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Soot, or in scientific parlance “fine particulate matter,” isn’t just the stuff that blackens window sills or dulls car finishes — it’s a serious health hazard, linked to cardiopulmonary disease, asthma, allergies, and lung cancer, as well as a host of other harmful conditions.
Until recently, the annual ambient air quality standard established by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was a maximum of 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air of fine particles smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5).
But on February 7, 2024, the EPA announced that the Biden-Harris administration had finalized a new standard of 9 mcg PM2.5/per cubic meter of air.
In addition, the EPA reported that it will be modifying its PM2.5 monitoring network to include a factor that will account for the proximity to pollution sources of at-risk populations.
In a press release, the EPA said that the modification “will advance environmental justice by ensuring localized data collection in overburdened areas,” with the goal of informing future National Ambient Air Quality Standards reviews.
In a statement supporting the new standard, Environment America, a network of 30 state environmental groups, noted that in “the United States, the largest human-caused sources of soot pollution are fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — burned for electricity and transportation. Since the government last updated its standards, new research has found there may be no safe amount of air pollution and the World Health Organization cut in half its guidelines for allowable particulate matter (soot) pollution. The final rule lowers allowable soot limits for annual exposure by 25%, although it leaves the 24-hour limit unchanged, allowing for temporary pollution spikes.”
A Good Start
Pulmonologists interviewed for this article also applauded the tightened PM2.5 standard, but said that the change doesn’t go far enough.
“We know that particulate matter, also called particulate pollution, is the most dangerous form of air pollution, and there has been an extensive body of literature which outlines the negative impact of air pollution and poor air quality not only on respiratory health, but also on cardiovascular disease, premature pregnancies, mental health, and death,” Anne C. Coates, MD, FCCP, a pediatric pulmonologist at MaineHealth in Portland, Maine, said in an interview with this news organization.
“Lowering the limits certainly can help promote overall health as well as reduce asthma, COPD exacerbations, heart attacks, hospitalizations and death,” she said.
However “I wish that the EPA had gone further to address lowering the daily particulate matter standards because, remember, what they issued on February 7th was the reduction in the annual particulate matter,” she noted.
With the tighter standards, “things are going the right way,” said Priya Balakrishnan, MD, MS, FCCP, assistant professor in the Section of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at West Virginia University in Morgantown.
Following Trump administration efforts to weaken regulatory authority and reverse environmental regulations promulgated under President Obama, “this is the first kind of positive legislation moving forward,” she said in an interview with this news organization.
“Obviously, it’s not ideal, because it’s just monitoring the annual particulate matter 2.5 levels rather than daily ones, but it’s still a change in the right direction,” she said.
Deadly Air
As Dr. Coates and Dr. Balakrishnan noted, the revised ambient air standard is averaged over a year, and as such may not accurately capture periods where particulate matter concentrations are dangerously high, as occurs in many US states and Canadian provinces during wildfire season, or when one of the more than 200 remaining coal-fired power plants in the US release clouds of soot during daily operations or especially during periods of high electricity demand.
Some pollution sources are worse than others, as shown by a study published in the November 24, 2023, issue of Science. Health and environmental investigators reported that among Medicare beneficiaries, exposure to PM2.5 from sulfur dioxide released by coal burning for electricity generation was associated with a doubling in risk of death compared to PM2.5 exposure from all other sources.
Air pollution has also been identified as a key factor in the development of non–small cell lung cancer in nonsmokers, according to Charles Swanton, PhD, of the Francis Crick Institute, and chief clinician of Cancer Research UK, both in London, and his colleagues.
As Dr. Swanton reported at the 2022 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress, among 447,932 participants in the UK Biobank, increasing exposure to PM2.5 was significantly associated with seven cancer types, including lung cancer. They also saw an association between PM2.5 exposure levels and EGFR-mutated lung cancer incidence in the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Taiwan.
And as the investigators showed in mouse models, exposure to PM2.5 of lung cells bearing somatic EGFR and KRAS mutations causes recruitment of macrophages that in turn secrete interleukin-1B, resulting in a transdifferentiation of EGFR-mutated cells into a cancer stem cell state, and tumor formation.
Monitoring At-Risk Communities
Lisa Frank, executive director of the Washington legislative office of Environment America, explained in an interview how the revised standards may result in improvements in air quality, especially for at-risk populations such as lower-income urban dwellers.
“Regulations on particulate matter have been around for a few decades now, so there’s an established process that the state agencies and the EPA go through to make sure that air quality standards are met,” she said.
Over the next several years, the EPA will designate areas of the United States as either being in “attainment” (meeting primary or secondary ambient air quality standards) or in “nonattainment.”
“After that, implementation is up to the state and local air boards. They all are required to have a certain number of air quality monitors to keep track of pollution and they also handle reviewing permits for new construction, highways or other projects in that county that might affect air pollution,” she said.
Depending upon their size, counties are required under federal law to have air-quality monitoring sites in areas that are likely to have the worst air quality, such as major highways or urban traffic corridors.
Under the revised regulations, counties will be expected to have air-quality monitoring stations in or near at-risk communities, which should help to mitigate inequities that arise from proximity of polluting power plants in less-advantaged locations, Ms. Frank said.
“I think obviously any improvement in air quality is going to benefit everyone who breathes there, which I hope is all of us, but certainly people who already have the most air pollution hopefully should see bigger gains as well,” she said.
All persons interviewed for this article reported no relevant conflicts of interest. Dr. Coates and Dr. Balakrishnan are members of the editorial advisory board for CHEST Physician.
Soot, or in scientific parlance “fine particulate matter,” isn’t just the stuff that blackens window sills or dulls car finishes — it’s a serious health hazard, linked to cardiopulmonary disease, asthma, allergies, and lung cancer, as well as a host of other harmful conditions.
Until recently, the annual ambient air quality standard established by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was a maximum of 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air of fine particles smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5).
But on February 7, 2024, the EPA announced that the Biden-Harris administration had finalized a new standard of 9 mcg PM2.5/per cubic meter of air.
In addition, the EPA reported that it will be modifying its PM2.5 monitoring network to include a factor that will account for the proximity to pollution sources of at-risk populations.
In a press release, the EPA said that the modification “will advance environmental justice by ensuring localized data collection in overburdened areas,” with the goal of informing future National Ambient Air Quality Standards reviews.
In a statement supporting the new standard, Environment America, a network of 30 state environmental groups, noted that in “the United States, the largest human-caused sources of soot pollution are fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — burned for electricity and transportation. Since the government last updated its standards, new research has found there may be no safe amount of air pollution and the World Health Organization cut in half its guidelines for allowable particulate matter (soot) pollution. The final rule lowers allowable soot limits for annual exposure by 25%, although it leaves the 24-hour limit unchanged, allowing for temporary pollution spikes.”
A Good Start
Pulmonologists interviewed for this article also applauded the tightened PM2.5 standard, but said that the change doesn’t go far enough.
“We know that particulate matter, also called particulate pollution, is the most dangerous form of air pollution, and there has been an extensive body of literature which outlines the negative impact of air pollution and poor air quality not only on respiratory health, but also on cardiovascular disease, premature pregnancies, mental health, and death,” Anne C. Coates, MD, FCCP, a pediatric pulmonologist at MaineHealth in Portland, Maine, said in an interview with this news organization.
“Lowering the limits certainly can help promote overall health as well as reduce asthma, COPD exacerbations, heart attacks, hospitalizations and death,” she said.
However “I wish that the EPA had gone further to address lowering the daily particulate matter standards because, remember, what they issued on February 7th was the reduction in the annual particulate matter,” she noted.
With the tighter standards, “things are going the right way,” said Priya Balakrishnan, MD, MS, FCCP, assistant professor in the Section of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at West Virginia University in Morgantown.
Following Trump administration efforts to weaken regulatory authority and reverse environmental regulations promulgated under President Obama, “this is the first kind of positive legislation moving forward,” she said in an interview with this news organization.
“Obviously, it’s not ideal, because it’s just monitoring the annual particulate matter 2.5 levels rather than daily ones, but it’s still a change in the right direction,” she said.
Deadly Air
As Dr. Coates and Dr. Balakrishnan noted, the revised ambient air standard is averaged over a year, and as such may not accurately capture periods where particulate matter concentrations are dangerously high, as occurs in many US states and Canadian provinces during wildfire season, or when one of the more than 200 remaining coal-fired power plants in the US release clouds of soot during daily operations or especially during periods of high electricity demand.
Some pollution sources are worse than others, as shown by a study published in the November 24, 2023, issue of Science. Health and environmental investigators reported that among Medicare beneficiaries, exposure to PM2.5 from sulfur dioxide released by coal burning for electricity generation was associated with a doubling in risk of death compared to PM2.5 exposure from all other sources.
Air pollution has also been identified as a key factor in the development of non–small cell lung cancer in nonsmokers, according to Charles Swanton, PhD, of the Francis Crick Institute, and chief clinician of Cancer Research UK, both in London, and his colleagues.
As Dr. Swanton reported at the 2022 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress, among 447,932 participants in the UK Biobank, increasing exposure to PM2.5 was significantly associated with seven cancer types, including lung cancer. They also saw an association between PM2.5 exposure levels and EGFR-mutated lung cancer incidence in the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Taiwan.
And as the investigators showed in mouse models, exposure to PM2.5 of lung cells bearing somatic EGFR and KRAS mutations causes recruitment of macrophages that in turn secrete interleukin-1B, resulting in a transdifferentiation of EGFR-mutated cells into a cancer stem cell state, and tumor formation.
Monitoring At-Risk Communities
Lisa Frank, executive director of the Washington legislative office of Environment America, explained in an interview how the revised standards may result in improvements in air quality, especially for at-risk populations such as lower-income urban dwellers.
“Regulations on particulate matter have been around for a few decades now, so there’s an established process that the state agencies and the EPA go through to make sure that air quality standards are met,” she said.
Over the next several years, the EPA will designate areas of the United States as either being in “attainment” (meeting primary or secondary ambient air quality standards) or in “nonattainment.”
“After that, implementation is up to the state and local air boards. They all are required to have a certain number of air quality monitors to keep track of pollution and they also handle reviewing permits for new construction, highways or other projects in that county that might affect air pollution,” she said.
Depending upon their size, counties are required under federal law to have air-quality monitoring sites in areas that are likely to have the worst air quality, such as major highways or urban traffic corridors.
Under the revised regulations, counties will be expected to have air-quality monitoring stations in or near at-risk communities, which should help to mitigate inequities that arise from proximity of polluting power plants in less-advantaged locations, Ms. Frank said.
“I think obviously any improvement in air quality is going to benefit everyone who breathes there, which I hope is all of us, but certainly people who already have the most air pollution hopefully should see bigger gains as well,” she said.
All persons interviewed for this article reported no relevant conflicts of interest. Dr. Coates and Dr. Balakrishnan are members of the editorial advisory board for CHEST Physician.
Soot, or in scientific parlance “fine particulate matter,” isn’t just the stuff that blackens window sills or dulls car finishes — it’s a serious health hazard, linked to cardiopulmonary disease, asthma, allergies, and lung cancer, as well as a host of other harmful conditions.
Until recently, the annual ambient air quality standard established by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was a maximum of 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air of fine particles smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5).
But on February 7, 2024, the EPA announced that the Biden-Harris administration had finalized a new standard of 9 mcg PM2.5/per cubic meter of air.
In addition, the EPA reported that it will be modifying its PM2.5 monitoring network to include a factor that will account for the proximity to pollution sources of at-risk populations.
In a press release, the EPA said that the modification “will advance environmental justice by ensuring localized data collection in overburdened areas,” with the goal of informing future National Ambient Air Quality Standards reviews.
In a statement supporting the new standard, Environment America, a network of 30 state environmental groups, noted that in “the United States, the largest human-caused sources of soot pollution are fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — burned for electricity and transportation. Since the government last updated its standards, new research has found there may be no safe amount of air pollution and the World Health Organization cut in half its guidelines for allowable particulate matter (soot) pollution. The final rule lowers allowable soot limits for annual exposure by 25%, although it leaves the 24-hour limit unchanged, allowing for temporary pollution spikes.”
A Good Start
Pulmonologists interviewed for this article also applauded the tightened PM2.5 standard, but said that the change doesn’t go far enough.
“We know that particulate matter, also called particulate pollution, is the most dangerous form of air pollution, and there has been an extensive body of literature which outlines the negative impact of air pollution and poor air quality not only on respiratory health, but also on cardiovascular disease, premature pregnancies, mental health, and death,” Anne C. Coates, MD, FCCP, a pediatric pulmonologist at MaineHealth in Portland, Maine, said in an interview with this news organization.
“Lowering the limits certainly can help promote overall health as well as reduce asthma, COPD exacerbations, heart attacks, hospitalizations and death,” she said.
However “I wish that the EPA had gone further to address lowering the daily particulate matter standards because, remember, what they issued on February 7th was the reduction in the annual particulate matter,” she noted.
With the tighter standards, “things are going the right way,” said Priya Balakrishnan, MD, MS, FCCP, assistant professor in the Section of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at West Virginia University in Morgantown.
Following Trump administration efforts to weaken regulatory authority and reverse environmental regulations promulgated under President Obama, “this is the first kind of positive legislation moving forward,” she said in an interview with this news organization.
“Obviously, it’s not ideal, because it’s just monitoring the annual particulate matter 2.5 levels rather than daily ones, but it’s still a change in the right direction,” she said.
Deadly Air
As Dr. Coates and Dr. Balakrishnan noted, the revised ambient air standard is averaged over a year, and as such may not accurately capture periods where particulate matter concentrations are dangerously high, as occurs in many US states and Canadian provinces during wildfire season, or when one of the more than 200 remaining coal-fired power plants in the US release clouds of soot during daily operations or especially during periods of high electricity demand.
Some pollution sources are worse than others, as shown by a study published in the November 24, 2023, issue of Science. Health and environmental investigators reported that among Medicare beneficiaries, exposure to PM2.5 from sulfur dioxide released by coal burning for electricity generation was associated with a doubling in risk of death compared to PM2.5 exposure from all other sources.
Air pollution has also been identified as a key factor in the development of non–small cell lung cancer in nonsmokers, according to Charles Swanton, PhD, of the Francis Crick Institute, and chief clinician of Cancer Research UK, both in London, and his colleagues.
As Dr. Swanton reported at the 2022 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress, among 447,932 participants in the UK Biobank, increasing exposure to PM2.5 was significantly associated with seven cancer types, including lung cancer. They also saw an association between PM2.5 exposure levels and EGFR-mutated lung cancer incidence in the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Taiwan.
And as the investigators showed in mouse models, exposure to PM2.5 of lung cells bearing somatic EGFR and KRAS mutations causes recruitment of macrophages that in turn secrete interleukin-1B, resulting in a transdifferentiation of EGFR-mutated cells into a cancer stem cell state, and tumor formation.
Monitoring At-Risk Communities
Lisa Frank, executive director of the Washington legislative office of Environment America, explained in an interview how the revised standards may result in improvements in air quality, especially for at-risk populations such as lower-income urban dwellers.
“Regulations on particulate matter have been around for a few decades now, so there’s an established process that the state agencies and the EPA go through to make sure that air quality standards are met,” she said.
Over the next several years, the EPA will designate areas of the United States as either being in “attainment” (meeting primary or secondary ambient air quality standards) or in “nonattainment.”
“After that, implementation is up to the state and local air boards. They all are required to have a certain number of air quality monitors to keep track of pollution and they also handle reviewing permits for new construction, highways or other projects in that county that might affect air pollution,” she said.
Depending upon their size, counties are required under federal law to have air-quality monitoring sites in areas that are likely to have the worst air quality, such as major highways or urban traffic corridors.
Under the revised regulations, counties will be expected to have air-quality monitoring stations in or near at-risk communities, which should help to mitigate inequities that arise from proximity of polluting power plants in less-advantaged locations, Ms. Frank said.
“I think obviously any improvement in air quality is going to benefit everyone who breathes there, which I hope is all of us, but certainly people who already have the most air pollution hopefully should see bigger gains as well,” she said.
All persons interviewed for this article reported no relevant conflicts of interest. Dr. Coates and Dr. Balakrishnan are members of the editorial advisory board for CHEST Physician.