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Houston area transit agencies offering ‘Free Fare Fridays’ in September to promote cleaner air

News Feed
Friday, September 6, 2024

Gail Delaughter/Houston Public MediaBuses at Fort Bend transit facilityThe Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) announced this week that it had partnered with several Houston area agencies to provide free bus transit every Friday for September. The participating agencies include Harris County Transit, Fort Bend Transit, The Woodlands Township and Conroe Connection, according to Commute Solutions — a service of H-GAC. The initiative was created to take place during Ozone Action Month as September is often the worst month for air quality in the region. Available dates and routes: Harris County Transit – All routes are free on Sept. 6, 13, 20 and 27 The Woodlands Township – All routes are free on Sept. 6, 13, 20 and 27 Fort Bend Transit – All routes are free on Sept. 13, 20 and 27 Conroe Connection – Fixed routes and paratransit routes are free Sept. 6, 13, 20 and 27 For years Houston has been known for its poor air quality. According to data collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2020 to 2023, Harris County was one of several counties in Texas that failed to meet the standard. The data collected measured the average Fine Particle Concentrations found in the air, which the World Health Organization (WHO) considers to be one of the most dangerous forms of pollution as it can penetrate the lung barrier and enter the blood system. For context, the EPA set an annual primary fine particle standard of 9 micrograms per cubic meter and the WHO considers anything above 5 micrograms per cubic meter to be dangerous. However, the EPA recorded that Harris County had 11.4 micrograms per cubic meter, the worst of any county in Texas. A recent study has also found that communities of color are often hit hardest by poor air quality.

Harris County ranks as one of the worst in Texas for air pollution, according to the EPA.

Buses at Fort Bend transit facility.

Gail Delaughter/Houston Public Media

Buses at Fort Bend transit facility

The Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) announced this week that it had partnered with several Houston area agencies to provide free bus transit every Friday for September.

The participating agencies include Harris County Transit, Fort Bend Transit, The Woodlands Township and Conroe Connection, according to Commute Solutions — a service of H-GAC. The initiative was created to take place during Ozone Action Month as September is often the worst month for air quality in the region.

Available dates and routes:

  • Harris County Transit – All routes are free on Sept. 6, 13, 20 and 27
  • The Woodlands Township – All routes are free on Sept. 6, 13, 20 and 27
  • Fort Bend Transit – All routes are free on Sept. 13, 20 and 27
  • Conroe Connection – Fixed routes and paratransit routes are free Sept. 6, 13, 20 and 27

For years Houston has been known for its poor air quality. According to data collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2020 to 2023, Harris County was one of several counties in Texas that failed to meet the standard. The data collected measured the average Fine Particle Concentrations found in the air, which the World Health Organization (WHO) considers to be one of the most dangerous forms of pollution as it can penetrate the lung barrier and enter the blood system.

For context, the EPA set an annual primary fine particle standard of 9 micrograms per cubic meter and the WHO considers anything above 5 micrograms per cubic meter to be dangerous. However, the EPA recorded that Harris County had 11.4 micrograms per cubic meter, the worst of any county in Texas. A recent study has also found that communities of color are often hit hardest by poor air quality.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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Pollution exposure linked to mental health hospital admissions, says study

Researchers from St Andrews found rise in nitrogen dioxide exposure associated with higher admissionsExposure to air pollution is linked to an increased risk of hospital admission for mental illness, according to the most comprehensive study of its kind.The research, involving more than 200,000 people in Scotland, found an increase in exposure to nitrogen dioxide in particular was associated with a higher number of people being admitted to hospital for behaviour disorders and mental illnesses. Continue reading...

Exposure to air pollution is linked to an increased risk of hospital admission for mental illness, according to the most comprehensive study of its kind.The research, involving more than 200,000 people in Scotland, found an increase in exposure to nitrogen dioxide in particular was associated with a higher number of people being admitted to hospital for behaviour disorders and mental illnesses.Previously published research on the health effects of long-term exposure to ambient air pollution has tended to emphasise deaths rather than hospital admissions, and physical, rather than mental, ill health, the researchers said.The study found that air pollution was linked to increased risks of hospital admission for mental health, as well as physical illness.Stricter environmental restrictions would benefit millions of people and curb the impact on secondary care, the researchers said.Dr Mary Abed Al Ahad of the University of St Andrews, who led the study, said policies to tackle air pollution and a shift to renewable energy could help ease the burden on hospitals of people with both physical and mental illnesses in the long term.“Policies and interventions targeting air pollution emissions such as zero-emission zones or incentives for renewable energy in transportation and energy production sectors could help ease the hospital-care burden in the long term both locally and globally.”The analysis of data tracked from Public Health Scotland examined four key pollutants between 2002 and 2017 and the impact of ambient air pollution.Researchers drew on individual level data from the Scottish Longitudinal Study, which represents 5% of the Scottish population and includes demographic information from linked censuses.In all, 202,237 people aged 17 and above were included in the research, which was published in the open access journal BMJ Open.Their health and hospital admissions for cardiovascular, respiratory, infectious diseases, mental illnesses or behaviour disorders were tracked from Public Health Scotland data.They were linked to levels of four pollutants from road traffic and industry: nitrogen dioxide (NO2); sulphur dioxide (SO2); particulate matter diameter of at least 10μm (PM10); and small particulate matter of 2.5μm or less (PM2.5) per 1km2 in each person’s residential postcode.skip past newsletter promotionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionAverage cumulative exposure to air pollution was strongly associated with higher rates of hospital admissions, both for mental and physical illnesses. Higher cumulative exposure to NO2, PM10, and PM2.5 was associated with a higher incidence of hospital admissions for all causes.Ioannis Bakolis, a professor of public mental health and statistics at King’s College London who was not involved with the study, said the “large-scale” data was “appropriately analysed” and provided further evidence on the link between air pollution and mental health.Research has previously shown how people who spend their childhood in areas with high levels of air pollution may be more likely to later develop mental disorders.But a study by researchers in the US and Denmark has suggested a link between air pollution and an increased risk of mental health problems, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and personality disorders.Between 1% and 2% of the UK population have bipolar disorder in their lifetime, with similar figures for schizophrenia. It is estimated that about 5% of people in the UK have a personality disorder at any one time.

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Supreme Court dismisses constitutional claim in California air pollution case

Supreme Court dismisses a red-state constitutional claim that targeted California's power to fight air pollution.

WASHINGTON —  The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a red-state constitutional challenge to California’s special authority to fight air pollution. Over a dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas, the justices turned away an appeal from Ohio and 16 other conservative states, which asked the court to rule “the Golden State is not a golden child.”While Monday’s brief order closes the door on a constitutional challenge to California’s anti-pollution standards, the court on Friday cleared the way for a different, more targeted legal challenge.The oil and gas industry is suing over the state’s “zero emissions” goals for new vehicles, arguing California’s special authority to fight air pollution does not extend to greenhouse gases and global warming. A lower court had dismissed that suit on the grounds the oil producers had no standing to sue. Their complaint was they would sell less fuel in the future. On Friday, the justices agreed to reconsider that ruling early next year. They could clear the way for the suit to proceed.Monday’s related order narrows the legal grounds that the industry can use to challenge California’s rule, assuming it eventually wins standing.The incoming Trump administration is likely to intervene on the side of the challengers. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar had urged the court to turn down both appeals. They said California’s strict emissions standards are designed to fight smog and other air pollution as well as greenhouse gases. They argued that Congress had ample authority under the Constitution to set special rules for problems in different states. Since early in American history, they said Congress approved special customs duties for some states or rules involving tribes relations.In challenging California’s authority, Ohio’s Atty. Gen. David Yost pointed to the court’s 2013 decision that struck down part of the Voting Rights Act on the grounds it violated the principle of equal state sovereignty. When Congress adopted national air pollution standards in 1967, it said California could go further because it was already enforcing strict standards to combat the state’s worst-in-the-nation problem with smog.Ohio and red states say this special authority violates “core constitutional principles because no state is more equal than the others. And Congress does not have the general power to elevate one state above the others....Yet in the Clean Air Act, Congress elevated California above all the other states by giving to the Golden State alone the power to pass certain environmental laws.”Without commenting, the justices said they would not hear the constitutional claim.The Environmental Defense Fund hailed the court’s announcement.“California’s clean car standards have successfully helped reduce the dangerous soot, smog, and climate pollution that put all people at risk, while also turbocharging clean technologies and job creation,” said Alice Henderson, lead counsel for its clean-air policy group.

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Prenatal Exposure to Air Pollution May Hurt Baby's Brain

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterMONDAY, Dec. 16, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Air pollution could be harming the brain development of children...

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterMONDAY, Dec. 16, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Air pollution could be harming the brain development of children before they are even born, a new study warns.A 10 parts-per-billion increase in ozone exposure during the second trimester of pregnancy was associated with a 55% increased risk of intellectual disability among children compared to their siblings, researchers found.“Ozone exposure during pregnancy is a clear risk factor for intellectual disability,” said lead researcher Sara Grineski, a professor of sociology with the University of Utah.“We were particularly struck by the consistency of the findings across all trimesters and the strength of the sibling-based analysis,” Grineski added in a university news release.For the study, researchers analyzed data drawn from the Utah Population Database, a long-term research project into genetics and health among Utah residents. The team linked data on children with intellectual disabilities born between 2003 and 2013 to county-level daily estimates of ozone exposure gathered from the U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyIn particular, the data allowed researchers to compare siblings born with different levels of exposure to ozone pollution, researchers said.“Sibling designs allow us to control for some of these population factors that just would be really challenging to do,” said researcher Amanda Bakian, a research associate professor of psychiatry with the University of Utah’s Huntsman Mental Health Institute. “It just gives another layer of robustness of rigor to this study.”Ozone is a harmful air pollutant caused when sunshine prompts a chemical reaction in airborne nitrogen and volatile organic compounds emitted from cars, power plants, refineries and other sources, researchers explained in background notes.Ozone pollution is an increasing summertime hazard, particularly in the face of global warming, researchers said.The second trimester showed the strongest associations between ozone exposure in the womb and a child’s future brain development.During the second trimester, the fetal brain undergoes rapid growth, with neurons developing at a rate of 250,000 per minute, researchers said.Federal health standards for ozone exposure is 70 parts per billion, researchers noted.A 10 parts-per-billion increase in average ozone levels was associated with a 23% increased risk of intellectual disability when kids were compared to the population at large, and 55% higher when compared to their siblings, results show.“When it comes to intellectual disability, we have a prevalence estimate of about 1.3% or so, and that has been pretty consistent over time,” Bakian said.“That’s 1.3% of the kids that are born in any one year, and we still don’t have a great understanding of all the risk factors that are involved,” Bakian added. “What are the underlying mechanisms that drive this risk? Having intellectual disability has lifelong implications.”Given these findings, places with lots of ozone pollution have a higher risk of kids with intellectual disabilities, researchers said.“Salt Lake City ranks 10th for the most polluted cities in the U.S. in terms of ozone, and 2023 ozone levels were higher than 2022 levels,” Grineski noted.Reducing ozone levels will be critical to protecting the brains of children, researchers said. Clean car standards, transitioning to electric vehicles and improving manufacturing and agricultural processes will help lower air pollution.“We don’t want to neglect these issues related to ozone and cognitive health moving forward," Grineski said. "Our findings here for Utah suggest a troubling association. This is just one study in a sea of papers documenting the harmful effects of air pollution on health.”SOURCE: University of Utah, news release, Dec. 11, 2024Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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White US neighborhoods have more EPA air quality monitors, study finds

Disproportionate placement of devices leaves communities of color less protected from dangerous pollutantsThe Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality monitors are disproportionately positioned in whiter neighborhoods in the US, leaving communities of color less protected from dangerous pollutants like particulate matter, ozone, nitrous dioxide and lead, among others, new research finds.Policy and actions the EPA takes to reduce pollution are developed from the monitors’ readings, and communities of color are broadly more likely to be near major polluters. The findings raise questions about whether the agency has enough monitors installed, is properly placing them, and whether conclusions about the safety of the air in some areas are sound. Continue reading...

The Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality monitors are disproportionately positioned in whiter neighborhoods in the US, leaving communities of color less protected from dangerous pollutants like particulate matter, ozone, nitrous dioxide and lead, among others, new research finds.Policy and actions the EPA takes to reduce pollution are developed from the monitors’ readings, and communities of color are broadly more likely to be near major polluters. The findings raise questions about whether the agency has enough monitors installed, is properly placing them, and whether conclusions about the safety of the air in some areas are sound.“It seems like an obvious problem, but we don’t see much about … how there’s a measurement error in the gold standard for data collection,” said Brenna Kelly, a University of Utah doctoral student and study co-author. “It’s how we establish thresholds for safety, and who’s going to be susceptible to exposure to air pollution.”The researchers checked the position of nearly 8,000 EPA monitors nationwide and compared their locations with census block data.The study consistently found a lower average of monitors for particulate matter, ozone, nitrous dioxide and lead across all non-white groups. The chemicals are linked to a range of health effects like asthma, chest pain, cardiovascular disease, neurotoxicity in developing children, and cancer.It found the highest disparity in monitors for sulfur dioxide in Native American and Pacific Islander groups. Sulfur dioxide is a common emission during natural gas and petroleum extraction, oil refining and metal processing. It can cause difficulty breathing and exacerbate other respiratory issues.EPA’s monitors’ positions are determined by federal, state and local authorities, the study noted, though Kelly said there was not a clear process in place for determining where to locate a monitor. Variables such as population density and concentration of polluters factor into the decision.However, the process “can get pretty political”, Kelly added. Communities with more resources and political power may be able to sway the process, which may partly explain the disparity. The issue is also probably part of “institutionalized racism” in the decision-making process – marginalized groups typically receive fewer resources, Kelly added.The EPA’s monitors work by measuring a single point that is meant to be a representative sample of a larger region around it. The agency estimates broader regional air quality by using some form of interpolation, but this approach can leave significant gaps. The spaces and gaps seem to generally be inhabited by communities of color.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionMonitoring could be improved by using satellite imagery, the study notes. It can capture pollution across a region, but it also has limitations and would need to be deployed along with air monitors near the ground.“That’s the big question: ‘How do we get better data?’” Kelly said. “The dream is that we understand air pollution in every area at all times, how people move throughout their environment and how that changes what they’re exposed to.”

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Supreme Court to consider reviving industry’s bid to axe California clean car standards

The Supreme Court indicated Friday that it will take up a case that could revive industry efforts to axe California’s stricter-than-federal vehicle emissions standards. The high court granted a petition from companies and groups representing oil refiners and biofuel producers that seeks to revive their lawsuit against the Biden administration’s reinstatement of California’s clean cars...

The Supreme Court indicated Friday that it will take up a case that could revive industry efforts to axe California’s stricter-than-federal vehicle emissions standards. The high court granted a petition from companies and groups representing oil refiners and biofuel producers that seeks to revive their lawsuit against the Biden administration’s reinstatement of California’s clean cars program.  In 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave California the OK to enforce rules that required car companies to sell new cars in the state that produced less pollution — including by requiring a share of the cars sold to be electric or hybrid. Several other states have also adopted California’s rule.  The industry and red states sued over this action. They have argued that the Biden administration was essentially allowing California to act as “a junior-varsity EPA.” The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out their challenge on a technicality — saying they could not bring the case forward because they did not sufficiently prove how it would harm them.    On Friday, the Supreme Court said in a brief order that it would hear their effort to revive the case. The court declined their request to hear the underlying argument, though, only saying it would address the circuit court’s reason for tossing it.  This story is developing and will be updated. 

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