With the recently concluded observance of Clean Air Week, Americans take pride in the progress that has been made over the last 25 years in reducing air pollution. Since 1972, the six-major air pollutants - carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen oxides, ground-level ozone (smog), particulate matter (soot) and sulfur dioxide - have decreased nationally by almost 30 percent.
The national trend is highlighted right here in metropolitan Washington where from 1991 through 1995 (the last year reported), the federal clean-air standards were achieved 356 days a year on average, vs. 347 days during the period 1986 through 1990. And more progress will follow in the ahead from laws and regulations already on the books.
But rather than celebrate the good news, some are using Clean Week to invoke the suffering of asthmatics as support for changes proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the federal standards for ozone and particulates. They blame increased incidence of asthma, observed primarily in young children, on outdoor air pollution. Current understanding and facts about this medical problem are at odds with claims, however.
An association between asthma incidence and outdoor pollution is highly unlikely; overall, air quality has been improving just at the time asthma incidence is increasing —a fact supported by EPA's own data.
When air quality in many cities is examined, we find asthma has places where pollution is limited. Recently reported research has. identified likely factors that may be causally associated with increased asthma: indoor exposure to cigarette smoking and the presence of house hold pests such as cockroaches and rodents. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, "Nationwide, no evidence exists that supports the role of outdoor pollution levels as the primary factor driving the changes in the epidemiological patterns of asthma morbidity. Changes in the indoor environment, caused by changes in indoor living, are a much more plausible pathway."
A decision to propose new standards for ozone and particulate material in the face of widespread uncertainty associated with the scientific data base is a product of politics setting a regulatory agenda, not good science. The members of EPA's own Science Advisory Board have recommended a delay in proposing new standards until critical data can be collected. By EPA's own reckoning, America's air quality has improved dramatically, and the agency expects improvements to continue.
If we wait just five years while new data are developed, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain. New standards developed with this research will have a greater probability of being protective of our children's health than current proposals based on poor quality data. Given doubts that outdoor air quality is a cause of rising asthma incidences in urban children, the most likely consequence of EPA's proposal would be to divert limited resources from more productive scientific and medical areas — improving inner-city childrens' health and useful research into more likely causes for the rise in asthma.
Americans mistrust their institutions and mistrust the reliability of science. Science for-sale and our-science-is-as-good-as-mine have become the popular wisdom. "Junk science" has made it into the common language. Faith in science depends [on] objective, straight-shooting by the EPA. It fails in its duty to the American public when it makes unsupported claims about childhood asthma attacks caused by outdoor air pollution.
How can EPA reconcile those clams with the fact that asthma is increasing while pollution is decreasing? How can it lay claim to a scientific underpinning when the agency publicly indicts both indoor and outdoor air quality as the primary cause of childhood asthma? Good policy from a scientifically based regulatory body requires not policy-driven doublespeak, but objectively based credible statements and regulations founded in good science.
We are right to take note during Clean Air Week of our major accomplishments. And we must strive for continued improvements. However, policy decisions about appropriate directions for new advancements in air quality must be based on science, not political whim. Scientific and medical information should form the basis of new standards and should support claims of benefits to be achieved. That is not the case with the proposed ozone and particulate material standards. They will be costly to implement and real health benefits resulting from compliance are highly questionable.
Ronald E. Gots, M.D., Ph.D., and Suellen W. Pirages, Ph.D., are principals of the International Center of Toxicology and Medicine in Rockville, Md.
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