city have linked air pollution to poor lung function, increased asthma rates, and heart attacks, noted Douglas Dockery, chair of the HSPH Department of Environmental Health, in the fourth talk in the summer series of "Hot Topics" lectures on July 31. The title of the talk was "Boston Air Pollution and Its Effects."
"We've got a relatively clean environment, but we can do better,'' said Dockery, who has been studying the health effects of air pollution for some 25 years.
Sources of air pollution in Boston include local traffic and two coal-burning power plants in Salem, MA, and Brayton Point, MA. Automobiles spew carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, unburned hydrocarbons, and soot into the air, he said. Pollution, particularly in the form of fine particles, drifts in from the U.S. Midwest on air currents that typically flow west to east. These particles affect not just Boston, but recreational areas in New England, such as the Berkshires, the Maine coast, and the New Hampshire mountains, said Dockery.
"Oftentimes, it is worse in the recreational areas than it is in the city itself," he said.
Boston itself generally meets EPA standards for levels of nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ozone, although it sometimes exceeds standards for fine particles, said Dockery.
Air pollution "is a regional and national problem,'' he said. He described the landmark Harvard Six Cities Study, of which he was lead author. The study evaluated the effects of pollution on adults in the 1970s and 1980s. The results found a strong, positive correlation between levels of air pollution and mortality and led to a revision of existing air quality standards by the EPA. One of the study's findings found that individuals in highly polluted areas, such as Steubenville, Ohio, lived on average four years less than those who lived in less-polluted areas, such as Portage, Wisconsin.
"We were stunned by the magnitude of the difference,'' he said.
Last year, Dockery and a team of researchers published an eight-year follow up to the study and found that people lived longer in cities where the amount of soot in the air had been reduced.
—ML
Copyright, 2007, President and Fellows of Harvard College
