I have lived in New York City all of my life and have always known that the city’s air is full of pollutants. But what exactly are “air pollutants” and where do they come from? I had always assumed it was just car exhaust and fumes from the factories. I did not have a single iota of a clue what it was actually doing to the human body.
What it all comes down to is chemistry. Mercury, cadmium, copper, arsenic, lead, PCBs, sulfur-, nitrogen-, and carbon-oxides, all of the above have some adverse effect on the body over a certain level. What is scary about this information is that it is not confidential or hidden. People know that the concentration of car exhaust in the city is harmful. Companies know that pollutants are released into the air if the proper filters are not attached. Yet…there seems to be this attitude of turning a blind eye towards these unpleasant facts. It is almost as if this is just another part of “the cost of living.”
But what is the cost? From an economic standpoint, using cheaper methods of manufacturing (i.e., ones that release more pollutants) will drive down the price of the product. The problem here is that people cannot put a price tag on health. Health, whether it is personal health or the health of the population, cannot be quantified with precise numbers. It is as if health, without a number, does not factor into the economic equation. This seems to be why it is always forgotten.
Another part of the problem is that, below a certain threshold, pollutants do not cause alarm but they still inflict harm. If the amount of pollutants in the air is just tolerable enough to ignore, then any attempt to neutralize the threat seems like an unnecessary hassle. Even when someone’s personal health is at stake, they are willing to sacrifice a little bit of health in exchange for material comfort or a little extra pocket change.
Also note that air pollutants are not some distant concern we can ship to a landfill in Texas; it is right outside your door. It would be easy to argue “out of sight, out of mind” for a number of pollutants, but even when the damage is done on a daily basis, it seems to not bother most people.
In the previous paragraphs I realize that I have only spoken about the harmful effects and people’s attitudes in a very generalized manner. The next step is to look at the origin of the problem to figure out where to solve the issues. In the previous lecture, we started a discussion about the study of Central Park’s lake. Lead is known neurotoxin and was removed from gasoline in the late seventies to the early eighties in order to minimize its emission into the air. But did it work? We ended the class with one hint: the decline in lead concentrations of the lakebed started to decrease in the early sixties, more than a decade before lead was removed from gasoline. So where did it come from? My guess is lead-based paint.
