This month the Minnesota Department of Health and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency released a joint report on air pollution and human health. The “Life and Breath” report was a follow-up to a 2015 joint report on air pollution in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. In this year’s report the agencies looked at health and pollution data gathered statewide.
This year, as in 2015, the report generated headlines in many news outlets. Many stories focused on the deaths linked in part to air pollution (as many as 4,000 as year); other stories looked at health inequities identified in the report, especially in Greater Minnesota. Generally speaking, few stories addressed what Minnesotans could do to reduce air pollution.
The American Lung Association has been working on ways to reduce air pollution in Minnesota for more than 20 years. We’re not alone – we’re part of Clean Air Minnesota, a public-private partnership that seeks to reduce air pollution by 10 percent. According to the 2019 Life and Breath report, that modest reduction in air pollution could prevent as many as 500 early deaths, 150 emergency room visits, and 70 hospital stays.
Here are a few things happening now to address air pollution in Minnesota:
Cleaner fuels
By requiring a 20 percent biodiesel blend during the warm weather months, Minnesota has reduced annual emissions from diesel vehicles by an estimated 143 tons of particulate pollution and 1,600 tons of carbon monoxide. The price of this biodiesel blend is equivalent to traditional petroleum diesel, requires no new pumps or engine modifications to use. It also reduces lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 1.2 million tons.
Less coal
In the 1990s, coal-fired power plants provided 65 percent of the state’s electricity. Today, only about 37 percent of utility-scale electricity generation in Minnesota came from coal-fired plants, and that percentage is expected to continue to drop as the price of coal rises while the price of renewables drops. This trend away from coal was boosted when Xcel Energy announced its plans to shut down several coal plants in Minnesota, 10 years ahead of schedule.
Volkswagen dollars
[image_caption]Robert Moffitt[/image_caption]
Is it working?
Overall, air quality has slowly improved in Minnesota and across the nation since the landmark Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, though there is troubling recent news that our nation’s air quality grew worse over the past two years. At the same time, our medical knowledge and understanding of the health risks of air pollution has grown expeditiously.
There are signs of progress locally, which helps to demonstrate that we can achieve further reductions in air pollution. Between 2008 and 2013, the two years the Life and Breath reports analyzed, fine particle pollution in Minnesota decreased by about 10 percent. Ozone pollution rates remained unchanged. Some factors, such as drifting smoke from Canadian wildfires, are out of our immediate control. Other factors are in the hands of all Minnesotans: Which vehicle do we choose? How much electricity do we use? Could we share a ride to work or to school? In many ways, these many small decisions can have major effect on our air quality and our health.
A changing climate is bringing new challenges to our air quality, and there is still much work to be done to reduce air pollution in our state. That said, Minnesota has acknowledged the problem and we are taking positive steps to make our air quality — and our health — the best in the nation.
Robert Moffitt is a director of outdoor air for the American Lung Association office based in St. Paul.
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Biodiesel is actually much, much worse for the environment than fossil fuels, which is why actual environmentalists do not support it. The claim that biofuels reduce greenhouse gasses is outright false when all inputs are considered, like the habitat loss. Biofuel production is now being linked to bee population loss, as pollinator plants are being replaced with crops only good for making fuel.
Biofuels are a false solution to real clean energy. Sad to see the American Lung Association taking such a Trump-esque approach here.
There’s even another piece on Minnpost today talking about this
https://www.minnpost.com/earth-journal/2019/06/with-parasitic-mites-in-ascendance-honeybee-losses-reach-a-grim-new-high/
This is not signs of progress. This is going backwards. You are promoting an environmental catastrophe.
At least there is an arguable benefit to biofuels. There is none, except some camp-fire nostalgia, for backyard firepits. In Minneapolis, the spring-summer-fall air is full of small particulates that never used to be there before the recent craze for burning lots of wood outdoors, property by property.
I’m in the population that suffers when the air is full of wood-burning fire particulates. Can the pro-breathing-free organizations like the American Lung Association folks do some lobbying to counter that pollution?
Or maybe sponsor some research about it The problem is kind of like the gun violence problem: no studies to show the indulgent what their whims are doing to the rest of us.