This article taught me a lot about the air pollution in New York City. I like that it highlights all the positive change over the past few years. When I think of air pollution, especially in New York City, I always think of it as a lost cause because it seems like too big of a problem to deal with and it seems unrealistic to convince society to make changes. However, reading about the success of PlaNYC, I realized that we could continue to make progress. It also showed me how important environmental research and surveys are because you must know the source of the problem in order to fix it. There were many things I did not know about air pollution before this reading. I knew about carbon dioxide and ozone and the impact of air pollution on our respiratory systems, but I did not know about fine particles, sulfur dioxide, and nickel, which seem to be very harmful. One fact that I also found to be interesting was that in 2005 when 10,000 buildings were burning Nos. 4 and 6, they were emitting more PM2.5 than all the vehicles on the roads of the entire city (2).
The data in this article truly shows the extent of the improvement in recent years. A big change was in the heating oils used. The government passed restriction on the types of oils being used, and combined with the fact that the price of natural gas declined, the result was a 69% decrease in SO2 concentration over the past five years (5). It was also very interesting and encouraging to see that the SO2 concentration from heating oils consistently decreased from year to year, even when the average temperature of the winter got colder and the need for heating was stronger. The city has also lessened the number of gas-burning vehicles on the roads by increasing public transportation and enhancing walking and biking. It is nice that New York City sets such high standards to have the cleanest air quality out of all the large cities in the U.S. It is very impressive, and a testament of the successful citywide efforts, that our ranking of the nine largest cities has jumped from seventh to fourth (8).
It is great to look at all the success of the recent years, and I think the city deserves a ton of credit for it, but there still needs to be a lot more improvement than what we have, especially because the population in the city will continue to grow. It says that the decrease in PM2.5 had prevented 780 deaths, 1,600 emergency department visits for asthma, and 460 hospitalizations for cardiac and respiratory problems per year. Although that is significant, that is not enough. The fact that there are still thousands of people getting sick or dying from air pollution means that we need to make an even bigger effort. PlaNYC has not been able to significantly lower ozone levels, which are also very important for our health (10). We have seen that the government can make a difference when they get involved and enforce the environmental laws, so maybe we can blame the government and say that they must do even more. However, although I have been showed that it is possible to improve our air quality, until society has a major shift in its values, the air quality will not even come close to what we want it to be.
