Task Force Reports to Houston’s Mayor,
Ranks Air Quality
Health Risks
HOUSTON – (June 12, 2006) – A task force of experts assembled by University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston President James T. Willerson, M.D., today presented Houston Mayor Bill White with its final report on reducing air quality health risks.
Houston Mayor Bill White announces aggressive plans for cleaning up Houston’s air after reviewing a final report of a year-long study of air quality health effects by a task force assembled by UT Health Science Center at Houston President James T. Willerson, M.D. (left). During a June 12 news conference, White charged City Council Member Carol Alvarado (right), with holding hearings into the findings and determining next steps. Photo by David Mendel.
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.
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.”
“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,” said Willerson. “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.”
The Institute for Health Policy at The University of Texas School of Public Health organized, coordinated and staffed the research effort. 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 University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB).
“Nothing like this report has been done in Houston before,” said Linder. “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.
“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 four leading categories of emissions.
“I want them to go where we believe that there are polluters that are emitting those top 12 dangerous chemicals that are identified in the report and to do so particularly for those emitters who are in those neighborhoods in our city that have five or more out of the 12 present at high-risk levels in our air,” White said.
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 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 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.”
In addition to Linder, who is interim director of the Institute for Health Policy and currently an associate professor at the UT School of Public Health, members of the Task Force are:
- Task Force Chair Ken Sexton, Sc.D., a professor of environmental sciences at the UT School of Public Health, Brownsville Regional Campus.
- Thomas H. Stock, Ph.D., associate professor of environmental sciences at the UT School of Public Health.
- George Delclos, M.D., director of the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health, and director of the Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at the UT Health Science Center at Houston.
- Melissa L. Bondy, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and director of the Center for Childhood Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention.
- Jonathan Ward, Jr., Ph.D., a professor and director of the Division of Environmental Toxicology in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health, as well as deputy director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Toxicology Center, at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB).
- Stuart L. Abramson, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of pediatrics and immunology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, associate director for Clinical Research and Health Professional Education at the Children’s Asthma Center at Texas Children’s Hospital and director of the Pediatric Allergy and Immunology Clinic at Ben Taub General Hospital.
- Matthew P. Frasier, Ph.D., an associate professor of engineering and member of the faculty of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Rice University.
Media Contact: David Mendel
Media Hotline: 713.500.3030