Wednesday, May 03, 2006
From Joel Schwartz: Air pollution health risks: popular portrayals and scientific evidence
Hot off the press from Joel are these:
Polls show that most Americans worry about air pollution.
Environmentalists, regulators, health scientists, and journalists are the main purveyors of public information about air pollution risks, and most of this information is indeed alarming. In a new AEI paper, Air Pollution and Health: Do Popular Portrayals Reflect the Scientific Evidence? I show that these popular portrayals create an appearance of much greater and more certain harm from current, historically low air pollution levels than is warranted by the underlying evidence. I also discuss how the incentives in air pollution health science and regulation encourage risk exaggeration.
On a related note, the American Lung Association has just released its annual State of the Air report. In a new column for Tech Central Station, I show how journalists and opinion leaders have completely missed the unprecedented decline in violations of the federal 8-hour ozone and annual PM2.5 standards during the last few years. For example, 43% of national ozone monitoring sites violated the standard in 2003, but only 18% in 2005.
Nevertheless, just as in previous years, State of the Air continues to claim that half of all Americans live in areas that violate the standard.
Polls show that most Americans worry about air pollution.
Environmentalists, regulators, health scientists, and journalists are the main purveyors of public information about air pollution risks, and most of this information is indeed alarming. In a new AEI paper, Air Pollution and Health: Do Popular Portrayals Reflect the Scientific Evidence? I show that these popular portrayals create an appearance of much greater and more certain harm from current, historically low air pollution levels than is warranted by the underlying evidence. I also discuss how the incentives in air pollution health science and regulation encourage risk exaggeration.
On a related note, the American Lung Association has just released its annual State of the Air report. In a new column for Tech Central Station, I show how journalists and opinion leaders have completely missed the unprecedented decline in violations of the federal 8-hour ozone and annual PM2.5 standards during the last few years. For example, 43% of national ozone monitoring sites violated the standard in 2003, but only 18% in 2005.
Nevertheless, just as in previous years, State of the Air continues to claim that half of all Americans live in areas that violate the standard.
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