Annotated Bibliography

This source features a report by Jill U. Adams on the dangers, and current regulations of air pollution and climate change. Holding a Ph.D. in pharmacology from Emory University, the author primarily writes a health column for the Washington Post. She has also been featured in the magazines Audubon, Scientific American and Science. Because this article covers climate change, there is an inherent liberal bias. However, this bias coincides with irrefutable scientific data proving the existence of climate change. The audience for this article is anyone effected by air pollution and climate change; just about everyone. This source upholds my speculation that human beings have a significant effect on the climate. Before reading this article, I wasn’t aware that 55 million people a year died from air pollution. I found this source on CQ Researcher while searching for ‘pollution.’

Tyre, Peg. "The Writing Revolution." The Atlantic. The Atlantic, Oct. 2012. Web. 20 Feb. 2013.

The most prominent example of this is Salt Lake City. It is the largest city in Utah, and it is also the most polluted. This is a problem for the citizens of Salt Lake City. The levels of pollution there have more frequently reached unhealthy levels in recent years. This creates a serious health risk to both those with breathing problems and those who are perfectly healthy. “For the last few years, [Salt Lake City] has been grappling with one of the nation's most vexing pollution problems, where atmospheric inversions during the winter months lead to a thick fog of dirty air cloaking the region.” (Seen) It is a severe problem that has only gotten worse with time. Just last year, Salt Lake

Improved air quality wasn’t a subject of national concern until the mid 1900s. After decades of coal burning, unregulated gas emissions from cars and the excessive burning of fossil fuels, people started noticing bad air quality as a hazard to their lives. Over several decades, after seeing the costly effects air pollution was having on the environment and people’s health, interest groups like the Friends of The Earth club and the influences of Theodore Roosevelt and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring finally came together to persuade the government to enforce legislation that would reduce air pollution. Because of these efforts, the policies of the Clean Air Act of 1963 and the Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Act of 1965, that aimed to control air pollution and raise air quality standards, helped create the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on December 2, 1970. Since then, the EPA has passed more air quality improvement acts, and amendments to previous acts passed, to increase restrictions on air pollutants, with their main policy concern being the Clean Air Act. Improved air quality acts imposed by the EPA have been successful in cleaning the United States’ air quality by reducing ground-level ozone pollution and reducing emissions, allowing for a decrease in pollution related deaths/illnesses and a better standard of living. The EPA, through regulations and the Clean Air Act, has delivered it’s promise to improve air quality in the United States.

Air pollution is not a modern concept confined to the twentieth century or to the industrial

Researching the topic of air pollution Atlanta using the Galileo database was easy because there are several filters to narrow down the search. Furthermore, the database contains several non-periodical and peer-reviewed articles related to the topic. Using the criteria outlined above, the research selected two peer-reviewed articles from reliable academic sources. The criteria were reliable in selecting six peer-reviewed articles that covered the topic of air pollution in Atlanta comprehensively. Nevertheless, only one article provided the most reliable information related to the topic.

Most people never stop to think about the sanitation of the air around them. The only places that people ruminate over air quality are largely populated states and cities. One of these places is California. Ominous clouds of smog and polluted air constantly hover over the citizens. These people don’t ever look up and worry, because smog is a usual appearance. This issue destroys not only the earth and its atmosphere, but the very center of our lives: our bodies’ health. Particulate pollutants are like the retroviruses of the world: well-rounded and dangerous. Air pollution is the largest ecological issue of our time because the contaminated air lingers all over the world constantly being augmented to, and further threatening the world and those who lives in it.

Trends are changing with an increasing population in many metropolitan cities like San Diego, CA. Many individuals are spending more time in microenvironments like vehicles, making them more vulnerable to air pollutants and combustion by-products like PM 1.0, PM 2.5 and black carbon. These air pollutants have been associated to adverse human health effects including asthma, damage to DNA, cardiovascular effects, bronchitis, low birth weight and other respiratory symptoms.

According to a 2005 study, air pollution may be estimated to be responsible for 3% of adult cardiopulmonary disease mortality; 5% of trachea and bronchus mortality; and in children 1% of mortality from acute respiratory infections in urban areas throughout the world.(Cohen et al., 2005)

Air pollution used to be a natural occurrence that had no major effects on the Earth's inhabitants. Such instances were caused by forest fires, emission from the Earth, and volcanoes. It was not until humans discovered how to start and control fire that we started over polluting the planet. For many years cities have struggled through thick smog due to dense smoke emissions. Officials, like in Los Angeles, have tried to adopt multiple measures to combat the smog but the city, and the rest of the world, continued to boom in industry. Thus, overwhelming the air pollution reforms the city tried to enforce. However, it was not until about seventy-one years ago during the height of World War Two, when the dire consequences of air pollution began to dramatically increase. Instead of a foreign enemy attacking the city of Los Angeles, it was a domestic one, smog. On July 26, 1943 downtown Los Angeles was covered in smoke and fumes. The smog was extreme to the extent that it cut off visibility of three blocks. This spontaneous “gas attack” came about in the middle of a heat wave. For the citizens it was unbearable. They suffered from throat-scraping and eye stinging sensations. The people soon realized that something must have gone wrong.. The day after the incident, the city officials blamed the Southern California Gas Co.'s Aliso Street plant for the catastrophe. In order to stop the smog, the angry public had the plant shut down temporarily. Yet they were unpleasantly surprised to

Every human on the earth breath the air around to live and survive. However, the quality of the air is an important thing to take care of. Because, there are pollutants that can be present in the air at high levels. When present, there are many effects that can occur. So, let’s look at my region, the pollutants present in the air and what these pollutants can do.

The research presented in this paper will discuss poor air quality due to outdoor air pollution and its’ effects on human health. I have examined numerous documents, learning about the anthropogenic causes of the air pollution in addition to studying the hazards the contaminated air presents to the public, particularly in urban areas. I have created a policy that I believe directly addresses the current needs of the atmosphere in order to continue to reduce the amount of pollution in the air we breathe, in turn improving our overall health.

Las Vegas, Nevada and the surrounding Clark County ranks in the 90-100th percentile for the dirtiest/worst counties in the U.S. in terms of pollution from Carbon Monoxide emissions, Nitrogen Oxide emissions, PM-2.5 emissions, PM-10 emissions, and Sulfur Dioxide emissions (Scorecard, 2011b). These same pollutants are known to cause cytotoxic and functional damages to human airways through oxidative stress and inflammation; which are linked to respiratory diseases in children (Ferrante, Antona, Malizia, Montalbano, & La Grutta, 2016). Currently, Clark County is home to 29,146 children with asthma and 130,553 adults with asthma; that’s 7.55% of the population of 2,114,801 (American Lung Association, 2017). There seems to be a correlation between the high levels of pollution in Clark County and the high numbers of people with asthma that is impacting the community’s quality of life in terms of health and the economy, and it is having an adverse effect on the environment as well.

The proximity that people have to freeways and industries contribute to the diseases one might develop. Children are affected by air pollution the most because they develop or are born with some type of lung related disease. “Children who live near freeways, ports, and rail yards are five times more likely to have lung damage than kids who don’t.”(NRDC, 2017) Barrio Logan is located in a much-polluted area and it is surrounded by freeways. The community is one of the most affected neighborhoods in San Diego and its location is prominent for its high levels of air pollution. “..it is located in a large urban area, near major freeways, industrial sources, and neighborhood sources such as gas stations, dry cleaners, and automotive repair facilities.” (CalEPA, n.p) Residents here are highly prone to develop asthma. “ A report released in 2014 by the California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) shows asthma-related hospital visits in the 92113 ZIP code fell within the highest 10th percentile in the state. On average, 80 of every 10,000 residents visited an emergency center for asthma between 2007 and 2009.” (inewsource, 2014) In City Heights, air pollution is also an issue. People in this neighborhood also experience greater risks of developing or having a lung related problem. “EPA Respiratory Risk data from 2009 show that City Heights residents experience a 4-5 times greater risk than

Historically (pre-1892), the agrarian landscape was conducive to clean air; a time void of pollutants; however, with the advent of the industrial revolution, air quality was forever changed. Interestingly, two of today’s leading contributors of emissions are the result of two significant man-made events dating back to 1892 and 1893, which first began polluting the air. First came the emergence of factories with their emission billowing smokestacks (Davis & Henderson, 2011), which was followed by the first gasoline-powered automobile housing an internal combustion engine in 1983 (The Library of Congress, 2017). Although there’s shared knowledge about the importance of air quality and the health implications associated with air pollution, factories are still releasing toxic fumes and automobiles are releasing exhaust (Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry, 2013). Subsequently, that which was the catalyst that carried society into the modern era remains a public health threat 125 years later.