ENE 489: History Of Air Pollution 01-22-2021

okay well good afternoon so what i would like to do today is look at the history of

air pollution my goal is to give you some understanding of the historical background and the reasons for studying air pollution

science and engineering why do we care the photos here are actually taken back in the about the 1950s 1960s

as a kid i can remember going on vacation up to typically up north in maine i grew up in northern new jersey

and i can remember coming driving home and driving south and getting just north of boston and you could see

this orange haze on the horizon we'll talk about why what is that we'll look throughout the semester at issues like that

how have we controlled it what have we done to improve air quality and what do we need to do to continue improving air quality we'll look at it both

from the indoor air quality so what is the what or what are the issues related to living indoors we spend about

93 percent of our lives inside in a building what are the concerns

with air quality how do protect human health when we spend so much time inside we'll also look at air quality

outside so ambient air quality and we'll look at occupational hazards today what we're going to do is we're just going to walk through you know

history so we're going to start way back in ancient rome you often think about air quality from the perspective

that it's recent that it's something we never worried about or no one ever worried about in ancient times but that's not true

the romans talked about the smell of burning coal described it as disagreeable

troublesome troublesome these are actually comments of the third century um a student of aristotle um

the f the fresh i i'm not gonna pronounce it uh anyway he was a student of aristotle um the philosopher and statesman

seneca described the air as being oppressive and the roman air was described

as heavy heavens so they recognized that there were these issues of air quality anybody want to

try and venture a guess i mentioned burning coal as one of the causes potentially what are some other causes that you think

might have resulted in these oppressive conditions um they didn't have manageable wastewater systems exactly they didn't have manageable wastewater systems so decaying trash

decaying sewage um that would cause all sorts of mall loaders what else they use firewood firewood wood for firewood

exactly anything else with their method of transportation the horses and drawn carriages

obviously and with kind of with the decaying trash sewage the manure from the horses all of those would cause

male odors anybody know what they lined the aqueducts with concrete they used stone to build them but

what did they line the conduits with lined it with lead so in order to produce that

the lead in order to line these aqueducts they had to smelt it so lead smelting resulted in

a significant amount release of lead into the atmosphere in fact based on ice cores in greenland

the lead concentration during the height of the roman era era was about four times background levels

so extent very high concentrations of lead in the air the other issue is tanning of animal heights that releases a

significant amount of odor so those are some of the causes what are some of the solutions there's a clue in the photo

you use chimneys exactly build higher chimneys we've actually done this um fairly recently

in terms of dealing dealing with air pollution build higher chimneys they had chimneys that were up to about 25 feet tall

attempt to try and release those pollutants above the breathing zone and hopefully they

would disperse and be less problematic they also did somebody said water management waste management exactly they built sewers

to try and transport that waste away from the living areas in order to reduce the pollution levels

he also built beach houses to try and escape the conditions so the worst of the conditions you could go

to your beach house and get away from the pollution they also used public policy in fact rome's public health

programs were actually better than most of the public health programs until recent times

flewdork who was a philosopher he was a historian he was also the priest of the temple of apollo which would have been very important at the time

was a champion of human rights and i don't really think about it but i mentioned the lead smell smelled and smelting well they decided

that they needed to protect their own citizens by not allowing them to work in the lead smelters so initially it was like there was the slaves that they were

going to put in the lens smelters but then they decided that it wasn't fair to just make this lead smelters those are the slaves suffer from the red and the smelters um

so then actually plutarch suggested that only criminally convicted slaves should go into the lead smelters obviously this is not a

viable proper solution to um airplane occupational exposures but they did attempt to put in some policies

in place um and they did feel that clean air and clean water was public property and the benefit of

all so they they did look at public health in that light fortunately they did not realize

that or did not connect the contaminants in the lead smelters with actual lead and they added lead acetate to their wine to sweeten the wine and

basically poison themselves with a bad acetate in their wine even though they understood that breathing

the air from the smelters was hazardous to their health now the issues of air pollution didn't end with the end of the roman empire

continued on in england one of the issues was burning sea colon you can see the sea coal

here um sea coal was is a very soft coal it washes up onto the beaches in

england and people could go and collect that sea coal so it was a free source of fuel but because it's very soft it burns

um it's a dirty fuel it produces a significant amount of particulate matter so in 1272 king edward the first

tried to ban sea coal the penalty was death it didn't work people didn't have much other choices wood was um scarce

so in order to try and you know survive through the winter people continue to burn sea call and that continued

a decade later richard ii tries to ban for restrict the use of call 14 1400's henry v

tries to restrict call that a century later queen elizabeth tries to ban the use of call none of this worked um

simply because it was cold it was damp and people needed to keep warm and there wasn't any other source or any other significant source of fuel

so in 1606 shakespeare wrote macbeth and there was a reference in macbeth to

the poor air quality in england specifically london predominantly london anyone want to guess what that reference is but

i remember reading shakespeare's i'll give you a clue it has something to do with the witches with the witch's chant pharah's

fairest foul and fowler's fur hover through the fog and filthy air that really is a reference to the poor air quality 60 years later or some 60 years later

john evelyn who was a 17th century writer he realized the

issues related to the poor air quality in his home city of london and he wrote a document called fugam

um this was actually a document written to king charles the second about the impact of air pollution on

health and on the environment so it's first known document that i have seen really talking about

the effective air pollution on public health and the environment the main issue was calls

the smoke from burning coal continues they realized that there was issues with air quality a little solution few

solutions at this point in time 1873 the air is described as being a whole smoke

saturated fog and in this case in london it hovered over the city for days causing roughly 268

deaths from bronchitis or pulmonary disease 1879 again in london another this was almost

four months of what they referred to as sunshineless gloom

again from the burning of coal by 1902 a bi-weekly fog report is produced

describing the aircraft quality anybody recognize the painting or the artist is it monae it is monet and what we

don't realize is that a number of monet's pain in fact quite a few of monae's paintings are actually of london and

he was intrigued by the effects of light through the smog

and what he's actually painting or depicting is the poor air quality you can see if you look up the chairing cross

bridge uh painting same thing look at a number of his paintings and really what what he's depicting is the light refraction reflect

refracting off of the particulate matter and it gives that kind of hazy impressionalist perspective it wasn't just london

the u.s had its own problems

the u.s had its own problems significant air pollution we're to the point where in the late

1800s cincinnati and chicago both enact air pollution regulations early 1900s the city of chicago

passes an ordinance to try and reduce the smoke emitted by the factory so we've got the height of the industrial revolution we have no

significant regulations we have no federal regulations at all and we're seeing significant

issues with hair quality in 1901 there was a anthracite coal strike that resulted in a shortage of

fuel for heating and as a result robert thurston a wrote a report in the to the smithsonian

or was published in the smithsonian annual report documenting the potential for alternative energy so this at this

point because of the call strike because of the lack of fuel they started looking at alternative energies it really wasn't

because of air pollution it was because of the strike they looked at tidal wind

and solar power and interestingly enough in 1901 the recommendation was

that solar power was the most had the greatest potential and should be considered interestingly

it really wasn't until the last 10 or so years that we really started investing in solar power

now despite what the romans knew despite all of the air pollution incidents during the

1200s so the way to the 18 19th century air pollution

events continued into the 20th century we'll look at three these are really the three most

commonly discussed air pollution events of the name 20th century they are not the only ones there are

books written about the various different events so first one we'll talk about

is the muse valley in belgium this is an area along the river muse

it is a very heavily industrialized area in continental europe there were steel works

zinc smelters glass manufacturers fertilizer plants manufacturing or explosive manufacturing plants

all along this river valley on december 1st in 1930 a thick fog covered a large part

of belgium people reported sore throats shortness of breath people suffered from severe

respiratory distress coughing as well like uh symptoms vomiting the population that was most affected

were the elderly asthmatics and those with heart disease more than 60 people died

there was a tenfold increase in mortality and when they did autopsies on these people that died they

actually found pure carbon soot in their lungs not only did humans die but also

cattle birds and other animals suffered and many died because of this event talk about why these occurred towards the

after i go through the three events dinorah pennsylvania is located in the mangala mangahela river valley

it's about 20 miles south of pittsburgh it's very hilly area um it's industrial town and swedish steel mill

sulfuric acid plant freight yard population was about 14 000.

u.s steel company had its facility in genora there's also the dinora zinc

works and about 5 000 people were employed in these facilities now i've mentioned to river valley

the hills are quite steep in this area what happened was that in october 1948

a thick yellow acrid smog enveloped the town and stayed there for about five days when it finally cleared they realized

that 20 people had died from during these six days another 50 were dying

hundreds were suffering or would be would suffer from permanent lung damage from this event i was actually never

known exactly how many people died the significant attempt an actually quite successful attempt to

hide the information it wasn't until 1994 that a full accounting of what actually

happened was released and the people that suffered were never fully compensated for the effects

of this event and the last one i'll mention is again back to london um and this was in

december 1952 it was an unusually cold winter and that resulted in an increased coal

consumption so we're back to that issue with consumption of coal the air pollution was so bad that the air was described as

thickest pea soup you've heard that phrase that's where it comes from comes from the especially in london the air quality or

the poor air quality that occurred in london as a result

there were at least four thousand deaths in two weeks the air was so polluted that public transportation stopped

it was like night all day long you can see the bus in the photo you can see the lights on that was during the day

indoor concerts had to be canceled because the indoor air quality was so bad because of

this no air purification systems you just ventilate ventilating the outside air people couldn't even see the

stage so they had to cancel the concerts what you see in this plot here is the significant increase in the number of deaths so you

can see the deaths here so you can see the in significant increase in number of deaths you see a significant increase

in the so2 levels the sulfur dioxide and you see a significant increase in here what's described here is

smoke and now we refer to this as particulate matter and we will talk about this later but you'll often see

it as pm and you'll see it as pm10 npm 2.5 and that has to do with the size of the particles and we'll we'll talk more about that throughout

the course and why it's important why do we break down pm10 versus pm 2.5 and this is just an another plot you can

see here is where the fog occurred and most most of the deaths the peak occurred actually after the fog had lifted

but people are significantly affected by it it's not uncommon you can see here that bronchitis is the major cause of death but because

of the impact on the cardiac system you see an increase in heart attacks during

air pollution events all of these cases were occur or occurred during what is referred to as a anticyclone

inversion so what happens there as you can see in the photo here is you've got a descending movement of

air so the air is being pulled down to ground level you're not getting dispersion of that contaminants it's just sitting close to the ground

level you've got a relative increase in atmospheric pressure and these are typically um associated with

periods of very still calm and often cold air it's also occurred typically in river valleys

or plains where the air gets trapped in the valley and you get very little movement essentially very little

ventilation on dispersion of these pollutants result in chemical irritation of the exposed membrane surfaces so

they're they're affecting the nasal membranes the sinuses off most of these are all associated with

sulfur oxides predominantly sulfur dioxide and associated with particulates and when we will talk about the

respiratory system and why this is important but this combination of sulfur dioxide and particulates

is extremely deadly much more so than even if both of them are separate typically death occurred within about

one to two days of the episode and but the increase in mortality often continued for weeks

with genora and muse valley because of the smeltering they believed that there was fluoride in the air

and that may have worsened the problem nobody was out there measuring concentrations of these you can see it on this slide here

and they do have some measurements in 1952 mainly for smoke and sulfur diet and sulfur dioxide

they weren't measuring anything else besides that any questions about any of these incidents the next three that i want to talk about are slightly different these are

occupational or industrial events so the others are much more

widespread the sources are much more varied these were the three that i'll talk about are

really the result of a singular event so with proposal rica posa rica is in the north central veracruz state

of mexico it is an important petroleum producing region they were produced and processing high sulfur

crude oil there was a hydrogen sulfide flare and that inadvertently

went out releasing hydrogen sulfide to the atmosphere happened that it was also at the same time when this happened an inversion in the valley so there was

light wind this foggy atmosphere and this resulted in 22 sudden deaths

320 hospitalized the effect was almost immediate for those individuals that were in the closest vicinity

to where this flare was located and it caused both respiratory and central nervous system

facts um terms of those hospitalized they were people of all ages a single single event because

of a flare going the second event is in italy this was at a chemical processing plant

and they were producing hexachlorophene hexachlorophene was used as a topical antiseptic

very commonly used at the time a valve malfunctioned

releasing a cloud of this chemical this dioxin and that cloud traveled southwest

this intetrochlorodibenzo peridioxan is considered one of the most toxic chemicals

created by humans it happened to be on that day it was present at a higher concentration it was not

it's an impurity in produced in the production so what it did was it contaminated an area about

six kilometers long so about five um about three and a half four miles long and one kilometer wide

the result was chloracne which is basically a skin um irritation

there were also fears of genetic impairments because of this chemical and it bioaccumulates so it accumulates

in the fat which means that as you go up the food chain the concentration increases so as a result on the fear

that it would bioaccumulate and then be consumed by humans about 80 000 animals predominantly poultry

and rabbits were killed in order to try and prevent that dioxin

from getting into the food chain long-term effects have been a increased risk of breast cancer

and an excess of lymphatic tumors the third incident was in 1984. it occurred

in bhopal india and it occurred at a union carbide pesticide facility

there's a length a leak the number of people that died as a result of this event range have been estimated from

between 4 000 up to about 15 000. hundreds of thousands of people

000. hundreds of thousands of people were injured more than a hundred thousand with permanent disability so

what happened was um malfunction again in the facility methyl isocyanate

was used as an intermediate in the manufacture of seven which is a pesticide

so to produce this they take carbon monoxide react with chlorine to produce phosgene phosgene is a chemical weapon that was used in

world war one so not a good chemical right there and then that phosgene is combined with methyl amine to produce the methyl

isocyanate which is an irritant to the lungs causes edema causes bronchial spasms

coronal opacity it's thought that potentially hydrogen cyanide was also produced as a result

of this malfunction in 2010 seven ex-employees were convicted of criminal negligence and that was because the

working conditions at this plant were absolutely horrendous had a horrible safety record the

manuals that they had were produced in english but few could read those english manuals their monitoring

in their plant was extremely poor there was there were communication gaps between union carbide and the indian company that was actually operating the plant

they had absolutely no action plan to deal with a disaster and they had had numerous safety violations that were not dealt

with it's just a horrible picture showing how bad the situation was the list well second to the last event

that i'll talk about is the world trade center 911 2001 we don't think of it as a air pollution event

but it very much was an air in addition to all of the other destruction destruction that happened but it was really an it was an air pollution event when those

buildings collapsed asbestos was released silica was released the particulates

plastics that burned and the chemicals from there the um

those that were most affected were the first responders and it's believed that at least 10 000

first responders were significant were exposed to high levels of these various different pollutants

they experienced ear nose and throat irritations coughing wheezing shortness of breath bronchitis

even those that lived in the area were exposed even if they were outside of the area of the explosion they were still

subjected to or exposed to these concentrations or these various different pollutants

there was absolutely no measurement of these pollutants in the immediate days after 9 11.

so we know very little about what these individuals were exposed to but what we have seen is an increase

in prostate cancer thyroid cancer multiple melanoma among those first responders

that assisted and were the heroes after the towers were hit we're also seeing

men with breast cancer at much higher rates than we would expect and those really again are in those workers those first responders that were near ground zero

so it's we don't think of it as a air pollution event but it did have it is an air pollution event last year at this time

there were major fat fires throughout australia you can see in the map here this was a map of the hot spots

as of january 5th 2020 so they began their year with actually and they ended 2019 and began

2020 with these massive buyers and just give you um an extent of the size of these

this image here compares the 2018 california fires to fires in the amazon fires in

australia they had had a three-year drought some of the hottest temperatures on record

up to about 120 degrees fahrenheit and as a result of this the fires were so intensive they caused what are referred to

as pyrocumulus clouds these clouds are actually caused by the fire caused by the heating of the air

from the high fire causing these clouds they can then induce thunderstorms lightning and then that lightning

further propagates these fires and that's what was happening at this time and that's why you see these fires all over um much of

the coastline of australia so they'd try and control one fire and then you'd get these lightning caused by

the fires and it would start a new another fire elsewhere the air quality was horrendous at one point

the air quality index was 3 000 in canberra which is the capital of australia that is in you can see it from

this figure here um kind of a sense that is in the oh you can see kind of looking at the scale here

you know you want levels down under fifty um see three thousand these are this is hazardous this is where it really is how it is really hazardous

to your health to even be outside i'll across respiratory descent distress airports were closed because of the heat generated it caused

turbulence during flights and nearly three billion animals were either killed or displaced by the fires you could actually see the

fires from the satellite images in terms of just some recent events and we will talk throughout the semester

um about covert 19 covid19 is transmitted through aerosols we'll talk more about what that

means these links actually do work you can read more about it but why it is really important

that we consider that in terms of indoor air quality and protecting our population

from disease recently in l.a because the incidence of covid is so high

they actually suspended mercury regulations for a crematorium the mercury is actually from dental amalgams but there are mercury

regulations to try and reduce mercury levels in the ambient air but those were actually suspended

because of unfortunately the backlog of bodies

from people that have died of covet the there was a recent rule put in place under the previous administration

and it's basically a fossil fuel friendly rule one of the things is that we are still using we'll talk about the

clean air act we're using the clean air act amendments of 1990 they have not been amended since then so what happens is the administration produces rules and

these rules are actually much easier to turn over or vacate and these were vacated by the court

um recently the bay area had the worst air quality in the world and the photo the bottom photo on your right is actually

from the bay area in california just to give you a sense we're still dealing with air quality air pollution events and we still need to

find ways to improve our air quality so happy to take any questions you may have we don't have a lot of time left but happy

to answer any questions that you have in the remaining time