Air quality-related health damages of food.

Agriculture is a major contributor to air pollution, the largest environmental risk factor for mortality in the United States and worldwide. It is largely unknown, however, how individual foods or entire diets affect human health via poor air quality. We show how food production negatively impacts human health by increasing atmospheric fine particulate matter (PM2.5), and we identify ways to reduce these negative impacts of agriculture. We quantify the air quality-related health damages attributable to 95 agricultural commodities and 67 final food products, which encompass >99% of agricultural production in the United States. Agricultural production in the United States results in 17,900 annual air quality-related deaths, 15,900 of which are from food production. Of those, 80% are attributable to animal-based foods, both directly from animal production and indirectly from growing animal feed. On-farm interventions can reduce PM2.5-related mortality by 50%, including improved livestock waste management and fertilizer application practices that reduce emissions of ammonia, a secondary PM2.5 precursor, and improved crop and animal production practices that reduce primary PM2.5 emissions from tillage, field burning, livestock dust, and machinery. Dietary shifts toward more plant-based foods that maintain protein intake and other nutritional needs could reduce agricultural air quality-related mortality by 68 to 83%. In sum, improved livestock and fertilization practices, and dietary shifts could greatly decrease the health impacts of agriculture caused by its contribution to reduced air quality.

EASIUR-HR: A Model To Evaluate Exposure Inequality Caused by Ground-Level Sources of Primary Fine Particulate Matter.

People of color disproportionately bear the health impacts of air pollution, making air quality a critical environmental justice issue. However, quantitative analysis of the disproportionate impacts of emissions is rarely done due to a lack of suitable models. Our work develops a high-resolution reduced-complexity model (EASIUR-HR) to evaluate the disproportionate impacts of ground-level primary PM2.5 emissions. Our approach combines a Gaussian plume model for near-source impacts of primary PM2.5 with a previously developed reduced-complexity model, EASIUR, to predict primary PM2.5 concentrations at a spatial resolution of 300 m across the contiguous United States. We find that low-resolution models underpredict important local spatial variation of air pollution exposure to primary PM2.5 emissions, potentially underestimating the contribution of these emissions to national inequality in PM2.5 exposure by more than a factor of 2. We apply EASIUR-HR to analyze the impacts of vehicle electrification on exposure disparities. While such a policy has small aggregate air quality impacts nationally, it reduces exposure disparity for race/ethnic minorities. Our high-resolution RCM for primary PM2.5 emissions (EASIUR-HR) is a new, publicly available tool to assess inequality in air pollution exposure across the United States.

Current and Future Estimates of Marginal Emission Factors for Indian Power Generation.

Emission factors from Indian electricity remain poorly characterized, despite known spatial and temporal variability. Limited publicly available emissions and generation data at sufficient detail make it difficult to understand the consequences of emissions to climate change and air pollution, potentially missing cost-effective policy designs for the world's third largest power grid. We use reduced-form and full-form power dispatch models to quantify current (2017-2018) and future (2030-2031) marginal CO2, SO2, NOX, and PM2.5 emission factors from Indian power generation. These marginal emissions represent emissions changes due to small changes in demand. For 2017-2018, spatial variability in marginal CO2 emission factors range 3 orders of magnitude across India's states. There is limited seasonal and intraday variability with coal generation likely to meet changes in demand more than half the time in more than half of the states. Assuming the Government of India approximate 2030 targets, the median marginal CO2 emission factor across states decreases by approximately a factor of 2, but emission factors still span 3 orders of magnitude across states. Under 2030-2031 assumptions there is greater seasonal and intraday variability by up to factors of two and four, respectively. Estimates provide emission factors to evaluate interventions such as electric vehicles, increased air conditioning, and energy efficiency.

Cardiopulmonary Mortality and Fine Particulate Air Pollution by Species and Source in a National U.S. Cohort.

The purpose of this study was to estimate cardiopulmonary mortality associations for long-term exposure to PM2.5 species and sources (i.e., components) within the U.S. National Health Interview Survey cohort. Exposures were estimated through a chemical transport model for six species (i.e., elemental carbon (EC), primary organic aerosols (POA), secondary organic aerosols (SOA), sulfate (SO4), ammonium (NH4), nitrate (NO3)) and five sources of PM2.5 (i.e., vehicles, electricity-generating units (EGU), non-EGU industrial sources, biogenic sources (bio), "other" sources). In single-pollutant models, we found positive, significant (p < 0.05) mortality associations for all components, except POA. After adjusting for remaining PM2.5 (total PM2.5 minus component), we found significant mortality associations for EC (hazard ratio (HR) = 1.36; 95% CI [1.12, 1.64]), SOA (HR = 1.11; 95% CI [1.05, 1.17]), and vehicle sources (HR = 1.06; 95% CI [1.03, 1.10]). HRs for EC, SOA, and vehicle sources were significantly larger in comparison to those for remaining PM2.5 (per unit µg/m3). Our findings suggest that cardiopulmonary mortality associations vary by species and source, with evidence that EC, SOA, and vehicle sources are important contributors to the PM2.5 mortality relationship. With further validation, these findings could facilitate targeted pollution regulations that more efficiently reduce air pollution mortality.

Optimizing Emissions Reductions from the U.S. Power Sector for Climate and Health Benefits.

Improved air quality and human health are often discussed as "co-benefits" of mitigating climate change, yet they are rarely considered when designing or implementing climate policies. We analyze the implications of integrating health and climate when determining the best locations for replacing power plants with new wind, solar, or natural gas to meet a CO2 reduction target in the United States. We employ a capacity expansion model with integrated assessment of climate and health damages, comparing portfolios optimized for benefits to climate alone or both health and climate. The model estimates county-level health damages and accounts for uncertainty by using a range of air quality models (AP3, EASIUR, and InMAP) and concentration-response functions (American Cancer Society and Harvard Six Cities). We find that reducing CO2 by 30% yields $21-68 billion in annual health benefits, with an additional $9-36 billion possible when co-optimizing for climate and health benefits. Additional benefits accrue from prioritizing emissions reductions in counties with high population exposure. Total health benefits equal or exceed climate benefits across a wide range of modeling assumptions. Our results demonstrate the value of considering health in climate policy design and the need for interstate cooperation to achieve additional health benefits equitably.

Unspeciated organic emissions from combustion sources and their influence on the secondary organic aerosol budget in the United States.

Secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formed from the atmospheric oxidation of nonmethane organic gases (NMOG) is a major contributor to atmospheric aerosol mass. Emissions and smog chamber experiments were performed to investigate SOA formation from gasoline vehicles, diesel vehicles, and biomass burning. About 10-20% of NMOG emissions from these major combustion sources are not routinely speciated and therefore are currently misclassified in emission inventories and chemical transport models. The smog chamber data demonstrate that this misclassification biases model predictions of SOA production low because the unspeciated NMOG produce more SOA per unit mass than the speciated NMOG. We present new source-specific SOA yield parameterizations for these unspeciated emissions. These parameterizations and associated source profiles are designed for implementation in chemical transport models. Box model calculations using these new parameterizations predict that NMOG emissions from the top six combustion sources form 0.7 Tg y(-1) of first-generation SOA in the United States, almost 90% of which is from biomass burning and gasoline vehicles. About 85% of this SOA comes from unspeciated NMOG, demonstrating that chemical transport models need improved treatment of combustion emissions to accurately predict ambient SOA concentrations.

Public Health Costs of Primary PM2.5 and Inorganic PM2.5 Precursor Emissions in the United States.

Current methods of estimating the public health effects of emissions are computationally too expensive or do not fully address complex atmospheric processes, frequently limiting their applications to policy research. Using a reduced-form model derived from tagged chemical transport model (CTM) simulations, we present PM2.5 mortality costs per tonne of inorganic air pollutants with the 36 km × 36 km spatial resolution of source location in the United States, providing the most comprehensive set of such estimates comparable to CTM-based estimates. Our estimates vary by 2 orders of magnitude. Emission-weighted seasonal averages were estimated at $88,000-130,000/t PM2.5 (inert primary), $14,000-24,000/t SO2, $3,800-14,000/t NOx, and $23,000-66,000/t NH3. The aggregate social costs for year 2005 emissions were estimated at $1.0 trillion dollars. Compared to other studies, our estimates have similar magnitudes and spatial distributions for primary PM2.5 but substantially different spatial patterns for precursor species where secondary chemistry is important. For example, differences of more than a factor of 10 were found in many areas of Texas, New Mexico, and New England states for NOx and of California, Texas, and Maine for NH3. Our method allows for updates as emissions inventories and CTMs improve, enhancing the potential to link policy research to up-to-date atmospheric science.

Implications of ammonia emissions from post-combustion carbon capture for airborne particulate matter.

Amine scrubbing, a mature post-combustion carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, could increase ambient concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) due to its ammonia emissions. To capture 2.0 Gt CO2/year, for example, it could emit 32 Gg NH3/year in the United States given current design targets or 15 times higher (480 Gg NH3/year) at rates typical of current pilot plants. Employing a chemical transport model, we found that the latter emission rate would cause an increase of 2.0 µg PM2.5/m(3) in nonattainment areas during wintertime, which would be troublesome for PM2.5-burdened areas, and much lower increases during other seasons. Wintertime PM2.5 increases in nonattainment areas were fairly linear at a rate of 3.4 µg PM2.5/m(3) per 1 Tg NH3, allowing these results to be applied to other CCS emissions scenarios. The PM2.5 impacts are modestly uncertain (±20%) depending on future emissions of SO2, NOx, and NH3. The public health costs of CCS NH3 emissions were valued at $31-68 per tonne CO2 captured, comparable to the social cost of carbon itself. Because the costs of solvent loss to CCS operators are lower than the social costs of CCS ammonia, there is a regulatory interest to limit ammonia emissions from CCS.

Air pollutant emissions from the development, production, and processing of Marcellus Shale natural gas.

UNLABELLED: The Marcellus Shale is one of the largest natural gas reserves in the United States; it has recently been the focus of intense drilling and leasing activity. This paper describes an air emissions inventory for the development, production, and processing of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale region for 2009 and 2020. It includes estimates of the emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and primary fine particulate matter (< or = 2.5 microm aerodynamic diameter; PM2.5) from major activities such as drilling, hydraulic fracturing, compressor stations, and completion venting. The inventory is constructed using a process-level approach; a Monte Carlo analysis is used to explicitly account for the uncertainty. Emissions were estimated for 2009 and projected to 2020, accounting for the effects of existing and potential additional regulations. In 2020, Marcellus activities are predicted to contribute 6-18% (95% confidence interval) of the NOx emissions in the Marcellus region, with an average contribution of 12% (129 tons/day). In 2020, the predicted contribution of Marcellus activities to the regional anthropogenic VOC emissions ranged between 7% and 28% (95% confidence interval), with an average contribution of 12% (100 tons/day). These estimates account for the implementation of recently promulgated regulations such as the Tier 4 off-road diesel engine regulation and the US. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Oil and Gas Rule. These regulations significantly reduce the Marcellus VOC and NOx emissions, but there are significant opportunities for further reduction in these emissions using existing technologies. IMPLICATIONS: The Marcellus Shale is one of the largest natural gas reserves in United States. The development and production of this gas may emit substantial amounts of oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic compounds. These emissions may have special significance because Marcellus development is occurring close to areas that have been designated nonattainment for the ozone standard. Control technologies exist to substantially reduce these impacts. PM2.5 emissions are predicted to be negligible in a regional context, but elemental carbon emissions from diesel powered equipment may be important.

The role of gifts in building influence with politicians: Thematic analysis of interviews with current and former parliamentarians.

Gifts are a powerful way to acknowledge and strengthen interpersonal relationships. As with any relational space, gifting plays various roles in forming and maintaining relationships in political contexts, but its contribution to relationship-building has attracted little attention. This paper examines how politicians in Aotearoa New Zealand both engage with gifting and how they navigate the perceptions of others. Four current members of parliament (MPs) and six retired MPs participated in semi-structured interviews with questions on common practices and common understandings about political gifting. Their responses indicate their use of four different processes: formal processes are the guidelines provided by the government on gifting, but when these are insufficient, contextual processes regarding perceptions of the media, constituents or colleagues are used, or, alternatively, MPs rely on personal values or view gifting in terms of transactional processes with both parties receiving benefits. The paper explores perceptions and complexities of a sequence of gifts during events (event gifting). The authors recommend an improved awareness and understanding of the contribution of gifting practices to political relationship building.

Addiction industry studies: understanding how proconsumption influences block effective interventions.

The legalized consumption of products with addiction potential, such as tobacco and alcohol, contributes in myriad ways to poor physical and mental health and to deterioration in social well- being. These impacts are well documented, as are a range of public health interventions that are demonstrably effective in reducing harm. I have discussed the capacity for the profits from these substances to be deployed in ways that block or divert resources from interventions known to be effective. Addiction industry studies constitute a new and previously neglected area of research focusing specifically on understanding the salient relationships that determine policy and regulation. This understanding will increase the odds of adopting effective interventions.

Secondary organic aerosol formation from photo-oxidation of unburned fuel: experimental results and implications for aerosol formation from combustion emissions.

We conducted photo-oxidation experiments in a smog chamber to investigate secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation from eleven different unburned fuels: commercial gasoline, three types of jet fuel, and seven different diesel fuels. The goals were to investigate the influence of fuel composition on SOA formation and to compare SOA production from unburned fuel to that from diluted exhaust. The trends in SOA production were largely consistent with differences in carbon number and molecular structure of the fuel, i.e., fuels with higher carbon numbers and/or more aromatics formed more SOA than fuels with lower carbon numbers and/or substituted alkanes. However, SOA production from different diesel fuels did not depend strongly on aromatic content, highlighting the important contribution of large alkanes to SOA formation from mixtures of high carbon number (lower volatility) precursors. In comparison to diesels, SOA production from higher volatility fuels such as gasoline appeared to be more sensitive to aromatic content. On the basis of a comparison of SOA mass yields (SOA mass formed per mass of fuel reacted) and SOA composition (as measured by an aerosol mass spectrometer) from unburned fuels and diluted exhaust, unburned fuels may be reasonable surrogates for emissions from uncontrolled engines but not for emissions from engines with after treatment devices such as catalytic converters.

Unpacking the differing understandings of "alcohol industry" in public health research.

BACKGROUND: Use of the term 'alcohol industry' plays an important role in discussions of alcohol and public health. In this paper, we examine how the term is currently used and explore the merits of alternative conceptualisations. METHODS: We start by examining current ways of referring to 'alcohol industry' in public health and then explore the potential for organisational theory, political science, and sociology to provide alcohol research with more inclusive and nuanced conceptualizations. RESULTS: We identify, and critique, three conceptualisations based on purely economic understandings of industry: literal, market, and supply-chain understandings. We then examine three alternative conceptualizations based on systemic understandings of industry: organizational, social-network, and common-interest understandings. In examining these alternatives, we also identify the extent to which they open up new ways of approaching the levels at which industry influence is understood to operate in alcohol and public health research and policy. CONCLUSIONS: Each of the six understandings of 'industry' can play a role in research but their utility depends on the question being asked and the breadth and depth of the analysis being undertaken. However, for those intending to engage with a broader disciplinary base, approaches grounded in the systemic understandings of 'industry' are better positioned to study the complex nexus of relationships that contribute to alcohol industry influence.

Subnational implications from climate and air pollution policies in India's electricity sector.

Emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants in India are important contributors to climate change and health damages. This study estimates current emissions from India's electricity sector and simulates the state-level implications of climate change and air pollution policies. We find that (i) a carbon tax results in little short-term emissions reductions because there is not enough dispatchable lower emission spare capacity to substitute coal; (ii) moving toward regional dispatch markets rather than state-level dispatch decisions will not lead to emissions reductions; (iii) policies that have modest emissions effects at the national level nonetheless have disparate state-level emissions impacts; and (iv) pricing or incentive mechanisms tied to production or consumption will result in markedly different costs to states.

Chlorine truck attack consequences and mitigation.

We develop and apply an integrated modeling system to estimate fatalities from intentional release of 17 tons of chlorine from a tank truck in a generic urban area. A public response model specifies locations and actions of the populace. A chemical source term model predicts initial characteristics of the chlorine vapor and aerosol cloud. An atmospheric dispersion model predicts cloud spreading and movement. A building air exchange model simulates movement of chlorine from outdoors into buildings at each location. A dose-response model translates chlorine exposures into predicted fatalities. Important parameters outside defender control include wind speed, atmospheric stability class, amount of chlorine released, and dose-response model parameters. Without fast and effective defense response, with 2.5 m/sec wind and stability class F, we estimate approximately 4,000 (half within ∼10 minutes) to 30,000 fatalities (half within ∼20 minutes), depending on dose-response model. Although we assume 7% of the population was outdoors, they represent 60-90% of fatalities. Changing weather conditions result in approximately 50-90% lower total fatalities. Measures such as sheltering in place, evacuation, and use of security barriers and cryogenic storage can reduce fatalities, sometimes by 50% or more, depending on response speed and other factors.

Policy influence and the legalized cannabis industry: learnings from other addictive consumption industries.

BACKGROUND AND AIM: New Zealand has recently legalized medicinal cannabis and has explored the possibility of legalizing large-scale recreational cannabis supply. In the process, concerns have emerged regarding whether corporations involved in the large-scale production and sale of legalized cannabis will invest in tactics of influence with policymakers and the public. This paper aimed to examine the various ways a legalized cannabis industry could seek to influence governments and the public in the New Zealand reform context. METHOD: Based on the study of industry tactics with alcohol, tobacco and gambling, we applied a three-chain model of industry influence that breaks tactics into the 'public good', 'knowledge' and 'political' chains. RESULTS: Exploratory analysis of the nascent cannabis industry's activity in New Zealand provided signs of industry influence strategies related to all three chains. The medicinal cannabis industry has associated the establishment of a legal cannabis sector with regional economic development and employment, supported lobbying for recreational law reform, funded NGOs involved in lobbying for law reform, established research partnerships with universities, invited ex-politicians on advisory boards, and participated in government public sector partnerships. CONCLUSION: There is emerging evidence that the legal cannabis industry is using strategies to influence the regulatory environment in New Zealand.

Prevalence and risk factors for Salmonella spp. contamination of slaughtered chickens in Taiwan.

The present study was designed to estimate the prevalence of Salmonella contamination in Taiwanese broilers at slaughter and to identify risk factors associated with the presence of Salmonella in processed batches of broilers. Carcass rinse samples from 362 batches of broilers were collected from 45 chicken abattoirs in Taiwan between February 2013 and November 2014. Univariate analyses and multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify putative risk factors for contamination. Salmonella was detected in 32.6 % (95 % CI: 30.4-34.8) of individual broilers and 56.4 % (95 % CI: 51.1-61.5) of the sampled batches. The multivariable logistic regression model identified season (July to November) (OR = 1.95; 95 % CI: 1.2-3.2) as increasing the risk of infection. Abattoirs in the southern region (Taichung and Kaohsiung) (OR = 0.45; 95 % CI: 0.3-0.8); batches scalded for > 90 s (OR = 0.2; 95 % CI: 0.1-0.3) and batches of commercial white broilers (BR) (OR = 0.21; 95 % CI: 0.1-0.4) all had a decreased risk of contamination compared to abattoirs from the northern region, scalding < 90 s and Taiwan native chickens (TNC), respectively. This study highlights the influence of environmental conditions and poultry breed on the risk of Salmonella contamination of chickens during slaughter.

Responding to the risks associated with the relapse of recovering staff members within addiction services.

Practitioners working within addiction services who are recovering from their own addiction issues contribute positively to the strength of service interventions, but their recovery also poses risks, particularly those associated with the possibility of relapse. Little has been published on this issue despite its significant impact on the relapsing practitioners, their clients and colleagues, and the services themselves. This "point-of-view" article divides the various impacts of a practitioner's relapse into four phases and examines how services might develop early and late response strategies. It argues that formal monitoring processes can assist in both preventing and responding to the harms associated with these relapses.

Using backup generators for meeting peak electricity demand: a sensitivity analysis on emission controls, location, and health endpoints.

Generators installed for backup power during blackouts could help satisfy peak electricity demand; however, many are diesel generators with nonnegligible air emissions that may damage air quality and human health. The full (private and social) cost of using diesel generators with and without emission control retrofits for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) were compared with a new natural gas turbine peaking plant. Lower private costs were found for the backup generators because the capital costs are mostly ascribed to reliability. To estimate the social costs from air quality, the changes in ambient concentrations of ozone (O3) and PM2.5 were modeled using the Particulate Matter Comprehensive Air Quality Model with extensions (PMCAMx) chemical transport model. These air quality changes were translated to their equivalent human health effects using concentration-response functions and then into dollars using estimates of "willingness-to-pay" to avoid ill health. As a case study, 1000 MW of backup generation operating for 12 hr/day for 6 days in each of four eastern U.S. cities (Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and New York) was modeled. In all cities, modeled PM2.5 concentrations increased (up to 5 microg/m3) due mainly to primary emissions. Smaller increases and decreases were observed for secondary PM2.5 with more variation between cities. Increases in NOx, emissions resulted in significant nitrate formation (up to 1 microg/m3) in Atlanta and Chicago. The NOx emissions also caused O3 decreases in the urban centers and increases in the surrounding areas. For PM2.5, a social cost of approximately $2/kWh was calculated for uncontrolled diesel generators in highly populated cities but was under 10 cent/kWh with PM2.5 and NOx controls. On a full cost basis, it was found that properly controlled diesel generators are cost-effective for meeting peak electricity demand. The authors recommend NOx and PM2.5 controls.