Task Force Ranks Air Quality Health Risks in Houston

Ozone and fine particulate matter head a list of the dirty dozen pollutants identified as definite health risks by a task force of experts assembled by University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston President James T. Willerson, M.D. In June the task force presented Houston Mayor Bill White with its final report.

The Task Force on Reducing Air Quality Health Risks was asked in April 2005 to examine available data relating to outdoor air pollutants in the Houston area and to advise the mayor on those most likely to cause significant risks to human health.

UT Health Science Center at Houston President James T. Willerson, M.D.,
at podium, presents a report from a study of Houston’s air quality. Houston
Mayor Bill White, left, charged City Council Member Carol Alvarado with
holding hearings into the findings. With them are task force members
Stuart L. Abramson, M.D., Ph.D., third from left, assistant professor of
pediatrics and immunology, Baylor College of Medicine, and Stephen H.
Linder, Ph.D., associate professor of management, policy and community
health, UT School of Public Health. Photo by David Mendel

The final report ranks relative health risks from more than 179 hazardous air pollutants for which federal regulatory standards have yet to be developed. The scientific panel identified the dozen pollutants, including ozone, that pose the highest risk to residents in the Greater Houston area and categorized another 30 or so as posing probable (nine) or possible (24) risks to human health. The risks from the remainder were either uncertain (118) or unlikely (16).

Rising to the top of the list are ozone, particulate matter, 1,3-butadiene, and benzene – pollutants known to be highly prevalent in the Houston region and to pose significant health risks.

“One thing I would highlight in the list of offenders with ozone and particulate matter, is diesel particulate matter,” said Task Force Coordinator and Staff Director Stephen H. Linder, Ph.D. “This appears to pose a very high cancer risk across the 10-county area. The sulphur levels in diesel fuel have just been reduced, but the levels of on-road and off-road diesel particulates are still very high.”

Constructive Role to Play

“Our university community does indeed have a constructive role to play in supporting decisions that must be made by this administration, this courageous mayor, and others in government and industry to alleviate the health problems that we know are tied to breathing polluted air,” Willerson said. “The UT Health Science Center and its partners in the medical center look forward to a continuing role in providing scientific assistance to the city on pollution problems and on all other issues that bear on the health of Houstonians.”

Linder, who is interim director of the Institute for Health Policy and an associate professor at the UT School of Public Health, said, “Nothing like this report has been done in Houston before. Most of the attention, and rightly so, focuses on our ozone problems that keep us from complying with federal clean air standards – but the report also underscores the fact that air pollution has a greater impact on the most vulnerable groups in our society.”

Among these at-risk groups, the report says, are: elderly people, especially those suffering from chronic respiratory and cardiovascular disease; children, who are more exposed through outdoor activities while undergoing constant growth and development; pregnant women and their unborn babies; and those who have limited access to health care and few resources to reduce threats to their health.

Several neighborhoods in East Houston, because of their proximity to the Ship Channel, the Port of Houston and numerous refineries, receive especially close attention in the report. The task force found that these neighborhoods carry the burden of almost twice as many pollutants from the “definite risk” category as the rest of Greater Houston.

Historic Turning Point

“Today marks a historic turning point in the battle of Houstonians to get cleaner air,” said Mayor White during a City Hall news conference announcing the findings of the task force report. “This study is the basis for a new regional plan of action to clean the air.”

As a result of the report, White is ordering the installation of monitors and new infra-red equipment based in areas thought to be responsible for the leading categories of emissions. White also directed Houston City Council Member Carol Alvarado (District I), who chairs the Council’s Committee on the Environment and Public Health, to conduct “detailed hearings” into the findings of the report and the next steps the city should follow to effectively improve air quality.

White used the news conference to put Houston businesses on notice. “Cleaner air is good for most Houston businesses,” said White. “One business that puts toxins in the air hurts the businesses of other firms in our community. That simple, clear statement has not always been the policy of the business community of Houston.”

The Institute for Health Policy at the UT School of Public Health organized, coordinated and staffed the research effort, which was chaired by Ken Sexton, Sc.D., professor of environmental sciences at the UT School of Public Health Brownsville Regional Campus. The work of the task force was underwritten by a philanthropic gift.

The eight-member task force included four experts from the UT School of Public Health, plus one each from Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine, the UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and the UT Medical Branch at Galveston. For a list of members, see http://distinctions.uthouston.edu/archive/2006/
August/task_force.html. For the complete report, see http://www.sph.uth.tmc.edu/uploadedfiles/
centers/ihp/UTreportrev.pdf.

By David Mendel, Public Affairs