Member-only story
12 Urgent Reasons to Reduce Air Pollution
Global warming gets all the attention, but bad air is deceptively deadly and damaging to kids and adults
8 min readNov 11, 2020
Air pollution generated by fossil-fuel burning is often portrayed as a mere nuisance, a sideshow to the threat of global warming, a visible haze over a cityscape that sometimes drives the most vulnerable people indoors. In many ways, Americans have gotten used to bad air — we go about our business, our worries dominated by other important issues like climate change, Covid-19 and political polarization, with many people now pinning hopes on President-elect Joe Biden to tackle all three.
But the truth about polluted air is much darker and more urgent, the effects far more sinister and widespread than you might realize. Let’s do a quick science-based inventory of the issues. Dirty air…
- Kills infants
- Triggers asthma
- Is linked to schizophrenia
- Is linked to childhood autism
- Throttles cognitive development
- Is caused by the same activities that fuel global warming
- Fuels depression and thwarts happiness
- Shortens life spans across the board
