New Yorkers Are Dying from Air Pollution Caused by Other States

(Bloomberg) -- Roughly half of deaths related to poor air quality in the United States occur in states where the pollution did not originate, according to a study released Wednesday in the journal Nature.
 
The study found that New York experienced the largest number of premature deaths from air pollution created outside the state—3800 in 2018. Wyoming most consistently produced pollution that affected the heath of those in other states. North Dakota and West Virginia were also found to be offenders.

Although it’s been well known for some time that cross-state air pollution is damaging—particularly on the East Coast, where pollution travels from the Rust Belt because of air current patterns—the study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the first to quantify the premature mortality effects.
 
“The numbers of deaths that are due to cross-state pollution are much bigger than anything we thought,” said Steven Barrett, the principal researcher on the paper who is a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
 
The researchers hope their work will inform public policy. Current air pollution regulation allows largely for local regulation of local sources said Tracey Holloway, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies air quality but did not work on the study.  “Each state can do a ton to control air pollution within their own borders, but they only have bits and pieces to address air pollution coming from other states.”
 
A slew of recent scientific studies have shed new light on the negative impacts of  air pollution on human health. However, estimates of annual deaths can vary widely depending on variables and the methodology of the study.  
 
The MIT researchers focused on pollution that comes from combustion, such as car and truck engines, power plants, and home heating and cooling units. They aimed not only to estimate deaths from cross-state air pollution but to break down the pollution impacts by each of these sectors. It took more than a decade to develop the computational model that would make this possible, Barrett said.
 
The researchers looked at three years—2005, 2011, and 2018—and found that air pollution deaths had actually decreased from roughly 111,000 a year to 76,500 largely due to a drop in emissions from power plants. Power plant emissions are one of the few categories regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under cross-state agreements.
 
During the years covered by the study, the percentage of deaths caused by out-of-state pollution declined from 53 percent to 41 percent. This is also related to the clean up of the electricity generation, the report said. By 2018, there were 13,000 fewer out-of-state deaths from electricity generation than in 2005.
 
The researchers showed, however, that sectors of pollution that are subject to less regulation by the EPA had become greater sources of cross-state pollution. Commercial and residential emissions are now double that of the power generation sector.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Emily Biuso at ebiuso@bloomberg.net

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