“Feb. 12, 2009
Study Links Improved Fetal Health to Reduction in Toxic Releases
Special from The Record
A new study by a Columbia economist definitively links a decline in fetal harm in the 1990s to stricter environmental controls. It proves, according to its authors, that living near a toxic manufacturing plant poses a significant risk to fetal health.
The study, by Professor Janet Currie and graduate student Johannes Schmieder, will be published in the May edition of the American Economic Association's Papers and Proceedings. Currie's research specializes in the relationship between economic policy and children's health.

Professor Janet Currie
Image credit: Eileen Barroso
"Unhealthy emissions can be viewed as a pricing problem," says Currie, who chairs Columbia's economics department and is the Sami Mnaymneh Professor of Economics. "Factories dump toxic releases into the atmosphere but don't pay the cost of pollution. There would be less harm to the children who ingest the toxins if the factories had to bear the cost."

Currie's study argues that day-to-day releases of 10 harmful toxicants¿such as cadmium, toluene and epichlorohydrin¿can cause low birth weight, premature birth and infant death. The researchers discovered that reductions in the release of these three chemicals accounted for a 3.9 percent reduction in infant mortality in the United States from 1988 to 1999.
The data on toxic releases are collected as a result of a 1986 federal law requiring many U.S. plants to file annual emissions reports with the Environmental Protection Agency¿a law created in response to the 1984 disaster in Bhopal, India, where more than 10,000 people were killed after a Union Carbide pesticide plant released 42 tons of toxic gas.
Currie has since capitalized on those emissions reports to produce research that is "revolutionary," says Michael Greenstone, an environmental economist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "This paper has taken a giant step forward in improving our understanding of the relationship between toxic emissions and infant health," he says.
Currie's work is an outgrowth of her research interest in children's welfare, where she has used economic approaches and data to study such topics as pollution, school absenteeism and the effects of school breakfast programs on child nutrition. Her 2006 book, The Invisible Safety Net: Protecting Poor Children and Families, looks at social welfare programs and determines that¿contrary to much political rhetoric¿many social welfare programs are effective.
A few years ago, Currie noticed that the emissions data collected by the EPA hadn't been fully explored since 1986. While there had been plenty of research on the effects of chemical emissions following the Bhopal disaster, none of it focused on the health of infants born near manufacturing plants, she recalled. Fetal health, she reasoned, would be an ideal way to measure the effects of toxic emissions because of the known timeframe of pregnancy, a restriction that would allow for tighter control of variables such as place of residence.
Related Link
0. New Research Suggests Pollution-Related Asthma May Start in the Womb, Feb. 13
Currie relied on vital statistics data, including birth certificates, as well as the mandatory emissions reports from plants in the top 75 percent of U.S. counties by population from 1988 to 1999. She considered only the births from January to March of each year and matched that data with emissions reports from the previous year. (Babies born in the first three months of the year are more than 50 percent likely to have been exposed to the previous year's emissions while in the womb, she explains.)
Currie's previous work has helped shape policy for federal children's programs, like State Children's Health Insurance Program and Head Start. She hopes her newest research will encourage environmental change in the coming years as well.
"The ultimate goal of this work ”

“Still no reply from Dr Mark Broomfield to my e-mail.

Will anyone at the Environment Agency reveal how they check whether or not a point source of industrial PM2.5 air pollution might be harmful to health?”

“Chris, you are aware that modern incinerators are a little bit more advanced than you stone age fire right? It¿s not like they just drive up and dump your garbage on top of an open fire pit. You don¿t get anywhere near the same level of technology for any other industrial process and that includes power stations.”

“Dr Mark Broomfield, of Enviros Ltd, was one of the authors of the 2004 DEFRA report into waste disposal in which the claim was made that incineration posed no harm to health.

Earlier today, I e-mailed Dr Broomfield to ask him what health and mortality data he'd examined at electoral ward level around any incinerator which persuaded him or hs colleagues that incinerators posed no harm to health.

I await his reply with considerable interest.”

“Micro and nano particles go straight through the filters.
These particles are dangerous.
Check the literature if you do not believe my comment.
Brian (St. Dennis Cornwall)”

“Mike Ryan and others are right; incinerators under the guise of EfW/CHP are a coverup on health. As opposed to scarmongering, it is public debate and scientific discussion and scrutiny at a level HPA/EA haven't gone to. No spin, lots of scrutiny.

Don't be taken in by glossy websites and EfW clean, green and safe spin; the research hasn't been fully done on microsoot/monitoringPM2.5/PM1s.

In 1-2years AD of food waste; plasma gasification / Gasplasma will be taking over from incineration; its got a few more months to go in Canada and France to get from advanced demonstration to proven- bankability/deliverability follow.

Do you buy a near obsolete technology for 25/30 years; when the new technology is just about to be realeased???”

“What rubbish - they say smoking will kill ya, never done me any harm, also if smoking is so bad why haven't the government banned it - eh”

“The problem is easily solved if our maufacturers are pursuaded to package sensibly and to use materials in products that can be re-used. This approach is called zero-waste. If Plymouth sets itself the target of getting recycling upto 75% and Plymouth adopts Zero Waste as its policy position then quite simply the millions that will be wasted on a 25 year nightmare can be invested in environmentally sustainable solutions and Plymouth can be crowned Europe's Green Capital. Stephen Kearney and his fellow Liberal Democrats are not being opportunistic as some of the cooments state. They have a solution to our problem in stark contrast to the Conservative and Labour groups on the Council who are content to wash their hands of the problem and pretend the consequences of their policy are scaremongering.”

“Readers should also be aware that this monster is not just to burn up our waste. It will also be burning the rubbish from Torbay and the rest of Devon. Why should we be dumped on with their rubbish just to stack up absurd accounting rules for the Government. Not to mention the number of lorry journeys heading our way to bring us this toxic cargo.”

“I am the Michael Ryan named in the above article and I'd like the Environment Agency to name all the incinerators around which they've examined rates of illness and premature deaths at electoral ward level and then compared the data with a "control" group of electoral wards which are free from industrial PM2.5 emissions from incinerators or any other source.

The Environment Agency have fallen down on the job with regulation of polluting industries and have failed to comment on or respond to any newspaper article that reports my research.

The ONS data I've used shows clearly that incinerators cannot be regarded as harmless and publicising the truth isn't "scaremongering".”