Cloudy with a Chance of Soot

Driving down 77 into Cleveland is a fairly standard commute. traffic jams, construction, and a clear blue skies on a nice day. But on an average day – there’s usually smog. Factories visible from the interstate spit clouds of smoke and fire across the horizon every day. But do you know what’s in those clouds?

“I’ve lived in Cleveland a good chunk of my life. I’ve seen the flares for years. Never thought much about it, only to find out that yeah, what those flares are is just chemicals that are on fire being released into the air,” said Steven Gabor of Ohio Citizen Action, a statewide grassroots organization that advocates for cleaner energy.

 

“I do this every day almost. And I was unaware of this until we actually started directly working on this stuff. So you can imagine the average person whos doing this on a daily basis is going to have no idea whatsoever.”

 

The American Lung Association ranked Cleveland and Akron Air as poor quality, with dangerous ozone levels and the tenth highest particle pollution year round. ‘It’s only one of 11 cities in the nation to not meeting the standard,” said Ken Fletcher, Director of Advocacy for the American Lung Association in Michigan and Ohio.

 

 

“There’s too much particle pollution on an average basis, they’re not meeting the standard when it comes to particle pollution, so pretty much the air needs to be cleaned up in Cleveland.”

The American Lung association collects data from the EPA to analyze levels of particle pollution, like soot, and ozone pollution, like smog. Not only does this add to the murky blanket of clouds over Cleveland, but brings health concerns.

 

“Ozone when it’s inhaled, that irritates the lungs, it’s like a bad sunburn, it can cause immediate health problems and can continue for days later,” said Fletcher. “Ozone can cause wheezing and coughing and asthma attacks and premature deaths, so certainly anybody with a compromised system – those with asthma, COPD, lung cancer, the elderly, young people, can definitely be impacted by being exposed to bad air quality. But even those who are perfectly healthy and you’re outside, in construction where you’re exposed to consistently bad air quality, you can develop health problems from breathing that in on a regular basis.’

 

 

This study comes at a pivotal moment for our ozone levels. It followed an announcement of 18 states who are suing the EPA for its decision to roll back Obama-era standards for car emissions. These regulations were established as an attempt to cap the levels of CO2 emissions from exhaust fumes. However, President Trump and the Scott Pruitt of the EPA rolled back this standard, saying it is detrimental to businesses.

 

Fletcher disagrees with this decision. “The EPA has taken steps that are actually taken steps that will actually make our air quality worse.” He said. “They’ve already put on hold the clean power plan, which was going to clean up the existing coal-burning power plants, they’re talking about potentially lessening and weakening the clean car standard, which will put more car exhaust into our air – so all these steps are going to make it worse in terms of our air quality. So, I think those states that are suing the EPA are very just in doing that.”

 

 

Gabor says the argument of needing to cut regulations to create jobs doesn’t hold water. “This whole thing about environmental responsibility vs jobs is really an outdated argument at this point. The renewable energy industry is actually one of the most fruitful places and fertile places for job growth, not just in Ohio but throughout the United States.” He explained. “We should actually be giving incentives to companies to be coming in here to promote that economic growth and those jobs.”

 

 

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts solar and wind turbine technicians as the fastest growing job sector in the next 10 years, exceeding growth in nursing and software development. Gabor says Ohio was once one of the leaders in wind energy investments, but that growth stopped in 2014 after an amendment to the budget increased the distance turbines must be from property lines.

 

Ohio is not one of the states suing the EPA, and Gabor says he’s not surprised. Ohio still gets about half its energy from coal, and these rollbacks are more in line with that vision than one of clean energy.

 

Fletcher says that air quality shouldn’t be compromised for politics. “I think a lot of times the debate becomes ‘can we afford to clean up the air, and do we want to make the changes necessary’ – but when you’re dealing with people’s health, you’re possibly putting people in the hospital with asthma attacks, or causing lost days from work, from school – so there’s an economic cost of not doing something and of not cleaning up the air.” He said.

 

“We can clean up the air, there’s things to take, we just have to have the will to do it.”