New York Air Pollution
The most urgent problem challenging New York City -- NYC is air pollution as the city's air quality has been adjudged as the worst in the entire nation. The American Lung Association -- ALA has expressed serious concern in its report on the state of the nation's air quality in an effort to safeguard the public health which has a distinctly political attitude. The report says that NYC's position is 22nd on a list of the major polluted nations while it is placed 13th on a list of the worst ozone-polluted metropolitan regions.
The ALA is protecting vehemently to safeguard tools in the Clean Air Act which can clean up the pollution which the government is trying to roll back. ALA maintains that NYC citizens must be aware of the damaging consequences of the air pollution in their communities. The damaging effect might not be visible to the human eye, but it is a fact and has the potential to kill. The report states that the ozone and presence of suspended particulate matter -- SPM is guaranteed to cause heart attacks, asthma, chronic lung disease, strokes, lung cancer and associated health problems. The report corroborates the reality that individual and community health cannot be segregated from the neighboring economic and political landscape. The Report puts about 2.7 million citizens in the Queens and Richmond counties who are at greater threat from ozone air pollution which is a major substance in smog and 2.9 million citizens in Bronx and New York counties who are at risk throughout the year because of round the year exposure to pollution due to SPM.
The State of the Air Report reveals that in excess of half of the 8 million residents of NYC are at serious health risk when they inhale the polluted atmosphere. Particle pollution has also been revealed to enhance the chances of heart attacks and strokes, lung cancer, activate asthma attacks and augment the requirement for medical care and extended hospital stays. The ALA is endeavoring in NYC to safeguard environmental strategies and persist cleaning up the air. The organization has introduced five environmental health bills planned to lower fuel emissions that aggravates lung diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease -- COPD. The provisions of the Bill seeks ensures that the city purchases vehicles that pollutes the minimum and the city's sanitation and bus fleets will be needed to use ultra-low sulphur diesel and cleaner technology. The people who are severely at risk are (i) 1.4 million people with past cardiovascular diseases in the five boroughs living with short-term pollution due to suspended particles.
Besides, short-term exposure lasting from several hours to several days has been associated with premature deaths, heart attacks and stroke. (ii) 4,60,000 individuals and 1,60,000 children suffering from asthma in NYC are exposed to unhealthy particle levels round the year (iii) 26%, in excess of 76.5 million of the US population reside in areas with unhealthy levels of suspended particle pollution for the short-term (iv) every fifth American, the population of whom is estimated to be 58.3 million reside in areas within unhealthy levels of particle pollution that persists across the year (v) almost half of all Americans constituting 142.7 million who inhabit counties with unhealthy levels of ozone, regardless of considerable lowering of ozone in the 34 years devoted to tackle the problem. (vi) taking the total figure into picture, about 152 million Americans reside in counties having unhealthy levels of either ozone or short-term levels of particle pollution across the year; and the most distressing part has been that 50.2 million Americans reside in counties in which all three levels are unhealthy. The Clean Air Act that has been promulgated mandates the Environment Protection Agency -- EPA and other states to clean up lethal pollutants and guarantees that residents breathe air which is still safe to breathe till the year 2010.
The Senate thwarted a bill which the large energy companies just wished to. It would have amended the law to allow them to get a decade more to pollute and to raise pollution at their oldest and nastiest plants. In order to minimize exposure to ozone and pollution from SPM, the ALA of NYC suggests that the residents observe the following (i) checking of air quality forecasts (ii) filling up gas-powered vehicles after sunset (iii) avoiding physical exercises close to high-traffic regions. At the time when pollution levels are high, it is better to avoid exercising outdoors, or in its place attempt an exercise regimen that needs less exertion. (iv) Avoiding smoking indoors (v) avoiding fireplaces and wood-burning stoves. Air pollution is found everywhere. Smoke, haze, mist, dust, bad smelling and corrosive gases and lethal compounds are found almost everywhere. The run up to the pollution everywhere and NYC in particular has been due to human activities. Nevertheless, it emerged to assume alarming proportions only during the past 200 years when the teeming population, massive industrialization and proliferation of vehicular population generated vast quantities of contamination. It has been estimated that a 150 million metric tons of air pollutants excluding carbon dioxide and wind-blown soil are released into the US. The net emissions across the world of these pollutants are nearly 2 billion metric tons annually. Generally, air quality becomes the worst in places where the maximum air pollutants are emitted, implying in highly industrial and urban areas due to increased traffic levels. Therefore, local and urban air pollution inclusive of indoor air pollution comprises a significant problem.
Some of the pollutants like tropospheric ozone, phytochemical oxidants, and sulphur and nitrogen compounds, are very easily blown by the winds and gets scattered over extensive areas. Thereafter, the regional air pollution problems of ozone and acid precipitation have drawn rising attention as these impact people, animals, vegetation, and materials over a very large region. Humans have been making increasing demands on the natural environment of this planet consistently for more than 1000 years. For major part of that period, these influences have been localized or short lived. With the approaching of the 20th century, there has been a realization that mankind is poised to enter into an era in which the releases to the atmosphere have the capability to transform the entire environment of the planet. Although NYC have somehow been able to cope with the problems of air quality like combustion smog, phytochemical smog and reduction of ozone layer through taking preventive measures at the time when the symptoms got worse. The major causes of air pollution has been identified as rising levels of ozone and NYC has been identified as having the 4th worst ozone level across important areas of the nation.
The city has financed campaigns to urge for using public transportation and thus lower some of the ozone production, but currently smog has been identified as the most damaging pollutant that endangers the air quality of city inhabitants. A lot of other substances contribute to air pollution in NYC. Unhealthy intensities of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and soot have been found in the atmosphere of the city during the bygone decade. The most common source has been identified as motor vehicle tailpipe exhaust. On a regular basis, thousands of cars, buses and trucks consume fossil fuels in gallons on the streets of NYC. Urban congestion and other traffic conditions raise the gasoline use and as a result increase the intensities of pollutants. The breathing of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and suspended particulates are responsible for serious biological problems which is equivalent to smoking a packet of cigarettes daily. The approach to the solution is a two-pronged one. First of all it is crucial managing traffic growth rates and ensuring a cleaning up act of polluting vehicles. Such has been the volume of traffic that presently drivers in the NYC area are compelled to spend more that the equivalent of a full work week every year trapped in the traffic mess. The proliferation in traffic and congestion need diverse actions to ensure a healthy and habitable NYC for the 21st century. Three different types of solutions are viable.
(i) Incentives like congestion pricing which encourage less driving during congested times and fund new transit
(ii) clean-vehicle technologies, particularly targeting the oldest and vehicles that pollute the maximum.
(iii) Land use rules and developer incentives that minimize the need to drive, and keep schools and homes and habitations away from heavy traffic.
A constituent of the solution must also be to persist refining the science with air pollution monitoring programs at the local level. A tested solution is the congestion pricing that helps reduce traffic in their urban centre along heavily used corridors. In case of big cities like NYC with congested central business districts -- CBD, coming up with a ‘cordon' scheme helps lower traffic and emissions in the urban centers by offering drivers an incentive to drive into the city during off-peak times. In these situations, revenues colleted from congestion pricing can be used for the benefit of travelers through helping to pay for ingenious transit preferences and faster travel. In NYC, the most important aspect for congestion pricing would be to design a system which (i) gives genuine traffic reduction to every boroughs, particularly in case of communities who are facing a toll with heavy traffic, congestion and asthma rates; and (ii) assists in financing the much required mass transit improvements inclusive of new clean-fuel bus service to neighborhoods which do not possess proper subway access.
A general reduction of the traffic volume reduction would outcome in decreased congestion and more travel speeds. Equally amazing, although, are the advantages which neighborhoods outside the CBD would possibly experience. Due to NYC's particular traffic patterns, traffic congestion is expected to go down 25% or higher in the Long Island City and downtown Brooklyn, and 18% in the 125th Street corridor in Harlem. The system would turn into a revenue earner as much as $500 million or higher annually which could be ploughed back into the transit system. New clean-fuel express bus lines to the adjacent areas which are poorly served by transit and stopped projects such as the Second Avenue will also help. In concert, the overall lowering in traffic volume, the benefits got from improvements in air quality of lowering the stalemate and the building of new transit preferences could usher a powerful package of benefits in favor of all New Yorkers. As regards the second solution of emission cleaning for the dirtiest vehicles on the road, there are three workable fundamental strategies (i) replacement of the nastiest fleet and encouraging transition to hybrid and other additional alternatives. The fist step lies in just replacing the oldest and nastiest vehicles with newer vehicles which correspond or exceed the most advanced federal emissions standard. For instance, NYC buses are not retired till they ply for 18 years. Hence, in case of taxis, radio cars and other fleets that are always on the road, a changeover to hybrids and other modern technologies requires immediate policy changes of the Govt. (ii) Retrofitting remaining diesels wit filters is also a viable solution. Diesel filer technology has proven to be very efficient at reducing up to 90% of the lethal particulate matter emissions from diesel motor vehicles.
It is perceived that countrywide, every dollar contributed towards retrofit technology translates into $13 in public health. In case of NYC, the value is estimated to be even higher given the city's high population density. NYC has already enacted laws mandating public fleets and machineries used in the implementation of public contracts to deploy the best available retrofit technologies. Hence it is the need of the hour to invest substantially in diesel clean-up measures. (iii) Enforcing laws disallowing vehicles to idle as idling vehicles emit higher levels of pollution compared to moving vehicles. NYC already is equipped with anti-idling laws however scanty little is being done to enforce them. The appropriate solutions lies in engaging city bodies with enforcement; locating procedures for the public to report scofflaws and in cases possibly making use of technologies such as electrified truck stops such that trucks which are required to run on-board systems are able to do so without idling their diesel engines. (iv) Monitoring local pollution is another area that evaluates air quality which the citizens actually inhale. In this direction, the EPA suggests installation of air monitors away in heavily utilized areas known as ‘hot spots'. The EPA considers that is not correct to particularly need any number of monitors to be installed in microenvironment or hot spot locations. Regional variations such as topography, wind patterns and added physical features such as urban canyons as shown in Exhibit -I will be able to concentrate pollutants, change risk zones or in other manners shift the exact spatial characteristics of exposure.
In case of larger cities, millions of inhabitants reside, perform jobs and engage in recreational activities in these environments. Whereas a lot of traffic and health studies have been performed, there is a handful that combines real monitored values with the perceived health effects. Bettering roadside monitoring systems will permit for enhanced understanding of health effects and reveal if people close to roadways are exposed to levels that are higher than the permissible standards. Despite a lot of extensions of the NAAQS deadline, currently - nearly twenty five years following the original deadlines sanctioned and after two important rewrites of the Clean Air Act, a lot of areas are in deviance of the act's fundamental objectives. Even though the persistent incapability to provide on the deadlines undercut the justification presented for the 1970 federalization, it must not be construed as an absence of progress in improvement of the nation's air quality. Nevertheless, air quality in the NYC has improved compared to what it has been during the past decades, partly because of federal regulations. Among the most positive aspects of federalization that set up a purposeful benchmark for people to assess if their air quality was within the healthy permissible limits.
Akin to the presence of the Toxics Release Inventory that has supported to lower the quantities of those emissions the enactment of NAAQS built demands to enhance quality of air. Indeed, as it would be few years prior to other characteristics of federalization would come to be effective, the simple existence of the NAAQS might have been the important federal contribution to the lowering of reductions. Finally nurturing the environment in a direct way will go a long way in solving the air pollution NYC. In this regard, capturing the benefits of the open space plan is a targeted plan wherein tree plantation on a war footing to soak harmful emissions from the city's pollutants. It has to be ensured that every NYC Street is completely dotted by the year 2030. To implement this, tree plantation will be done after revising the zoning code to need new construction and important redevelopment projects to grow one street tree for every 25 feet of street frontage. On an institutional level, private development project is expected to deliver 3,000 to 5,000 trees annually, with an added 3,000 annually spawned through important capital construction projects. Plans are also on the anvil to grow 12,500 trees with an investment of $17 million. The plantation will be accorded priority in neighborhoods with the lowest stocking level and maximum air quality concerns.
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