Many recent studies have involved the effect of microplastics in drinking water on both human and marine health. However, more and more studies have begun investigating the impact that airborne microplastics have on both human and ecological health. Inhaling fragments of microplastics have largely detrimental human health impacts. The most surprising finding is that airborne microplastics have not just been found in highly industrialized and polluted areas, but also ones that we normally see as “pristine,” such as national parks. Microplastics can come from obvious sources such as plastic bottles, but also from waterproof outdoor gear and tents used for camping. The human health risks involved with breathing in fragments of microplastics have been recently linked to lung disease and tissue damage. Read More
Tag: health
The murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor by police and the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on minority communities has largely brought to light the systemic racism that is deeply embedded in our society. The effects of industrial pollution and extreme weather events due to climate change are often also brought specifically upon minority communities. In the attached article, Yale Environment 360 interviews Elizabeth Yeampierre, the co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance, to further discuss the deep intersection between environmental injustice, climate change, and racism and how we can build a movement to help combat them together. Read More
Sacrifice zones are communities that are unequally overburdened by pollution from industry at the expense of other communities using the industrial end product. Sacrifice zones are typically characterized by having a majority low-income and/or minority population and currently have the highest death rates from COVID-19. Recent studies conducted by Harvard University and the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic have researched the correlation between areas with higher concentrations of particulate matter (PM2.5) and/or toxic air pollutants, and higher death rates from COVID-19. Given the evidence that sacrifice zones are some of the most severely impacted communities from the pandemic, we ask the question why isn’t more being done to protect these vulnerable populations? Read More.
Midland, Michigan is still assessing the damages after torrential rain and dam failure flooded the area. The height of concern was the status of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Saginaw River Dredge Material Disposal Facility that houses dioxin contaminated sediments that could have spread from the storm water. The facility appears to have remained in tact; however, there is still concern that the flood could have spread river sediment already contaminated with dioxin from Dow towards residential properties. It may take some time to fully determine the extent of the damage in Midland as many properties are still under water. Read More.
Over the course of the last three years, the Trump administration has rolled back or is in the progress of rolling back nearly a 100 of the country’s top environmental policies. The administration has worked to weaken and revoke many of the Obama-era regulations that were enacted to protect our environment and health. A majority of the rollbacks were aimed at reducing burden for the oil, gas and coal industries, while in effect, potentially increasing greenhouse gas emissions and creating poorer air quality. Read More.
After three years in office, the Trump administration has dismantled most of the major climate and environmental policies the president promised to undo.
Calling the rules unnecessary and burdensome to the fossil fuel industry and other businesses, his administration has weakened Obama-era limits on planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and from cars and trucks, and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water and toxic chemicals. Several major reversals have been finalized in recent weeks as the country has struggled to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
In all, a New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts more than 60 environmental rules and regulations officially reversed, revoked or otherwise rolled back under Mr. Trump. An additional 34 rollbacks are still in progress.
With elections looming, the administration has sought to wrap up some of its biggest regulatory priorities quickly, said Hana V. Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program. Further delays could leave the new rules vulnerable to reversal under the Congressional Review Act if Democrats are able to retake Congress and the White House in November, she said.
The bulk of the rollbacks identified by the Times have been carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency, which repealed and replaced the Obama-era emissions rules for power plants and vehicles; weakened protections for more than half the nation’s wetlands; and withdrew the legal justification for restricting mercury emissions from power plants.
At the same time, the Interior Department has worked to open up more land for oil and gas leasing by cutting back protected areas and limiting wildlife protections.
“Over the past three years, we have fulfilled President Trump’s promises to provide certainty for states, tribes, and local governments,” a spokeswoman for the E.P.A. said in a statement to The Times, adding that the agency was “delivering on President Trump’s commitment to return the agency to its core mission: Providing cleaner air, water and land to the American people.”
But environmental and legal groups said the rollbacks have not served that mission. Ms. Vizcarra, who has tracked environmental rollbacks for Harvard since 2018, said the agency under Mr. Trump has often limited its own power to regulate environmental harm, especially when it comes to climate change.
Many of the rollbacks have faced legal challenges by states, environmental groups and others, and some could remain mired in court beyond November, regardless of the outcome of the election.
Hillary Aidun, who tracks deregulation at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said many of the rollbacks had not been adequately justified, leaving them vulnerable to legal challenge.
The New York Times analysis identified 10 rules that were initially reversed or suspended but later reinstated, often following lawsuits and other challenges. Other rollbacks were rebuffed by the courts but later revised by the administration and remain in effect.
All told, the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks could significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions and lead to thousands of extra deaths from poor air quality each year, according to energy and legal analysts.
Below, we have summarized each rule that has been targeted for reversal over the past three years.
Are there rollbacks we missed? Email climateteam@nytimes.com or tweet @nytclimate.
Air pollution and emissions
Completed
1. Weakened Obama-era fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for passenger cars and light trucks.
E.P.A. and Transportation Department | Read more »
2. Revoked California’s power to set stricter tailpipe emissions standards than the federal government.
E.P.A. | Read more »
3. Withdrew the legal justification for an Obama-era rule that limited mercury emissions from coal power plants.
E.P.A. | Read more »
4. Replaced the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which would have set strict limits on carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants, with a new version that would let states set their own rules.
Executive Order; E.P.A. | Read more »
5. Canceled a requirement for oil and gas companies to report methane emissions.
E.P.A. | Read more »
6. Revised and partially repealed an Obama-era rule limiting methane emissions on public lands, including intentional venting and flaring from drilling operations.
Interior Department | Read more »
7. Loosened a Clinton-era rule designed to limit toxic emissions from major industrial polluters.
E.P.A. | Read more »
8. Revised a program designed to safeguard communities from increases in pollution from new power plants to make it easier for facilities to avoid emissions regulations.
E.P.A. | Read more »
9. Amended rules that govern how refineries monitor pollution in surrounding communities.
E.P.A. | Read more »
10. Weakened an Obama-era rule meant to reduce air pollution in national parks and wilderness areas.
E.P.A. | Read more »
11. Weakened oversight of some state plans for reducing air pollution in national parks.
E.P.A. | Read more »
12. Relaxed air pollution regulations for a handful of plants that burn waste coal for electricity.
E.P.A. | Read more »
13. Repealed rules meant to reduce leaking and venting of powerful greenhouse gases known as hydrofluorocarbons from large refrigeration and air conditioning systems.
E.P.A. | Read more »
14. Directed agencies to stop using an Obama-era calculation of the social cost of carbon that rulemakers used to estimate the long-term economic benefits of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Executive Order | Read more »
15. Withdrew guidance directing federal agencies to include greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews. But several district courts have ruled that emissions must be included in such reviews.
Executive Order; Council on Environmental Quality | Read more »
16. Revoked an Obama executive order that set a goal of cutting the federal government’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent over 10 years.
Executive Order | Read more »
17. Repealed a requirement that state and regional authorities track tailpipe emissions from vehicles on federal highways.
Transportation Department | Read more »
18. Lifted a summertime ban on the use of E15, a gasoline blend made of 15 percent ethanol. (Burning gasoline with a higher concentration of ethanol in hot conditions increases smog.)
E.P.A. | Read more »
19. Changed rules to allow states and the E.P.A. to take longer to develop and approve plans aimed at cutting methane emissions from existing landfills.
E.P.A. | Read more »
In progress
20. Submitted notice of intent to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement. (The process of withdrawing cannot be completed until November 2020.)
Executive Order | Read more »
21. Proposed relaxing Obama-era requirements that companies monitor and repair methane leaks at oil and gas facilities.
E.P.A. | Read more »
22. Proposed eliminating Obama-era restrictions that, in effect, required newly built coal power plants to capture carbon dioxide emissions.
E.P.A. | Read more »
23. Proposed revisions to standards for carbon dioxide emissions from new, modified and reconstructed power plants.
Executive Order; E.P.A. | Read more »
24. Began a review of emissions rules for power plant start-ups, shutdowns and malfunctions. One outcome of that review: In February 2020, E.P.A. reversed a requirement that Texas follow emissions rules during certain malfunction events.
E.P.A. | Read more »
25. Opened for comment a proposal limiting the ability of individuals and communities to challenge E.P.A.-issued pollution permits before a panel of agency judges.
E.P.A. | Read more »
26. Delayed issuing a rule limiting greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft. (The E.P.A. acknowledged it is legally required to issue the rule, but has not done so yet. The delay is being challenged by environmental groups.)
E.P.A. | Read more »
27. Proposed limiting pesticide application buffer zones that are intended to protect farmworkers and bystanders from accidental exposure.
E.P.A. | Read more »
Drilling and extraction
Completed
28. Made significant cuts to the borders of two national monuments in Utah and recommended border and resource-management changes to several more.
Presidential Proclamation; Interior Department | Read more »
29. Lifted ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Congress; Interior Department | Read more »
30. Rescinded water pollution regulations for fracking on federal and Indian lands.
Interior Department | Read more »
31. Scrapped a proposed rule that required mines to prove they could pay to clean up future pollution.
E.P.A. | Read more »
32. Withdrew a requirement that Gulf oil rig owners prove they can cover the costs of removing rigs once they stop producing.
Interior Department | Read more »
33. Approved construction of the Dakota Access pipeline less than a mile from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation after the Army Corps of Engineers had said it would explore alternative routes. (A court has since ruled the agency must investigate how the pipeline is impacting the environment and local tribes, but it can continue to operate in the meantime.)
Executive Order; Army | Read more »
34. Changed how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission considers the indirect effects of greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews of pipelines.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission | Read more »
35. Revoked an Obama-era executive order designed to preserve ocean, coastal and Great Lakes waters in favor of a policy focused on energy production and economic growth.
Executive Order | Read more »
36. Permitted the use of seismic air guns for gas and oil exploration in the Atlantic Ocean. The practice, which can kill marine life and disrupt fisheries, was blocked under the Obama administration.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Read more »
37. Loosened offshore drilling safety regulations implemented by the Obama after following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, including reduced testing requirements for blowout prevention systems.
Interior Department | Read more »
38. Lifted an Obama-era freeze on new coal leases on public lands. In April 2019, a judge ruled that the Interior Department could not begin selling new leases without completing an environmental review. In February, the agency published an assessment that concluded restarting federal coal leasing would have little environmental impact.
Executive Order; Interior Department | Read more »
In progress
39. Proposed opening most of America’s coastal waters to offshore oil and gas drilling but delayed the plan after a federal judge ruled that Mr. Trump’s reversal of an Obama-era ban on drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans was unlawful.
Interior Department | Read more »
40. Repealed an Obama-era rule governing royalties for oil, gas and coal leases on federal lands, which replaced a 1980s rule that critics said allowed companies to underpay the federal government. A federal judge struck down the Trump administration’s repeal. The Interior Department is reviewing the decision.
Interior Department | Read more »
41. Proposed revising regulations on offshore oil and gas exploration by floating vessels in the Arctic that were developed after a 2013 accident. The Interior Department previously said it was “considering full rescission or revision of this rule.”
Executive Order; Interior Department | Read more »
42. Proposed “streamlining” the approval process for drilling for oil and gas in national forests.
Agriculture Department; Interior Department | Read more »
43. Recommended shrinking three marine protected areas or opening them to commercial fishing.
Executive Order; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Read more »
44. Proposed opening more land in the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve for oil drilling. The Obama administration had designated about half of the reserve as a conservation area.
Interior Department | Read more »
45. Proposed lifting a Clinton-era policy that banned logging and road construction in Tongass National Forest, Alaska.
Interior Department | Read more »
46. Approved the Keystone XL pipeline rejected by President Barack Obama, but a federal judge blocked the project from going forward without an adequate environmental review process. Mr. Trump later attempted to sidestep the ruling by issuing a presidential permit. Initial construction has started, but the project remains tied up in court.
Executive Order; State Department | Read more »
Infrastructure and planning
Completed
47. Revoked Obama-era flood standards for federal infrastructure projects that required the government to account for sea level rise and other climate change effects.
Executive Order | Read more »
48. Relaxed the environmental review process for federal infrastructure projects.
Executive Order | Read more »
49. Revoked a directive for federal agencies to minimize impacts on water, wildlife, land and other natural resources when approving development projects.
Executive Order | Read more »
50. Revoked an Obama executive order promoting climate resilience in the northern Bering Sea region of Alaska, which withdrew local waters from oil and gas leasing and established a tribal advisory council to consult on local environmental issues.
Executive Order | Read more »
51. Reversed an update to the Bureau of Land Management’s public land-use planning process.
Congress | Read more »
52. Withdrew an Obama-era order to consider climate change in the management of natural resources in national parks.
National Park Service | Read more »
53. Restricted most Interior Department environmental studies to one year in length and a maximum of 150 pages, citing a need to reduce paperwork.
Interior Department | Read more »
54. Withdrew a number of Obama-era Interior Department climate change and conservation policies that the agency said could “burden the development or utilization of domestically produced energy resources.”
Interior Department | Read more »
55. Eliminated the use of an Obama-era planning system designed to minimize harm from oil and gas activity on sensitive landscapes, such as national parks.
Interior Department | Read more »
56. Withdrew Obama-era policies designed to maintain or, ideally, improve natural resources affected by federal projects.
Interior Department | Read more »
In progress
57. Proposed plans to speed up the environmental review process for Forest Service projects.
Agriculture Department | Read more »
Animals
Completed
58. Changed the way the Endangered Species Act is applied, making it more difficult to protect wildlife from long-term threats posed by climate change.
Interior Department | Read more »
59. Relaxed environmental protections for salmon and smelt in California’s Central Valley in order to free up water for farmers.
Executive Order; Interior Department | Read more »
60. Overturned a ban on the use of lead ammunition and fishing tackle on federal lands.
Interior Department | Read more »
61. Overturned a ban on the hunting of predators in Alaskan wildlife refuges.
Congress | Read more »
62. Amended fishing regulations to loosen restrictions on the harvest of a number of species.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Read more »
63. Proposed revising limits on the number of endangered marine mammals and sea turtles that can be unintentionally killed or injured with sword-fishing nets on the West Coast. (The Obama-era rules were initially withdrawn by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but were later finalized following a court order. The agency has said it plans to revise the limits.)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Read more »
64. Loosened fishing restrictions intended to reduce bycatch of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Read more »
65. Rolled back a roughly 40-year-old interpretation of a policy aimed at protecting migratory birds, potentially running afoul of treaties with Canada and Mexico.
Interior Department | Read more »
66. Overturned a ban on using parts of migratory birds in handicrafts made by Alaskan Natives.
Interior Department | Read more »
In progress
67. Opened nine million acres of Western land to oil and gas drilling by weakening habitat protections for the sage grouse, an imperiled bird. An Idaho District Court injunction temporarily blocked the measure.
Interior Department | Read more »
68. Proposed ending an Obama-era rule that barred using bait to lure and kill grizzly bears, among other sport hunting practices that many people consider extreme, on some public lands in Alaska.
National Park Service; Interior Department | Read more »
Toxic substances and safety
Completed
69. Rejected a proposed ban on chlorpyrifos, a pesticide linked to developmental disabilities in children. (Several states have banned its use and the main manufacturer of the pesticide in 2020 stopped producing the product because of shrinking demand.)
E.P.A. | Read more »
70. Narrowed the scope of a 2016 law mandating safety assessments for potentially toxic chemicals like dry-cleaning solvents. The E.P.A. said it would focus on direct exposure and exclude indirect exposure such as from air or water contamination. In November 2019, a court of appeals ruled the agency must widen its scope to consider full exposure risks.
E.P.A. | Read more »
71. Reversed an Obama-era rule that required braking system upgrades for “high hazard” trains hauling flammable liquids like oil and ethanol.
Transportation Department | Read more »
72. Removed copper filter cake, an electronics manufacturing byproduct comprised of heavy metals, from the “hazardous waste” list.
E.P.A. | Read more »
73. Ended an Occupational Safety and Health Administration program to reduce risks of workers developing the lung disease silicosis. In February released guidance to include silica in OSHA’s National Emphasis Program, a worker safety program.
Labor Department | Read more »
74. Rolled back most of the requirements of a 2017 rule aimed at improving safety at sites that use hazardous chemicals that was instituted after a chemical plant exploded in Texas.
E.P.A. | Read more »
In progress
75. Proposed changing safety rules to allow for rail transport of the highly flammable liquefied natural gas.
Transportation Department | Read more »
76. Announced a review of an Obama-era rule lowering coal dust limits in mines. The head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration said there were no immediate plans to change the dust limit but has extended a public comment period until 2022.
Labor Department | Read more »
Water pollution
Completed
77. Scaled back pollution protections for certain tributaries and wetlands that were regulated under the Clean Water Act by the Obama administration.
E.P.A.; Army | Read more »
78. Revoked a rule that prevented coal companies from dumping mining debris into local streams.
Congress | Read more »
79. Withdrew a proposed rule aimed at reducing pollutants, including air pollution, at sewage treatment plants.
E.P.A. | Read more »
80. Withdrew a proposed rule requiring groundwater protections for certain uranium mines. Recently, the administration’s Nuclear Fuel Working Group proposed opening up 1,500 acres outside the Grand Canyon to nuclear production.
E.P.A. | Read more »
In progress
81. Attempted to weaken federal rules regulating the disposal and storage of coal ash waste from power plants, but a court determined the rules were already insufficient. Proposed a new rule to allow coal ash impoundments of a type previously deemed unsafe a pathway to proving safety.
E.P.A.
82. Proposed a rule exempting certain types of power plants from parts of an E.P.A. rule limiting toxic discharge from power plants into public waterways.
E.P.A. | Read more »
83. Proposed weakenning a portion of the Clean Water Act to make it easier for the E.P.A. to issue permits for federal projects over state objections if the projects don’t meet local water quality standards, including for pipelines and other fossil fuel facilities.
Executive Order; E.P.A. | Read more »
84. Proposed extending the lifespan of unlined coal ash holding areas, which can spill their contents because they lack a protective underlay.
E.P.A. | Read more »
85. Proposed a regulation limiting the scope of an Obama-era rule under which companies had to prove that large deposits of recycled coal ash would not harm the environment.
E.P.A. | Read more »
86. Proposed a new rule allowing the federal government to issue permits for coal ash waste in Indian Country and some states without review if the disposal site is in compliance with federal regulations.
E.P.A. | Read more »
87. Proposed doubling the time allowed to remove lead pipes from water systems with high levels of lead.
E.P.A. | Read more »
Other
Completed
88. Repealed an Obama-era regulation that would have nearly doubled the number of light bulbs subject to energy-efficiency standards starting in January 2020. The Energy Department also blocked the next phase of efficiency standards for general-purpose bulbs already subject to regulation.
Energy Department | Read more »
89. Changed a 25-year-old policy to allow coastal replenishment projects to use sand from protected ecosystems.
Interior Department | Read more »
90. Limited funding of environmental and community development projects through corporate settlements of federal lawsuits.
Justice Department | Read more »
91. Stopped payments to the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations program to help poorer countries reduce carbon emissions.
Executive Order | Read more »
92. Reversed restrictions on the sale of plastic water bottles in national parks desgined to cut down on litter, despite a Park Service report that the effort worked.
Interior Department | Read more »
In progress
93. Proposed a sweeping overhaul of the National Environmental Policy Act that would limit the scope of environmental concerns federal agencies need to take into account when constructing public infrastructure projects, such as roads, pipelines and telecommunications networks.
Council on Environmental Quality | Read more »
94. Proposed limiting the studies used by the E.P.A. for rulemaking to only those that make data publicly available. (Scientists widely criticized the proposal, saying it would effectively block the agency from considering landmark research that relies on confidential health data.)
E.P.A. | Read more »
95. Proposed changes to the way cost-benefit analyses are conducted under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and other environmental statutes.
E.P.A. | Read more »
96. Proposed withdrawing efficiency standards for residential furnaces and commercial water heaters designed to reduce energy use.
Energy Department | Read more »
97. Created a product category that would allow some dishwashers to be exempt from energy efficiency standards.
Energy Department | Read more »
98. Initially withdrew, and then delayed, a proposed rule that would inform car owners about fuel-efficient replacement tires. (The Transportation Department has scheduled a new rulemaking notice for 2020.)
Transportation Department | Read more »
These rules were initially reversed by the Trump administration but were later reinstated, often following lawsuits and other challenges.
1. Stopped enforcing a 2015 rule that prohibited the use of hydrofluorocarbons, powerful greenhouse gases, in air-conditioners and refrigerators. A court later restored the prohibition.
E.P.A. | Read more
2. Sought to repeal emissions standards for “glider” trucks — vehicles retrofitted with older, often dirtier engines — but reversed course after Andrew Wheeler took over as head of the E.P.A.
E.P.A. | Read more
3. Sought to lift restrictions on mining in Bristol Bay, Alaska, but later suspended the effort. (A court ruled the E.P.A. could withdraw a 2014 determination that the project was a too great a threat to the Bay’s salmon. The federal permit for the mine is pending with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.)
E.P.A.; Army | Read more
4. Delayed a compliance deadline for new national ozone pollution standards by one year, but later reversed course.
E.P.A. | Read more
5. Delayed implementation of a rule regulating the certification and training of pesticide applicators, but a judge ruled that the E.P.A. had done so illegally and declared the rule still in effect.
E.P.A. | Read more
6. Initially delayed publishing efficiency standards for household appliances, but later published them after multiple states and environmental groups sued.
Energy Department | Read more
7. Removed the Yellowstone grizzly bear from the Endangered Species List, but the protections were later reinstated by a federal judge. (The Trump administration appealed the ruling in May 2019.)
Interior Department | Read more
8. Reissued a rule limiting the discharge of mercury by dental offices into municipal sewers after a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group.
E.P.A. | Read more
9. Delayed federal building efficiency standards until Sept. 30, 2017, at which time the rules went into effect.
Energy Department | Read more
10. Ordered a review of water efficiency standards in bathroom fixtures, including toilets. E.P.A. determined existing standards were sufficient.
E.P.A. | Read more
Categories
Minnesota Bans Toxic Chemical TCE
Minnesota has become the first state in the country to ban the toxic chemical TCE. The chemical is known to cause cancer and birth defects and has been released from Water Gremlin into the air for nearly 15 years within the White Bear Township. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed the ban of TCE on Saturday and companies within the state will have until 2022 to find an alternative product to use in its place. Read More.
Americans are exposed to endocrine-disrupting chemicals on a daily basis through the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the household products we bring into the house. Most endocrine disrupting chemicals have the ability to imitate developmental hormones in the body, or if exposed to at an early age, can lead to chronic conditions including diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and asthma. These preexisting conditions can increase the severity of the coronavirus. Although the immediate national concern is to reduce the spread of COVID-19, we should consider what changes can be made to reduce our exposure to disruptive chemicals in the environment to protect ourselves from future viruses and pandemics. Read More.
Is air pollution connected to higher coronavirus death rates? Various studies around the world, including one in Italy and one in England, are working to answer this question. In early April, the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health released findings on a study that found a positive correlation between long term exposure to particulate matter (PM 2.5) and higher death rates from virus. The study seeks to answer if exposure to air pollution leads to more severe outcomes to patients infected with COVID-19. The study has since been updated on April 24 to include updated conditions of the virus and additional variables connected to the spread of the virus.
Find Harvard University’s health study here.
Large events, such as hurricanes, wars, or the mass transmission of disease, have a tendency to reinvent how a city is designed or operates. One example is the construction of fountains and parks in Paris after a cholera outbreak in efforts to eradicate the disease. New York city, one of the loudest cities in the United States from to its busy streets and one of the hardest hit areas for the coronavirus, could see a change in the way the city is structured. Could the city see less cars to accommodate for a more pedestrian lifestyle? It cannot be fully determined how the city might change, but it begs the question of how other cities around the country could change in response to the virus.
The following article is reprinted on our webpage from the New York Times written by Ginia Bellafante.
The following article is reprinted on our webpage from the New York Times written by Ginia Bellafante.
Streets Should Be Car-Free During Lockdown. And After.
Cholera changed the face of Paris. Will Covid-19 change the streets of New York?
By Ginia Bellafante
May 1, 2020
May 1, 2020
Late Tuesday afternoon, New York’s City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, was on a nine-mile walk, one the current crisis has him taking everyday — the quest for fresh air and decompression. Beginning from his boyfriend’s apartment in Williamsburg, he heads north into Queens over the Pulaski Bridge and through Hunter’s Point South Park. That is where he was when I caught up with him by phone, watching people for the most part diligently perform the choreography of social distance without, he noted, the interventions of the police.
For several weeks, Mr. Johnson had been pushing to close miles of city streets to cars as a means of accommodating what would only become a growing desperation to safely and more comfortably walk and bike outside as warmer weather approached. Mayor Bill de Blasio resisted for a long time, initiating a small pilot program and then abruptly shutting it down deciding that it wasn’t worth the trouble. He maintained that the Police Department, itself badly hit by the pandemic, was too depleted to enforce the plan, which implied that law enforcement was essential to carrying it out.
This week the mayor announced that he would indeed set aside up 100 miles of road in phases, the first 40 miles over the next month. Though many of the details have yet to be finalized, the police will monitor closings in some capacity. Advocates for livable streets have had a hard time understanding why the police would be so critical to the venture given that other cities like Oakland, Calif., have largely managed to ban traffic from select locations with barricades and signs.
Crises of the kind we are experiencing require nimble and innovative thinking, the willingness to break with frameworks of the past. The slow implementation of a measure that seems at once relatively simple and destined to provide so much good, offers one more example of the bureaucratic inertia that has distinguished management of the corona outbreak at so many different levels of government. If we can’t quickly summon cars off the street — and only some of them and just provisionally — at a time when no one is going anywhere, how can we expect the city to brilliantly and flexibly reimagine itself once the pandemic is over?
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, public-health catastrophes managed to inaugurate the wholesale re-engineering of societies. Ingenuity was the hallmark of a time in which public health was intricately linked to urban planning and design. The continued eruptions of cholera and other diseases ultimately brought about transformative infrastructural changes to deliver clean air and water to places marked by filth, stench, pestilence.
The Paris that Georges-Eugène Haussmann famously conceived — a city of wide boulevards, parks, fountains — arose in response to a cholera outbreak that had moved the French government to demolish medieval buildings where illness was thought to spread too easily.
Crises of the kind we are experiencing require nimble and innovative thinking, the willingness to break with frameworks of the past. The slow implementation of a measure that seems at once relatively simple and destined to provide so much good, offers one more example of the bureaucratic inertia that has distinguished management of the corona outbreak at so many different levels of government. If we can’t quickly summon cars off the street — and only some of them and just provisionally — at a time when no one is going anywhere, how can we expect the city to brilliantly and flexibly reimagine itself once the pandemic is over?
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, public-health catastrophes managed to inaugurate the wholesale re-engineering of societies. Ingenuity was the hallmark of a time in which public health was intricately linked to urban planning and design. The continued eruptions of cholera and other diseases ultimately brought about transformative infrastructural changes to deliver clean air and water to places marked by filth, stench, pestilence.
The Paris that Georges-Eugène Haussmann famously conceived — a city of wide boulevards, parks, fountains — arose in response to a cholera outbreak that had moved the French government to demolish medieval buildings where illness was thought to spread too easily.
In this country, by the 1870s, the seven founding members of the American Public Health Association included an architect and a housing specialist. Frederick Law Olmsted was already a celebrated landscape architect when he became secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission, a precursor to the Red Cross, where he oversaw a medical network that aided wounded soldiers during the Civil War.
The ongoing health emergencies of the period were deeply personal for him. Olmsted’s first child had died of cholera. Both his brother and stepson were lost to tuberculosis. The urban parks movement, led by Olmsted, was built on the notion that green space was the respiratory apparatus for any urban environment, the prerequisite for expectations of sound collective health.
Later, the advance of Modernist architecture was grounded in some of the same assumptions about the curative properties of light and air. The flat roofs, terraces, balconies, huge windows — the lean clinical aesthetic borrowed to a great extent from the design of sanitariums where tuberculosis patients were sent for treatment.
Later, the advance of Modernist architecture was grounded in some of the same assumptions about the curative properties of light and air. The flat roofs, terraces, balconies, huge windows — the lean clinical aesthetic borrowed to a great extent from the design of sanitariums where tuberculosis patients were sent for treatment.
Twenty years earlier, Le Corbusier, the Swiss architect whose legacy is best observed in the unadorned apartment tower, looked to a future where cities were distinguished by a kind of stylized hygiene. “There are no more dirty, dark corners,” he wrote. “Everything is shown as it is. Then comes inner cleanliness.”
What New York will look like — how and under what circumstances we will come to feel “clean” — remains the great uncertainty. Disaster brings the opportunity for reinvention, but how enthusiastically will we embrace it? The two major cataclysms to afflict 21st century New York — 9/11 and then a decade later, Hurricane Sandy — similarly occasioned chances to abandon anachronistic approaches to the development of public and private space; were those chances squandered?
After the Twin Towers fell, government authorities and committees and subcommittees were formed and spent many years and billions of dollars to essentially refashion Lower Manhattan into a bigger and more elite mall. (Has anyone you have ever known set foot in the Montblanc store in the Oculus? Or even thought about it?) Hurricane Sandy was supposed to have awakened us, viscerally, to the threats of climate change, and instead it led the real-estate industry right back to constructing high-rises on the waterfront, adjusting by moving building mechanicals to the top of whatever went up.
The back and forth over whether or not to open streets fully to pedestrians and how to do it stems in part from concerns held by the police department that drivers won’t behave themselves and might ram either by accident or intent into people retreating onto open streets. This is the reasonable mind-set of counterterrorism, one that dominated the thinking of the department, to great success, for two decades. But it now requires a shift to new and different realities.
Much of the opposition to how New York might do things differently in the age of the coronavirus has followed the logic that we cannot adopt models deployed in other cities because we are not other cities — we are not Oakland; we are not Denver. We are bigger, denser, more complicated.
“I am so tired of this argument about New York exceptionalism,’’ Corey Johnson told me. “We are New York. The whole point is that we are creative.”
A new screening tool is now available that identifies populations across the country that are most vulnerable to severe complications following exposure to the coronavirus and development of covid-19. This community vulnerability map which was developed by Jvion, a health care data firm, in collaboration with Microsoft. Jvion uses socioeconomic and environmental factors, such as lack of access to transportation, exposure to pollution, unemployment and mortality rates at the census block level to identify communities vulnerable to severe effects of covid-19.
In an article about his new mapping tool in Grist magazine, Jvion is described as using “machine learning to analyze block-level data from the U.S. Census to identify ‘environmental health hazards’ as one key socioeconomic factor that makes a population more vulnerable to severe covid-19 outcomes, based on the health effects of polluted air, contaminated water and extreme heat. They also factored in how chronic exposure to outdoor respiratory air pollutants such as fine particulate matter can increase the risk of cancer, respiratory illness and cardiovascular disease – preexisting conditions that make exposure to the novel corona virus more severe and fatal.”
This interactive and searchable map differs from others available on the internet in that it identifies the populations that once infected will likely experience severe outcomes ranging from hospitalization to death.
This vulnerability map can be used together with the USEPA’s EJScreen, an Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping tool. The EJScreen uses 11 environmental and health indicators and standard demographic data to identify communities most susceptible to air quality pollution. The EJ screen specifically includes a cancer risk and respiratory hazard index that is provided as a percentile in the state or nationally.
When the vulnerability mapping tool is matched with the EPA’s EJ Screen, the results are astounding. The relationship between a community’s proximity to industrial facilities and the projected risk of severe covid-19 outcomes is very clear and very strong. The areas of high vulnerability identified on the Community Vulnerability map match well with areas with high pollution from industrial facilities identified by the EJScreen, painting an all too familiar picture of communities suffering disproportionately from multiple and cumulative risks.
The preexisting respiratory and other health conditions that African Americans suffer from living in the shadows of industrial facilities in sacrifice zones across the country contribute significantly to their susceptibility to the lethal effects of covid-19. This reality isn’t an accident, but the result of economic and environmental conditions imposed on people of color over the long history of discrimination in this country.
In spite of these obvious disparities and the growing threat that people of color and African Americans in particular face from covid-19, EPA announced this month that it has stopped enforcing regulations that hold corporate polluters accountable for releasing toxic chemicals into the air we breathe. This is another outrage. Sign our petition to demand that the government reverse this disastrous decision.