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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Study Confirms Air’s Tiny Hazards Harvard Researcher Links Spokane Pollution, Hospital Admissions

When fine dust particles and ozone in Spokane’s air increase, so do hospital admissions of elderly people suffering respiratory problems.

That’s the conclusion of a new study published last month in the journal Epidemiology.

Joel Schwartz of Harvard University’s School of Public Health, one of the country’s leading air pollution experts, conducted the study.

It further confirms what Schwartz and his colleagues have found in 21 other U.S. and foreign cities: fine particles cause health damage at levels far below current federal air pollution limits.

Schwartz found a similar correlation between ozone levels and hospital admissions - even though Spokane doesn’t flunk federal ozone standards.

While the ozone layer in the stratosphere protects the Earth against the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays, ground-level ozone is a toxic gas that’s the main chemical in smog.

“The current standards are not protective of public health,” Schwartz said in an interview.

The worst pollutants appear to be ultra-fine particles from combustion sources, Schwartz said.

In Spokane, that includes wood stoves, cars, smoke from grass field burning, some road dust, and industrial emissions.

Schwartz’s study provides further proof that particulate air pollution is a serious health concern, said Grant Pfeifer of the Washington Department of Ecology.

“Spokane isn’t immune,” Pfeifer said.

Even though the new study doesn’t specifically address grass field burning, it shows why state regulators are looking for an alternative to torching fields each summer.

“It will help us explain to the public why we’re taking a hard look at certifiable alternatives to grass burning,” Pfeifer said.

The tiny particles go deep into the lungs and bloodstream, aggravating respiratory disease. They also invade houses.

Indoor levels of fine particles are about 80 percent to 90 percent of outdoor levels, Schwartz’s study says.

The particles are linked to reduced lung function, increased respiratory illness, school absenteeism, chronic breathing problems, increased hospitalization and emergency room visits, and more deaths in vulnerable people, the new studies show.

Schwartz used supercomputers to correlate daily weather, air pollutants and 4,300 Spokane hospital admissions for people aged 65 and older from Jan. 1, 1988 to Dec. 31, 1990.

For every 50-microgram per cubic meter increase in fine particles, Spokane hospital admissions for all respiratory diseases jumped 9 percent, Schwartz found.

Fifty micrograms is equal to about one fifty-thousandth of a penny, said Ron Edgar, chief technical expert for the Spokane Air Pollution Control Authority.

Schwartz found the average daily number of Spokane admissions of elderly people was small, only 3.9 people.

But with a 50-microgram increase in air pollution, admissions for chronic pulmonary disease jumped 17 percent, and for pneumonia, 5 percent.”It’s like the tiny rings on a tree that grows for 100 years. The computer helps us get a big look at very small changes.”

Fifty micrograms per cubic meter of air is one-third the current national 24-hour standard of 150 micrograms for airborne particles.

The study provides the strongest evidence yet that tiny particles are Spokane’s biggest air pollution hazard, Schwartz said.

That’s because the city’s air has much less sulfur dioxide, the most common pollutant in other cities he’s studied.

An American Lung Association activist hailed the new study.

“It should put to final rest the claim that particles, including grass smoke, are just a minor irritation,” said Yvonne Bucklin, regional director of the American Lung Association of Washington.

Based on accumulating evidence from the new studies and pushed by a lawsuit from the Lung Association, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a stricter limit for particle pollution.

In 1997, EPA is planning to scrap its 24-hour standard for particles 10 microns or less in diameter, called PM 10, and replace it with a new limit on the tiniest and most harmful of the airborne particles, known as PM 2.5.

The PM 2.5 standard is likely to be between 25 and 85 micrograms per cubic meter, said Joe Williams, the state’s chief air official in Ecology’s Olympia office.

Spokane’s highest 24-hour average for PM 2.5 particle pollution was 40 micrograms in 1995.

“Depending on where EPA sets the number, Spokane could violate the new standard,” Williams said.

, DataTimes