Air pollution has gone down, but wildfire smoke is here to replace it.
Nick Muller, professor of economics, engineering, and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, explores how to address this.
Faculty Bio:
Nicholas Muller is the Lester and Judith Lave Professor of Economics, Engineering, and Public Policy and works at the intersection of environmental policy and economics. His interdisciplinary research projects focus on distributional weights in benefit cost analysis, calculating air pollution damage from wildfires and economic activity, measuring the costs associated with deployment of carbon capture and storage systems in the United States, and analyzing the effects of environmental policies on the municipal bond market. He teaches microeconomics, sustainable business, energy policy and economics, and environmental and natural resource economics. He has published papers in the American Economic Review, Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.
Transcript:
Since the end of the 20th century, air pollution from human activities in the United States has greatly decreased. In contrast, wildfire emissions have risen, particularly in recent years. Fires are sources of air pollution like fine particulate matter or PM2.5. Acute and long-term exposure to PM2.5 is associated with increased mortality risk. Hence, in addition to the costs associated with fires themselves (deaths in the fires and property damage), there are substantial costs associated with exposure to the resulting smoke which can travel hundreds of miles from the blazes.
Socially vulnerable populations are disproportionally exposed to high levels of PM2.5 in the U.S. Further, vulnerable populations are more likely to experience chronic illness and are less likely to have adequate health care making them more susceptible to risks from pollution.
In our research, we estimate that wildfire and prescribed burn smoke caused 200 billion dollars in health damages in 2017, a sum driven by 20,000 premature deaths. Nearly half of this damage came from wildfires, in the West, with the remainder from prescribed burns, in the Southeast. While vulnerable populations incur greater smoke exposure, premature mortality risk is systematically driven by age of the exposed populations. Senior citizens represented 16% of the population but incurred 75% of the mortality risk.
Our work suggests measures for local, state, and national decision-makers to address the growing environmental hazard of fire smoke and its impact on vulnerable communities. These include expanding real-time air quality monitoring, investing in filtration technologies to establish indoor, clean air spaces, and distributing respiratory protection, such as N95 masks, during smoke events.
