Author: christopherjpalessandro1462

Superfund sites are areas designated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as toxic areas that need to be cleaned.  There are currently 21 sites that have been designated by the EPA as needing an immediate and intense cleanup.  These sites include a landfill with radioactive waste near St. Louis and a public housing complex with lead contamination in East Chicago.  Even though there are major areas with serious health concerns, the funding for the EPA has decreased dramatically: the Trump administration decreased the Superfund budget by 30 percent.  Because of this, it is difficult to do hasty and comprehensive cleaning.  This is a public health concern, since there are many chemicals that are in sediment which can be detrimental to human health.  These include radioactive material, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and many other toxins which can cause the development of irritation, cancer, and many other ailments.  The way that the EPA defines their sites is somewhat strange as they give higher importance to areas which will help them meet their milestones, or site specific actions, as opposed to actually cleaning up the most detrimental areas (Brady).

The EPA is an instrumental organization which protects the health and safety of people all over the United states.  Figure 1 shows all of the super funds in the United States.  These funds are especially concentrated in New York, which shows the gravity of the situation in this area.  In fact, Brooklyn College is within 4 miles of a superfund site, and there are 4 more within 10 miles of it.

Figure 1: Superfund Sites in the United States

The problem with Superfund sites is that they can be on the Superfund list for decades.  It is expected that the toxins in groundwater and soil will remain for a long time.  This is somewhat uncontrollable.  However, what is controllable is the money in the EPA’s budget.  This budget is necessary since, when there are abandoned Superfund sites with no company to take responsibility, the EPA has to pay.  But, if there is no money, then there is no way to detoxify.  As shown in Figure 2 by the red columns, the number of active Superfund sites have decreased (National Geographic).

Figure 2: EPA Superfunds

To keep this trend going, the EPA needs to keep cleaning, and needs to prioritize their goals correctly, in terms of eliminating the most harmful sites over reaching their milestones.  Once this is done, the effect that harmful chemicals in soil and water can be minimized, which will make these sites, and their surrounding locations a safer place to live in.

Dennis, Brady. “EPA Lists 21 Toxic Superfund Sites That Need ‘Immediate and Intense’ Cleanup.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 8 Dec. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/12/08/epa-lists-21-toxic-superfund-sites-that-need-immediate-and-intense-cleanup/.

“How Close Are You to a Superfund Site?” National Geographic, www.nationalgeographic.com/superfund/.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the air is about 403.3 ppm.  This concentration has grown 50% faster than average over the past decade.  Additionally, these high levels have not existed since 3-5 million years ago.  These prehistoric levels are known from tiny air bubbles in ancient Antarctic ice cores, and from fossils and chemicals that are trapped in sediment.  During this era, the temperature was 2-3°C higher, which caused major portions of ice sheets in Greenland and West Antartica to melt.  This caused the sea level to be 10-20 m higher than it is today (Miles).  Therefore, any major increase in global temperature can become catastrophic and wipe out populated low-lying areas.  To prevent this, the Paris climate accord was discussed in Bonn, where countries met to determine how to limit carbon dioxide emissions from coal, oil, cement, and deforestation.  In this meeting, countries aimed to prevent temperatures from rising by 2°C and vowed to give at least $100 billion per year by 2020 to “help poor countries develop clean energy and build resilience to disasters” (Plumer).  The United States attended this meeting, although it does want to retreat from the agreement by 2020.

To prevent death and destruction, nations including the United States have to take the issue of global warming seriously.  While at Bonn, the United States argues for developing nations to have more transparency with verifying their emissions, but pushed back proposals from smaller nations which asked that rich countries would be transparent as to where they put the funds to help poorer countries (Plumer).  To be effective and for their own benefit, countries should be as clear, purposeful, and useful as possible.  This holds true since the world’s temperature is set to rise by 3°C in the near future (Plumer).  The only way to prevent this and widespread damage from climate change is to lower greenhouse gas emissions.  To do this, policy changes have to occur in as many countries as possible, which would limit emissions from governments, vehicles, and large businesses.  Money used to do this would be put to good use, and an overall profit would be made since the costs of disasters like flooding and from larger, more damaging hurricanes would be much larger than the amount spent to prevent these disasters from occurring.

Miles, Tom. “Carbon Dioxide Levels Grew at Record Pace in 2016, U.N. Says.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 30 Oct. 2017, www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-greenhouse/carbon-dioxide-levels-grew-at-record-pace-in-2016-u-n-says-idUSKBN1CZ0YB.

Plumer, Lisa Friedman And Brad. “What Happened (and Didn’t) at the Bonn Climate Talks.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 18 Nov. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/climate/bonn-climate-cop23.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate&action=click&contentCollection=climate®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=sectionfront.

The Clean Power Plan seeks to make America more reliant on natural-fired power plants and other natural sources of energy as opposed to coal-fired power plants.  This change with directly benefit the health of America’s population since this would decrease the amount of PM2.5.  PM2.5 is any airborne mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets, which has a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less (laqm.defra.gov.uk).  Chemicals emitted from plants( such as sulfur dioxide, VOCs and ammonia) act as precursors to these particle matters.  PM2.5 can cause “respiratory problems, heart disease and lung cancer, conditions that would, therefore, be made less prevalent by climate regulations” (Mooney).  As shown by the chart below, the amount of PM2.5 has been recently decreasing over time due to the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations.

https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/particulate-matter-pm25-trends

However, even these lower than average levels still cause premature deaths and increase in medical costs.  According to a new Trump administration document, 423,000 tons of the PM2.5 precursor gas, sulfur dioxide, can avoided in the year 2030.  According to estimates, this could cause a decrease of 1,900 to 4,500 premature deaths per year after 2030 and can save $4-8 billion dollars in health costs (Mooney).  These estimates are controversial, especially since the EPA has changed a few major assumptions which go into creating them.  Even so, PM2.5 has been proven to be detrimental to health costs and to people biologically.  Therefore, even if the numbers are incorrect, the qualitative analysis behind them holds true.

Air pollution has recently caused about 200,000 American deaths per year (Chu).  This makes air pollution a deadly force, which should be controlled and eradicated.  Air is an essential resource, which needs to be clean for the health and happiness of Americans, and for economic reasons mainly tied to health care.  A main source of air pollution and of PM2.5 is coal plants and transit vehicles.  In order to keep the air clean, pollutant emissions should continue to be regulated, and the amount of coal plants in use should be decreased.  Optimally, America should gain a greater reliance on more natural sources of energy such as solar and wind energy, as well as natural-fired plants.  This clean energy transition would not just improve the health and economic strain of America, but also its sustainability.

References

Mooney, Chris. “Even Trump’s EPA Says Obama’s Climate Plan Would Save Thousands of Lives Each Year.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 1 Nov. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/11/01/trumps-epa-says-obamas-climate-rule-could-prevent-up-to-4500-deaths-annually-moves-to-scrap-it/.

Office, Jennifer Chu MIT News. “Study: Air Pollution Causes 200,000 Early Deaths Each Year in the U.S.” MIT News, 29 Aug. 2013, news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-causes-200000-early-deaths-each-year-in-the-us-0829.

https://laqm.defra.gov.uk/public-health/pm25.html.

Computer projections of the future climate have suggested that New York City will receive harsher, yet fewer storms in the near future.  The power of these storms will be derived from rising sea levels, caused by the melting of Antartic ice.  This ice is melting due to the increase in temperatures caused by global warming.  By 2100, many experts project that the world will be at least eight degrees warmer (Denchack 2016).  The melting of Antartic ice is estimated to cause an increase in the global sea level by three feet by the end of this century.  This will cause a large increase in the amount of storm surges that New York City receives.  A storm surge with a risk level near that of Hurrican Sandy used to be a one-in-500-years event in 1800.  This has changed to a one-in-25-years event and is projected to become an even more frequent event over time.  The rising sea level is not expected to stop by the end of this century but is expected to continue all the way to 2280-2300 if Antarctica will partially collapse.  This means even more storm surges for New York City, which can have many catastrophic effects on it.  Flooding causes erosion of rocks and soil, which can cause buildings to lose their foundations or become waterlogged (National Geographic).

New York City is a highly dense area, which makes it an especially dangerous place for flooding.  Besides decreasing structural integrity, floods carry diseases, hazardous materials, sharp debris, pesticides, and untreated sewage (National Geographic).  This can lead to New York City becoming an incredibly dangerous place to live in even after floods have recreated.  A major storm surge will ruin New York City’s economy since its real estate value will collapse and people will not be able to work there for a period of time after a major flood.  Damage caused by floods are proportional to the sea level which causes them.  This is why the melting of Antarctic ice directly affects the lives of New Yorkers, even though it might be 8,000 miles away.  High sea levels also mean higher death rates since floods will be more extreme, and can cover a larger area.

Works Cited

Mooney, Chris. “New science suggests the ocean could rise more – and faster – than we thought.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 26 Oct. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/10/26/new-science-suggests-the-ocean-could-rise-more-and-faster-than-we-thought/.

Denchak, Melissa. “Are the Effects of Global Warming Really that Bad?” NRDC, 25 July 2017, www.nrdc.org/stories/are-effects-global-warming-really-bad.

Society, National Geographic. “Flood.” National Geographic Society, 9 Oct. 2012, www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/flood/.

Mooney, Chris. “Severe power failures in Puerto Rico and across the Caribbean spur new push for renewable energy.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 28 Sept. 2017,

www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/09/28/storm-driven-power-failures-in-the-caribbean-spur-new-interest-in-renewable-energy/.

Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria have largely destroyed Puerto Rico’s and the Caribbean’s energy grids.  These grids have usually failed due to the overhead transmission lines breaking.  In order to prevent damage in the future, these places want to rebuild their energy grids by creating more localized energy generation and storage.  This would decrease the need for electricity to be delivered in large amounts across great distances.  Because of this reworking, Puerto Rico and Caribbean countries have an opportunity to change their main source of energy that their electric grids run on.  At the moment, imported oil is the main energy source for these countries since these regions have no proven petroleum reserves (U.S. Energy Information Administration).  However, this is not optimal since oil has many environmental impacts from both extraction and burning of it.  For example, some countries use hydraulic fracturing to collect oil.  This process uses machinery to drill into rock and emit high-pressure streams of liquid, which causes oil to be pushed through a receiving end.  This high-pressure stream, however, cracks rocks, making them easier to move, and pushes faults further open.  This increases the likelihood of earthquakes.  Also, burning fossil fuels increases the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which causes pollution and global warming.

Imported oil is also very expensive, and people who receive electricity from this source of energy pay a high price for it.  Although complete reliance on renewable resources for energy would be optimal, this is incredibly unlikely to occur especially because battery storage is very expensive.  Researchers suggest to have towns run mostly on solar power, but to have local microgrids ready to receive natural gas as a contributing fuel.  This would be economical, allow for less electrical grid damage from transmission lines, and be less taxing on the environment.  Also, when there is another natural disaster, each local area will have its own electrical supply.  This means that if one supply is damaged, only the local area powered by this supply would be in the dark; there would be no chains of outages.

“U.S. Energy Information Administration – EIA – Independent Statistics and Analysis.” Puerto Rico – Territory Energy Profile Analysis – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=RQ.