Over 1,000 health professionals sign letters to petition the Environmental Protection Agency to improve the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. This move comes amid rising concerns about the adverse effects of particle pollution on public health.
Detailing the gravity of the situation, Particle Pollution causes a number of health conditions including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, increased risk of infant mortality, impaired lung function in children, strokes, and asthma. It’s a problem that only continues to get worse as climate conditions leave the environment ripe for wildfires. The Environmental Protection Agency is required by the Clean Air Act to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards to fight air pollution. A new set of standards were supposed to be finalized last month but have not been, according to a press release from the American Lung Association.
Moving further into the subject,In a series of letters sent to the Environmental Protection Agency by the American Lung Association, 1,000 health professionals, including Anne Mellinger-Birdsong, MD, MPH, FAAP, urged for stricter air quality standards. As a pediatrician, Anne Mellinger-Birdsong is particularly concerned about how air quality affects infants and children's health. In these letters, health professionals suggested air quality standards matching current understandings of what is necessary for health. Those standards would require an annual standard of eight micrograms per cubic meter, and a 24-hour standard of 25 micrograms per cubic meter, according to a press release from the American Lung Association.
To emphasize on their concerns, one letter reads: "As health professionals we do our best to help reduce the health harms impacting communities we serve but we cannot control air quality. While today's air people breathe is much cleaner than it was decades ago; particle pollution – is still harming people's health across the country. The current National Ambient Air Quality Standards for particulate matter are just too weak."
Medical professionals see this as an important issue as 63.7 million people are exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution, according to the 2023 "State of the Air" report.
