CHAPTER 17 POLLUTION TODAY: SPECIFIC TRENDS AND ISSUES Dr. Ehrlich predicted...that the oceans could be as dead as Lake Erie by 1979. Today Lake Erie is palatable, and Dr. Ehrlich still is not (P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores, p.198). CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: TABLE OF CONTENTS Water Pollution Socialist Countries Conclusion Air pollution caused by human action has long been recognized as a problem. For example, "in about 1300 under Edward I, a Londoner was executed for burning sea coal in contravention of an Act designed to reduce smoke." Smoke and soot (known technically as "particulates") are the oldest and most dangerous of these pollutions. It has long been known that smoky air can be lethal, as figure 17-1 for Manchester, England, and Table 17-1 of disasters in the U.S. and elsewhere show. And recent statistical studies have confirmed the damage of industrial soot particles, even at relatively low levels; Joel Schwartz found that at presently-acceptable levels, "as many as 60,000 U. S. residents per year may die from breathing particulates." (The phrase "as many as" can be tricky; studies of other industrial air pollutants do not show nearly so much damage to health.) This study, plus the cost-benefit analysis of Krupnick and Portney discussed earlier, constitute reason to focus on dust particulates. Fig 17-1 for Manchester from Elsom. Table 17-1 The history of soot and other air pollutions in the developed countries includes a long period of increasingly dirty air accompanying the growth of industrial activity, and then a decline without observable end, as may be seen in figure 17-2 for London and figure 17-3 for Pittsburgh. Figures 17-2 and 17-3 The variety of air pollution measurements are difficult to sort out at first. They fall into the two general groups, a) emissions, which can be estimated after the fact by knowledge of industrial activity, but do not reveal how bad the air actually was for human beings, and b) measurements of air quality, which are relevant but more scarce. There tends to be a general correlation between emissions and airborne concentrations (at least for particulates and sulfur dioxide), as figures 17-4 and 17- 5 show, and hence the emissions data are meaningful even in the absence of air quality data. I'll present both sorts of measures for recent decades in the United States, utilizing the series published in the Statistical Abstract so that readers can easily update the positive trends for themselves. And I remind you that dust particulates are the most important air pollution, with sulfur dioxide perhaps the second most dangerous. Figure 17-4 from Elsom 1962-88 for SO2 and soot emissions and concentration, and figure 17-5 on Kew. and 9-Kew and other from Baumol-Oates and perhaps Elsaesser] and Elsom. The official Environmental Protection Agency U.S. data on particulates and sulfur dioxide in recent decades - as seen in figure 17-6 - show that emissions have been declining. Lead emission also has declined very sharply, and other pollutant emission also have decline somewhat. And figure 17-7 shows that the quality of the air Americans breathe has been sharply improving rather than worsening - just the opposite of common belief, as indicated in the polls cited in the previous chapter. The data for other pollutants mostly show similar improvement. Figure 17-6 Figure 17-7 Figure 17-8 shows data from 1975-1990 for a set of mostly-developed countries. And table 17-2 shows the improvement in sulfur dioxide concentrations in various cities. Figure 17-8 from Bernstam and Table 17-2 from CEQ 85. The foregoing graphs make clear that in the rich countries air is getting purer. And the public is being taken to the cleaners by such environmental groups as the National Wildlife Federation, which tell people just the opposite of the facts. It has been my experience that when these data are presented to people who believe our air and water are getting dirtier, they do not accept the general picture of steady improvement. Often they question the conditions in specific cities. Therefore see Figure 17-9 for New York and Los Angeles, the biggest and the most pollution- troubled, respectively. Figures 17-9a and b from Elsaesser and perhaps from his TRS article, and 9-LA from ??? The extent of air pollution does differ widely within the United States, of course, and among the rich countries. But in just about all places in the West, and with respect to just about all pollutants, the trend is toward diminution and a cleaner world. Doubters often wonder whether other data series show the opposite, or whether some important measures are being omitted. For those who will believe that the picture presented here is somehow untruthful, I can only urge that they consult original data sources themselves to check out their suspicions. A theoretical understanding of the long-term trends seen in the U.S. and Great Britain will help to predict the future course of air pollution in countries that are now still poor. Technological improvements in fuels and in pollution control undoubtedly contributed to the reversal of rising early pollution levels, though clean natural gas was used for a period during the 19th century in Pittsburgh. (The mills later returned to coal.) The ability of new technology to reduce air pollution may be seen in figure 13-3, which shows the dramatic results of the shift to nuclear power in France. The more important factor, however, is that as wealth increases, one of the goods that people are prepared to buy is a cleaner environment. The demand for a cleaner environment may be expressed through political activity, as was observed centuries ago in Great Britain; citizens clamor for businesses to be held responsible for their noxious emissions, which is entirely consistent with free-market principles; the form of the incentives and sanctions can matter greatly, however, as discussed in chapter 21. The most horrifying stories of air pollution in recent decades come from Eastern Europe. Western observers spotted some of these disasters years ago. But only in 1988 did the then-Soviet Union admit what had happened, including some of these sad happenings: *A top Soviet environmental official said that "50 million people in 192 cities are exposed to air pollutants that exceed national standards tenfold". His term for the situation was "catastrophic pollution". *The gasoline used in autos contains lead. *"Atmosphere haze results in ...40% reduced light intensity" in Prague. *In Magnitogorsk, Russia, the coroner said in 1991, "Every day there is some new disaster...a worker in his thirties dead from collapsed lungs, a little girl dead from asthma or a weakened heart." He said that "over 90 percent of the children born here suffer at some time from pollution-related illnesses." The revelations in the 1980s of the terrible air and water pollutions in Eastern Europe have provided powerful evidence of the role of government structure in such matters. Economic theory shows that in socialism the managers of enterprises have an incentive to use large amounts of raw material inputs without penalty for waste, rather than an incentive to economize on inputs as there is in a free-enterprise system. Hence the ratio of inputs to outputs is much larger in socialism, as seen in figure 17-10. And because factories are part of the government in socialism, and also because consumer protests were squelched by the authorities in Eastern Europe, consumers could not raise the charge that greedy businesspeople were polluting the environment for their own self-interest (although ironically the managers of the state enterprises were doing exactly that). This political system leads to a large volume of waste outputs that must either be controlled or - as was the case in Eastern Europe - simply vented to the environment. Fig 17-10[e from Bernstam Table 3] Noise is another product of socialism. Chang shows that the noise in six large Chinese cities is far louder than in London, Madrid, Rome, New York, and Medford, Mass., due largely to industrial activity and construction projects. And to make clear that the cause is not population density or culture, but rather the social system together with the depressed income level it produces, Chang shows that Hong Kong - though it is Chinese and very densely populated - is far less noisy than any other Chinese city. Pollution under socialism is further discussed below in connection with water pollution. Societal devices for dealing with pollutions are compared in chapter 21. But let us tarry here for one example of misguided policies that occur not under socialism, but in a democracy. Such policies are sometimes adopted because of private grabs obtained by political shenanigans, hallowed by the environmentalist label. The original Clean Air Bill proposal in 1990 provided for a 60 cent a gallon subsidy for ethanol as a substitute for gasoline - equal to the entire refinery cost of gasoline at that time. That subsidy would raise the consumer price of gasoline 10 to 15 percent. Seventy-five percent of the production subsidy would go to a single company, Archer-Daniels-Midland, that was very active in lobbying for the bill. The environmental benefits were dubious at best. While ethanol may emit less of some kinds of pollutants than gasoline, it emits more of others, and on balance may make the air more noxious. So it goes in the developed nations. What about the rest of the world? Assessing air pollution for the world as a whole is difficult, and is not necessarily meaningful. It is clear that the biggest cities in the biggest poor countries - China and India - have horrifying amounts of air pollution (SO2, smoke, particles) compared to the richer West. But the number of sites worldwide listed by the United Nations shows more sites with improvement on all three measures than deterioration. We can only hope that the poor countries get rich enough soon enough to speed their cleanup operations. WATER POLLUTION Concerning the amount of water available, see chapter 10, and chapter 20. The National Wildlife Federation's Index (a "subjective" measure, you may remember from chapter 14) depicted a continuing deterioration in water quality from 1970 until they stopped using numbers in 1984 [1982?], as seen in figure 17-11. The facts go in exactly the opposite (and happier) direction, as the official Environmental Protection Agency data show. Figure 17-11 The basic measures of water purity found in the Statistical Abstract of the United States (for which the reader can easily check future data) are as follows: 1) The proportion of observation sites with high rates of fecal coliform bacteria (an indicator of biologically-unhealthy water) fell sharply (figure 17-12). This measures the cleanliness of the water with regard to the diseases carried in human excrement. And figure 17-13 shows that the proportion of people in the U.S. served by sewers has risen over the years. Figures 17-12 and 17-13 here 2) The amounts of various kinds of toxic residues found in humans have been falling in the U.S., the U.K., and Japan (figure 17-14) Figure 17-14 from Bernstam Table 3 3) The number and amount of polluting incidents in and around U.S. waters fell (figure 17-15). Figure 17-15 oil polluting stat abs Solid long-run data for water quality are hard to come by. But most students of the subject would probably agree with this assessment by Orris Herfindahl and Allen Kneese: Serious deterioration in some aspects of environmental quality did take place between, say, 1840 and 1940... Since 1940, however, the quality of the environment has in some respects markedly improved. Rivers have been cleaned of their grossest floating materials.... More recent measures indicate improvement in the past few decades. Council of Environmental Quality data show that the proportion of water-quality observations that had "good" drinking water rose from 42 percent in 1961 to 61 percent in 1974. (I have not found consistent data to extend the series to the present; the EPA apparently quit publishing the data because the problem has diminished so greatly.) Socialist Countries The Eastern European socialist countries were for many years paragons of virtue for many in the West. Therefore, it was surprising to some when the first edition included the following notes: "'Blue Only a Memory, The Danube Is Filthy,'" says a New York Times headline. 'A dozen years ago we could swim in the Danube. Today the river is so dangerous it is illegal to swim in it,' said the head of the Czechoslovak Research and Development Center for Environmental Pollution Control.... Brastislava [the capital of Slovakia] has the most polluted atmosphere and the worst environment among other European cities". The ex-Soviet Union, too, was beset with water pollution problems. In Russia, a huge chemical plant was built right beside a beloved tourist attraction: Yasnaya Polanya, Leo Tolstoy's gracious country estate. Unmonitored fumes are poisoning Tolstoy's forests of oak and pine, and powerless conservationists can only wince. With equal indifference, the Soviet pulp and paper industry has settled on the shores of Lake Baikal. No matter how fully the effluents are treated, they still defile the world's purest waters. The level of the Caspian Sea has dropped 8 1/2 feet since 1929, mainly because dams and irrigation projects along the Volga and Ural rivers divert incoming water. As a result, Russia's caviar output has decreased; one-third of the sturgeons' spawning grounds are high and dry. Meanwhile, most municipalities lack adequate sewage treatment plants.... Water pollution continues to be a very grave problem in Eastern Europe as of this edition: *Half of Poland's river mileage in 1990 was so bad as to be even "unfit for industry...it would corrode pipes." *The tap water in then-Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) is dangerous to drink. *The public beaches on the Black, Baltic, and Aral seas were closed because of pollution. *Typhoid outbreaks - the sort of epidemic pollution that the West mostly banished years ago - are common. In 1985 there were 15,000 cases in the Soviet Union, 400 in the U.S. *The largest (by volume) fresh-water body in the world, Lake Baikal, is a textbook case of pollution from paper pulp mills. The explanation for this sad situation is the same as given above for air pollution under socialism. Poor countries have similar problems, or worse. Some of the rates of pollution are staggering - and I'm talking about the disease pollutions that sicken and kill lots of people immediately. For example, the rate of faecal coliform bacteria in the Sacramento River (U.S.) was 50 in 1982-4, and 680 in the Hudson River, whereas in the Sabarmati River at Ahmedabad, India, the rate in 1985-7 was 1.7 million, down from 5.4 million in 1979-81, and in the Lema River in Mexico it was 100,000 in 1982-4. (But by 1985-87 the Lema rate had dropped to 5965 - real improvement. In other rivers in Mexico and India the rates were much lower to begin with.) The increase in the Sacramento River from 37 in 1979-1981 to 50 in 1982-4 - potential grist for those who churn out scare stories - is entirely irrelevant in the context of such enormous pollutions elsewhere, and is surely just a statistical blip. Other data on access to safe drinking water and sanitation services give some indication of the improving trends in poor countries. ON THE POLITICS OF ENVIRONMENTAL HINDERING Perhaps because so many people think that the environment is deteriorating where it is really improving. we now have an environmental politics of hindering - of "monkeywrenching", as the Earth First! group calls their strategy - rather than a movement of enabling and creation. The aim is to interfere, stop, and prevent - for example, "gumming up he gas tanks of bulldozers and driving spikes into trees that have been marked for the sawmill" - rather than to build. Instead of "Lead, follow, or get out of the way" it is "Don't lead, don't follow, do whatever you can to get in the way of those who will lead or follow". This spirit can be seen in just a few casually-selected environmental policies: preventing the paper industry from choosing how much recycled paper should be included in its products; preventing timber firms from cutting trees (or in some cases, even from planting trees); preventing individuals from building homes even on their own large farms, and firms from building housing and commercial developments; preventing people from raising exotic animals for live sale (such as parrots) or for their products (such as the fur of minks and the ivory of elephants); preventing firms and communities from building nuclear power plants, and incinerators of waste materials, no matter how well-tested are the protections for environmental effects of the plants; and on and on. Only a wealthy society which has well-satisfied its basic needs can afford this mind-set, of course. But the diffuse and unintended ill effects of this mind-set that are not immediately obvious to the affluent are yet to be reckoned. An example of unintended consequences: The banning of asbestos was one of the factors in the Challenger shuttle tragedy (see the next chapter), and it also has led to lethal brake-drum failures such as the shard of a truck's drum that flew off and killed a motorist near my home . Of course the "activists" who fought for the banning of asbestos - which almost surely cannot have any ill effects in the small-volume uses connected with the Challenger's O-ring putty and with brake drums - did not intend these tragedies. And therein lies the point of the argument. CONCLUSION Advanced economies have considerable power to purify their environments. England's top anti-pollution bureaucrat, Lord Kennel, long ago identified the key element precisely. "With rare and usually quickly solved exceptions, there is no contaminating factor in the environment, including noise, that defies a technical solution. All it takes is money." Purification simply requires the will to devote the necessary part of a nation's present output and energy to do the job. Recent history and current trends illustrate that simple maxim. Many kinds of pollution have lessened in many places - for example, filth in the streets of the U.S., buffalo dung in the streams of the Midwest, organic impurities in our foods, soot in the air, and substances that killed fish in the rivers of England. And here is a U.S. success story: Long used for recreational purposes, Lake Washington [an eighteen-mile-long body of fresh water bordered by Seattle on its western shore and a number of smaller communities on its eastern shore] began to deteriorate badly soon after World War II when ten newly built waste treatment plants began dumping some 20 million gallons of treated effluents into its water every day. Algae thrived on the phosphorous and nitrogen in the sewage discharge, and each time more of the burgeoning aquatic plants died, so did a little bit of the lake - in the form of oxygen lost in decomposition. The lake became cloudy and malodorous, and the fish died along with the algae. Alarmed, the state legislature in 1958 created a new authority - the Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle - and charged it with sewage disposal for the Seattle area. With the support of local residents, Metro, as the agency soon became known, built a $121 million integrated system that funnels all of the area's effluents far out into Puget Sound. In that way, the wastes are dissipated by tidal action. Starting in 1963, the system was far enough along for the plants that had been dumping their nutritive wastes into the lake to begin, one by one, to divert their output into the new system and Puget Sound. The results were obvious in the clearer, cleaner water and the return of fish populations. "When the phosphorous levels fell off, so did the algae blooms," says one zoologist, "and so did the pollution." What Lake Washington demonstrates, of course, is that pollution is not irreversible - provided the citizenry is really determined to reclaim the environment, and willing to pay for past years of neglect. Most astonishing of all, the Great Lakes are not dead - not even Lake Erie! Though the fish catch in Erie fell during the 1960s, it quickly rebounded. By 1977 10 million pounds of fish were caught there. Ohio beaches on Lake Erie reopened, and "trout and salmon have returned to the Detroit River, the Lake's biggest tributary." For the Great Lakes as a whole, the catch was at its lowest in history in 1965 (56 million tons), but has since rebounded to **[73] million tons in [1977], not far from the average since World War I. By 1977 Lake Michigan had become "an angler's paradise...the finest fresh-water fishery in the world," a $350-million-a-year sport fishing industry. And by 1991...***[Wash Post story in already, somewhere] What about all the other possible pollutants - PCB's, mercury, global warming, global cooling, and the rest? Because their number is as large as the environmentalist's imagination, it is not possible here or elsewhere to consider, one at a time, all the past, present, and future pollutions; many are briefly mentioned in chapter 18, however. But we should learn a sharp lesson from the recent histories of environmental scares, as briefly discussed in the next chapter. Without important exception, the scares have turned out to be without merit, and many of them have been revealed as not simply a function of ignorance but of fraud. ENDNOTES page# \ultres\ tchar17 February 7, 1994