INHALING THE HAZE

INHALING THE HAZE

Traffic cruises north on Interstate 275 as the Sunsphere looms in the background. There are 13 million miles of vehicular traffic per day in and around Knox County, according to studies by the University of Tennessee and Tennessee Department of Transportation. In Tennessee, about 30 percent of total nitrogen oxide spewed into the environment is contributed by motor vehicles.

Warning: Something's in the air, and it's hazardous to your health

By Fred Brown
News-Sentinel senior writer

WARNING: Breathing deeply in East Tennessee can be harmful to your health.

Or, for that matter, breathing anywhere in the Eastern United States may not be such a great idea. Don't laugh. It's true.

And don't head out for the mountains. They are in worse shape than the Tennessee Valley in most cases. Hide out on the ridge tops for long and you are apt to turn your lungs into fried bacon strips.

Scared? You should be. Knoxville in summertime when the living is easy is about as healthy as dwelling in a dustbin. The city is now recognized as having the eighth worst air quality in the nation. This is not exactly a top 10 list the city and county want to be in, not with a spanking new convention center to lure conventions and people to the area.

And just think, Los Angeles, holding at No. 1 with a population about 14 times the size of Knoxville, has air and haze only seven times worse than Knoxville's.

Ozone is about 8,000 feet thick from earth to sky, top to bottom, across a wide swath of East Tennessee. It's that whitish, sometimes brownish haze you see from about 11 a.m. until dusk when the air chills and the mush dissipates in the valley.

In the upper atmosphere, ozone shields the Earth from the sun's ultraviolet rays. But, ozone in the lower atmosphere is a major contributor to air pollution.

Nitrogen oxide is one of the six principal pollutants – along with carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter and sulfur dioxide – identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a precursor to ozone. It also plays a major role in the formation of particulate matter, haze and acid rain.

Major sources of nitrogen oxide are high-temperature combustion sources such as automobiles and power plants. The EPA says that short-term exposure to nitrogen oxide, three hours or less, can result in permanent changes to lung function. Note: That says

permanent changes.

Go up on the ridges, however, at night, and ozone is still hanging high. In fact, it never leaves the ridges this time of year. It's constant, which is one of the reasons native trees are turning into skeletons. Yes, there is the exotic bug factor: your balsam wooly adelgids and your any-other-wooly-critter that can worm through tree bark.

But if you take a hike on the high road you will note that fir, and now hemlock, are being hushed. Some hardwoods are also hitting hard times. For years, the concern was acid rain, then came the wooly bugs, and now, at least, a few brave souls are saying that maybe it's the atmosphere that is weakening the trees, making them susceptible to the whims of exotic invaders—another blow from other lands.

Ozone is not the only thing you should worry yourself about these days.

Try sulfur dioxide, part of a family of sulfur oxide gases, formed when fuel, mainly fossil fuel and oil, is heated. The EPA says that most of the sulfur dioxide in the nation is the result of coal-fired power plant emissions.

Sulfur dioxide combines with nitrogen oxide as the major culprits in acid rain, which is killing soils, streams and eating the face off of buildings and monuments. Sulfur dioxide has a big role in particulate matter and it, too, is strong enough to scatter light.

The good news about sulfur dioxide, however, according to the EPA, is that ambient concentrations have decreased 50 percent from 1981 to 2000 and 37 percent over the most recent decade.

But particulates in the air are another matter. What happens to them when you breathe? You are sucking in that stuff, at 3,400 gallons of air per person, per day (the EPA estimate for a healthy, normal person), straight to the lungs. Dark specs adhere to the lung sacs and sear lung tissue.

Some health experts are even saying that particulate matter can be linked to lung cancer. Particulates are known to cause lung disease, asthma and upper respiratory problems in the young and old. A generation of children will be cheated out of some years of life because their lung function will decline faster than children who have not been exposed to ozone, sulfur dioxides and nitrogen oxides.

Then the other partner in the air soup is mercury, a toxin that is emerging on the environmental radar screen as something to really worry about when it comes to those big plumes of smoke you see hanging out there. Currently there are no regulations on mercury in the air, but that may change.

Clean air. What are the problems here? The environmentalists say we are killing ourselves, our babies and our environment by allowing utility companies, vehicle manufacturers and others to spew poisons into the atmosphere, and to avoid the clean-up laws that have been on the books for one-quarter of a century.

Utility company representatives ask, "What bad air? We've been scrubbing it since 1970 when the Clean Air Act passed. What about automobile emissions and all the other emissions?"

You can fall down on either side you want to in this battle, but eventually you are going to have to take a side. Congress is about to see to that. You do have a dog in this fight. Your health, and your pocketbook.

In the next few weeks and months, the men and women elected to make these decisions in Washington will map out future energy standards by giving the green light for construction of at least 1,900 new utility plants.

And before the cement mixes, the venerable Clean Air Act, passed in 1970 and first amended in 1990 and strengthened again in 1997, is either about to hold up, or get changed to something that has the ring of clear skies, clean power or clean smokestacks to it. And then, again, maybe even something altogether new will happen.

Clean air. The issues are as many and multiple as they are complex. What to do?

Here are some of the problems, controversies and a few experts who venture ideas about the issues and possible fixes that have become badminton fodder.

The EPA's most recent findings on national ambient air quality show that: since 1970, overall emissions of the six principal pollutants have been reduced by 29 percent. At the same time, the Gross Domestic Product has jumped more than 150 percent, energy consumption has increased by 45 percent and more people are driving their automobiles more miles, up more than 140 percent.

And in spite of the money and technological improvements, the EPA estimates that more than 160 million tons of pollutants are emitted each year into the air we breathe. More than 120 million people, half the nation's population, live in areas where monitored air was listed as unhealthy because of the six principal pollutants.

Indeed, Knox County's air is some of the worst in the nation. The EPA's own studies show that Knoxville's sulfur dioxide emissions are higher than those in Atlanta; Baton Rouge, La.; Charleston, W.Va.; Dallas, El Paso, Texas; Gary, Ind. (at one time the most polluted city in the nation); Jersey City, N.J.; Los Angeles; Memphis; and Nashville.

And although Knox County is below the national nitrogen oxide emission regulation at the moment, nitrogen oxides can spread ozone hundreds of miles and since 1970 those emissions have increased by nearly 20 percent. The increase, the EPA says, is mainly due to "non-road" engines in construction, diesel vehicles, recreational vehicles and power plants.

Call it urban-sprawl-and-fun-in-the-sun pollution syndrome: big earth-moving machines belching diesel as they gulp down and push aside more land for subdivisions, shopping malls and highways.

This past June, the General Accounting Office, Congress' watchdog, reported that the nation's oldest and dirtiest power plants, about 17,000 of them, released twice as much sulfur dioxide into the air than the newer, more modern plants.

This report was issued just as the Bush administration offered the Clear Skies initiative, which would relax costly air pollution regulations when old utilities are repaired, maintained or expanded. The New Source Review portion of the Clean Air Act—which says that if old power plants modernize in any way, they must meet the Clean Air Act standards—would be eliminated under Clear Skies.

This brought a howl from environmental groups and some U.S. senators, mainly Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vermont, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. Jeffords and Lieberman have introduced legislation that delights the environmental policy wonks and gives the willies to the business and power communities.

Jeffords' cleverly named Clean Power Act, stops the Clean Air Act rollbacks, creates strong safeguards and at the same time includes market incentives for new, clean-energy technologies.

There are major differences between the Bush administration's Clear Skies and Jeffords' Clean Power bills. Essentially, the Jeffords bill requires 75 percent reductions in nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide by 2007, whereas Clear Skies puts in 67 and 75 percent reductions, respectively, by 2018. Both proposals allow the continued trading of credits between plants complying with pollution standards and those not in compliance, but the Jeffords bill also addresses carbon dioxide, the principal culprit in global warming. Clear Skies leaves that out.

Environmental critics say the Bush proposal, promoted by EPA administrator Christie Whitman and U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., on their combined trip to the Smokies, delays other pollution reductions required under the Clean Air Act for up to a decade.

The Bush plan also allows 50 percent more sulfur emissions than current law, critics claim.

Whitman counters by promoting the Bush plan as one that will reduce emissions in a more effective and less costly way than the Jeffords or other plans. One reason for that, she says, is that Clear Skies allows the marketplace to work and the Clear Skies initiative "rides on top of the Clean Air Act. I don't do away with it."

The GAO says the aging plants emit about 12.7 pounds of sulfur dioxide for each megawatt-hour of electricity produced. The new plants generate about 6.4 pounds of sulfur dioxide. Worst offenders were the power plants in the Southeast, Midwest and mid-Atlantic states.

More than half of the nation's fossil fuel power plants were built before 1972, including the Tennessee Valley Authority's. In addition, even though there has been a 29 percent drop in overall pollution, smog, which is caused by sunlight and heat reacting with emissions, has actually worsened in the Southeast and in the north.

Lung disease, says North Carolina physician Dr. Clay Ballentine, is a killer and it is on the increase in this region. The American Lung Association, which does not completely connect the dots between air pollution and the explosion in asthma, says some 24 million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with asthma. That is costly, running an estimated $12 billion annually in health costs.

"We are losing the battle against lung disease," says Ballentine, a private physician of internal medicine, treating patients with lung disease. He lives and works in Asheville, and is heavily involved in the national debate on clean air.

"The top three killers in the nation are cardiovascular diseases, cancer and lung disease. Absolutely, cancer and lung disease are linked to air quality," he says.

"Overall we are gaining ground on cancer and cardiovascular disease, but we are losing ground on lung disease. The death rates from lung disease are going up," he says.

"There is an epidemic of asthma, especially childhood asthma. It has risen in incidence in the past 20 years or so. And it is not just the incidence of childhood asthma. Every aspect of asthma has gone up at least 50 percent, some up over 100 percent," says Ballentine.

"Also, the pediatric death rate of asthma has gone up over 100 percent over the past two decades."

Ballentine says two large epidemiological studies from Southern California show that children who spend more time outdoors in heavy concentrations of ozone develop more asthma.

"So ozone not only worsens existing asthma, it actually causes asthma in children," he says.

Ballentine's critics say even though he is a physician treating patients with respiratory and cardiac disease as well as lung cancer, his findings are not backed up by solid science.

Another study shows that children who grow up in ozone-laden air similar to the air in this region have an 11 percent decrease in their lung function, says Ballentine.

When we are born, our lungs continue to grow and to expand until we reach about age 12, at which time the rate of growth becomes set. Around age 20, the aging process begins and lung function starts its slow decline.

"What we are doing is camping lung development at lower levels, so they are starting decline from an already compromised point. This generation of children is being visited with a huge burden with premature lung disease as they age," Ballentine says.

"If you live in air polluted areas, you give up one to three years in life expectancy as compared to a clean air area," he says. "That is about the same as living with a cigarette smoker. It is the same as the numbers for second-hand smoke. Cigarette smokers lose four to six years off their lives. Those exposed to second-hand smoke lose two to three years and those in air-polluted areas lose one to three years," he says.

"So air pollution exposure does not make them die a couple of days earlier. This is shaving years off life expectancy."

The Tennessee Valley Authority is the nation's largest utility. It operates 11 coal-fired plants, seven in Tennessee. It serves more than 8 million customers in seven states. And since it is the biggest kid on the energy block, it attracts close scrutiny.

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy for the Tennessee Clean Air Task Force has been dogged in its self-appointed watchdog role over TVA's plant operations. In its second report card on the agency, the alliance gives TVA good marks for taking "leadership through its voluntary commitment to reducing smog-forming nitrogen oxides."

But the environmental groups still say it is one of the nation's largest polluters and "meet(s) the only bare minimum of required sulfur dioxide emission reductions."

"All the data indicates that things are getting better," says John Shipp, general manager for Environmental Policy and Planning at TVA.

"As an example, five or seven years ago, there were no places that don't meet the standards—the weather."

"Ozone concentrations are going down. Actually they are up and down with the weather."

Over time, Shipp says, the state's ambient air quality has improved "Remarkably That's in spite of the fact that there has been a lot of development, a more of us are here, we drive more miles and we use more electricity than we used to."

Dr. Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, says Tennesseans use more energy per capita than any other people in the nation.

Shipp says polluting emissions from power plants are down, and now the nation is suffering more from automobile emissions than from coal-fired plants.

He cites TVA's statistics to back up his claim: In 1976, TVA emitted 2.3 million tons of sulfur dioxide. Last year, those emissions were down to 600,000 tons.

"So in addition to providing much more electricity to many more people, we have reduced our sulfur dioxide emissions and we have a plan to further reduce those emissions," he says.

He says TVA will build five more scrubbers for the fossil plants in Paradise, Ky., Colbert, Ala., Bull Run and Kingston. Two of the new scrubbers are destined for Kingston.

As for nitrogen oxide, Shipp says TVA began a program to reduce those emissions in 1995.

"When we complete that program at the end of 2005 we will have reduced (nitrogen oxide emissions) by 85 percent," he says.

TVA will spend about $2.7 billion on this program. The program, he says, will cost TVA $1 million a day for the remainder of the decade.

"This is part of our clean air strategy for complying with the regulations of the Clean Air Act to reduce emissions for the protection of public health and the environment in the Tennessee Valley and surrounding region," Shipp says.

Currently, there are no requirements to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. However, even here, he says TVA is doing things such as upgrading its hydroelectric plants, "and in doing so, we are increasing their capacity to produce more electricity, and that is without carbon dioxide."

As for mercury, Shipp says there are some reductions in the heavy metal when controls are put in place on other emissions, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.

"It is not the same everywhere. It depends on the type of coal you are burning, the configuration of the boilers and the order you have your controls. In some cases, mercury emissions will be reduced by the things we are doing to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide."

But right now, there are no requirements to reduce mercury emissions, Shipp says.

In the end, Shipp says it is TVA's business to "produce electricity reliably and at a low cost for 8.5 million people in the Tennessee Valley in a way that is environmentally responsible. That is what we are all about."

"If you live in air polluted areas, you give up one to three years in life expectancy as compared to a clean air area. That is about the same as living with a cigarette smoker."
— Dr. Clay Ballentine, North Carolina physician

Haziest of the hazy

Six of the nation's 25 most ozone-polluted cities are in California. Knoxville ranks No. 8. Three other Tennessee cities also made the list.