Wednesday, October 06, 1999
Smog's effects on health assessed
Ozone's toll goes largely unnoticed
BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Bad as they were, statistics released Tuesday on smog-related illnesses understated the problem in Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky, a local professor of environmental health cautioned.
Dr. George Leikauf called the numbers alarming, but said they ignored the additional, pernicious effect of tiny soot particles from diesel exhaust and other sources that lodge in lungs.
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SMOG'S EFFECTS
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The new report, Out of Breath: Health Effects from Ozone in the Eastern United States, estimates the following toll for the smog season in Hamilton, Butler, Warren, Clermont, Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties:
• 1,170 emergency room visits for asthma and other respiratory problems on high ozone days.
• 57,000 asthma attacks triggered by smog.
• 390 hospital admissions for asthma and other respiratory problems on smoggy days.
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He spoke at a press conference where a new report, “Out of Breath: Health Effects from Ozone in the Eastern United States,” was released by Ohio Public Interest Research Group (Ohio PIRG), the Sierra Club and the American Lung Association.
Illnesses caused or exacerbated by ozone — the breath-taking and eye-stinging ingredient in smog — were calculated by Abt Associates, a Bethesda, Md., consultant for a national Clean Air Task Force.
Using 1997 data — the best available when the study began — Abt estimated smog-season health effects for Hamilton, Butler, Warren, Clermont, Boone, Kenton and Campbell Counties — the Cincinnati smog region — to include 1,170 emergency room visits for asthma and other respiratory problems on high ozone days.
Had that many people been victims of a single incident, they would be “front page news,” activist Kate Strouse told reporters. Instead, the summer toll goes almost unnoticed.
A Cleveland-based field representative of Ohio PIRG, Ms. Strouse called for tougher controls on such ozone sources as coal-fired power stations and vehicles.
“It's not just an annoyance, it's a public-health threat,” Conrad Schneider, project manager for the sponsoring task force, said in a telephone interview.
Glen Brand, a Clifton resident and spokesman for the Cincinnati and national Sierra Club, renewed his call for tougher pollution limits on sports utility vehicles and power stations, especially those with older units which are exempt from new-facility standards.
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