{"id":218705,"date":"2010-01-13T10:30:12","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T15:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.epa.gov\/blog\/?p=1283"},"modified":"2010-01-13T10:30:12","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T15:30:12","slug":"science-wednesday-onair-breathe-cleaner-live-longer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/218705","title":{"rendered":"Science Wednesday: OnAir: Breathe Cleaner, Live Longer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Each week we write about the science behind environmental protection. Previous Science Wednesdays.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

On my second day of work, I was asked to find a Stephen Colbert video.<\/p>\n

I found it on the Comedy Central web site<\/a><\/p>\n

The subject of Colbert\u2019s mockery is actually one of the most significant air studies recently published. It presents evidence, for the first time, that breathing cleaner air actually makes people live longer.<\/p>\n

A 2009 study by Arden Pope, Majid Ezzati, and Doug Dockery published in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/a> shows that cleaner air in the U.S. has increased life expectancy by an average of 5 months.<\/p>\n

Over the past few decades, EPA has regulated air pollution because various scientific studies <\/a>have determined that it is harmful to human health. As particles emitted into the air have been gradually reduced, pollutant levels in air have significantly decreased.<\/p>\n

But despite the obviously cleaner air, it has been extremely difficult to confirm the resulting health improvements. Couldn\u2019t better health also be attributed to decreased cigarette smoking, better eating habits and health care, or a variety of other changes?<\/p>\n

Pope, Ezzati, and Dockery\u2014an EPA PM Research Center<\/a> grantee\u2014matched air monitoring data with life expectancy data spanning three decades and 51 cities across the US. Using advanced statistical models, they accounted for any other factors that might also affect life span (like cigarette smoking) in order to see the effects of air quality alone.<\/p>\n

Their results showed that an increase in life expectancy of 5 months was directly attributable to an average reduction of 6 micrograms per cubic meter of fine particle air pollution between 1980 and 2000.<\/p>\n

The implication of the study\u2014that EPA air regulations have directly and substantially lengthened human lives\u2014is a triumph for both regulatory agencies and researchers world wide because it shows that air research and policy really do work.<\/p>\n

Stephen Colbert isn\u2019t the only one to recognize the importance of this finding. News of the study was reported in the Washington Post<\/a>,\u00a0 New York Times<\/a>, and in an entire segment on NBC Nightly News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I spoke to Doug Dockery, investigator of the study and scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, to get his take on the impact of this finding.<\/p>\n

“There is an important positive message here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEfforts to reduce particulate air pollution concentrations in the United States over the past 20 years have led to substantial and measurable improvements in life expectancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

About the Author: Becky Fried is a student contractor with EPA\u2019s National Center for Environmental Research, part of the Office of Research and Development. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each week we write about the science behind environmental protection. Previous Science Wednesdays. On my second day of work, I was asked to find a Stephen Colbert video. I found it on the Comedy Central web site The subject of Colbert\u2019s mockery is actually one of the most significant air studies recently published. It presents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}