Killing you softly
Air quality, health, and the need to be outside
As I write this, I am sitting at home because the air quality outside is too poor for me to be able to ride my bike. I’ve been an “outdoor person” my entire life. Most of the hobbies I love are contingent on being outside: cycling, hiking, gardening, and even just sitting in my treehouse to read (yes, I have a little treehouse). I’ve had some issues with my lungs through the years, and I’m not twenty-nine anymore, so when the air quality is poor I can’t do the things I love.
My background is in health care and fitness. As an occupational therapist for thirty years I worked with people who had chronic and debilitating illnesses. Many of the illnesses were lifestyle related. Our bodies need movement to function well. For example, your calf muscles function as your “second heart” because the pumping of those muscles when you walk assists your veins to return blood, against gravity, to your heart. Sitting is a cause of poor circulation, along with myriad other problems.
Many of us sit at desks all day, then sit in cars, then eat dinner and sit on the couch. If we have the time and the privilege to be able to go to a gym or an exercise class that usually amounts to an hour or two of movement out of the twenty-four hours in a day. Most of the natural movement our ancestors did (walking, farming, preparing foods, picking berries etc) is long gone from our lives. Being outside in nature, moving, is essential to both our physical and mental health.
I’m always advocating for people to walk or bicycle whenever they can as a way to add movement back into their lives and to de-stress and escape from screens. But it’s only healthy to be outside if you can breathe the air.
Traffic related air pollution (TRAP) has been demonstrated to cause or worsen a wide range of serious health issues including asthma, heart and lung disease, cancers, leukemia and premature deaths, neurocognitive and neurodevelopmental diseases, and has been linked to diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimers. Toronto Public Health estimates that air pollution in Toronto (from all sources) causes roughly 1300 premature deaths and 3550 hospitalizations annually. The Canadian Lung Association estimates that more than 15000 Canadians die each year due to the effects of poor air quality. Children are particularly susceptible to poor air quality and it has been linked to impaired lung development, preterm delivery and low birthweights, and childhood leukemia.
Some of the airborne toxins that are commonly found include PM2.5 (particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter that penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream), ground level ozone, nitrogen dioxide and nitrogen monoxide, black carbon, methane, sulfur dioxide, acetaldehyde and benzene. Exposure to health-damaging toxins does not necessarily cause symptoms right away. Sometimes the diseases caused by these exposures take years to develop, and by the time a diagnosis is given, the problem is chronic or untreatable.
Given the health risks of air pollution, you would think that it would be closely monitored and regulated. Unfortunately, in Ontario, that is not the case. According to Laura Bowman, a lawyer with Ecojustice, Ontario’s Ambient Air Quality Guidelines are based on out-dated science and are neither enforced nor enforceable. Very little monitoring is done and that which is available (Newmarket is our closest air-monitoring station) demonstrates that we already exceed the World Health Organization’s recommended safety standards for particulate matter (almost double) and nitrogen dioxide (ten times the recommended limit).
Living close to a major highway puts you at a much increased risk because the pollutants associated with burning fossil fuels and other particulates that come from automobiles are more concentrated when you are close to the source (i.e. they dissipate as you get further away).
Sprawl, and multi-lane highways decrease air quality because they incentivize more people to drive. Multiple studies have concluded that more highways just create more traffic (induced demand). It would be far healthier and wiser to build better train services, fifteen minute communities, work from home whenever possible, and provide infrastructure for active transit.
Economists and advocates of growth-at-all-costs do not seem to take public health, or ecological sustainability into account. Human suffering and health care costs are treated as exigencies (see Adam’s post on negative externalities). The prevention of disease is far superior to having to treat it. As the Dalai Lama said, “Wealth should serve humanity, and not the other way around. Man sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.”
We need to be able to exercise, get outside and enjoy nature to have a good quality of life. Many of us do not have cottages or vacation homes to escape to. We need clean air, plenty of parkland, and places where we can walk, cycle or skateboard without risking our health. The solutions are not rocket-science, but require making ethical choices and planning for future generations, not just what is expedient today.
Weekly News Digest: “The Blowhole”
Here’s a great, short video about another downside to sprawl: burgeoning infrastructure costs:
And speaking of economics: https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2023/07/the-fastest-route-to-a-climate-turnaround-is-also-less-expensive/
A moving letter from a Calgary physician:
And a petition organized by the Ontario Headwaters Institute:
https://www.change.org/p/ontario-should-finalize-its-environment-plan?recruiter=1175399410&recruited_by_id=c8d38c30-5a9b-11eb-8d0a-7160168876f8&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=petition_dashboard&utm_medium=copylink
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Also, great thoughts. I love the framing of solutions as being rooted in making ethical decisions on behalf of the future.