This report really did show a lot of improvement for recent years regarding the air pollution in NYC. Over this time interval of 2008-2013, it seemed that the focus of the city government was to reduce the omissions of Nos. 4 and 6 oils because they were heavily polluting the air even though there was only about 1% of buildings that used these fuels. It seems that the legislation to reduce these two harmful pollutant sources were passed relatively quickly and then enforced, which showed why there was such an improvement to the air quality from 2008 to 2013. The graphs and charts presented in the report also displayed how the air quality improved, which was nice to see visually. However, there should have been some graphs that showed pollution data before 2008 to show the trends on a larger scale and see if we are really improving at a consistent level. The people who were responsible with this project also seemed to be very productive and efficient because they located one of the major sources of the problem and then worked quickly with lawmakers and policymakers to reduce those oil sources. This shows a lot of hope that pollution can be reduced significantly if the right people are at the leaders of the projects focused to stop pollution.
The report also did a nice job of showing how reducing the air pollution directly correlated to reducing health issues related to bad quality air. The graph on page 10 of the report made it really easy to see how health issues related to air pollution is slowly declining, which is is good sign for people living in those areas. Even though the report mentions mainly positive trends relating to air pollution, I liked the fact that they still mentioned there is a lot more work to be done regarding air pollution and that they are now focused on reducing the NOx levels in the air. There are many components that contribute to air pollution and the fact that one component has been reduced doesn’t mean that all the air pollution will just vanish. The report shows that the focus will shift to reducing NOx in the future, which is a good sign because we have to tackle these components one at a time. There has been good progress made towards reducing air pollution and if researchers and government regulators can cooperate together, there should be no reason why air pollution will not continue to be diminishing year after year.
