Laws on pollution in Toronto – failing? Pollution levels haven’t changed despite efforts as indicated by this University of Toronto study.
Looking over the last decade, there has been no overall reduction in smog in the GTA, despite best efforts to control some of the contributing factors,
However, claims of health impacts due to pollution in Toronto and other Canadian cities are up according to some other studies. Ross McKitrick says in a new peer reviewed study that the models and claims don’t add up.
Study Questions Link Between Air Pollution, Serious Health Effects
University of Guelph News Release
Challenging accepted wisdom, a University of Guelph professor says claims about the health effects of air pollution are not supported by data from Canadian cities.
Guelph economist Ross McKitrick, along with Gary Koop of the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and Lise Tole of the University of Edinburgh, analyzed a new database from 11 Canadian cities over a 20-year period. Unlike most earlier studies, this one included controls for effects of smoking and income.
They found no evidence that air pollution affected either hospital admission rates or time spent in hospitals. However, they did determine that both smoking and income levels directly affect respiratory health. Their findings appear this week in the journal Environmental Modelling and Software.
The researchers compared monthly hospital admission rates between 1974 and 1994 for all lung ailments to ambient levels of five common air contaminants. “We were looking for predictable, common physical effects from standardized exposure levels,” McKitrick said, adding the researchers examined data over a longer time span than most previous studies, and used advanced econometric methods called Bayesian Model Averaging to ensure they considered all possible combinations of effects.
“Our examination of data back to the early 1970s was motivated in part by the fact that air pollution was much higher compared to today,” he said. “If today’s air pollution levels are causing thousands of hospitalizations, the effects should have been even stronger in the 1970s when air quality was much worse.”
“But the data showed no evidence of changing health effects at the pollution levels observed in Canada over recent decades.”
The findings contradict hundreds of studies that have connected urban air pollution levels and respiratory health problems. Such studies have resulted in calls for tighter air pollution regulations and more stringent emission standards.
McKitrick said the discrepancies between this study and earlier research stem from the common practice of not examining long enough data sets and not controlling for model uncertainty, smoking rates and socioeconomic variables. He added that their study drew data samples from the 1970s, when many Canadian cities had high pollution levels, through the 1980s, when steady reductions began, and into the 1990s, when pollution levels were historically low.
“It’s important to get accurate measures of the potential benefits of air pollution regulations, namely improved quality of life and reduced health-care costs, in order to guide regulatory decision-making,” McKitrick said.
“We did find consistent evidence that lower smoking rates lead to fewer hospital admissions and shorter stays,” he said. The researchers also found evidence that, all else being equal, regions with larger economies tend to have higher hospital admission rates. This may indicate more hospitals and longer patient treatment regimens, McKitrick said.
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See the paper and supporting data here in Dr. McKitricks web page.
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Models that predict thousands of smog-related hospitalizations in Toronto don’t hold up
By Ross McKitrick
For many years we have heard that air pollution in Canada is responsible for thousands of annual deaths and hospitalizations. In 2004 Toronto Public Health claimed that 1,700 premature deaths and 6,000 hospitalizations occur each year in Toronto alone, due to air pollution. The Ontario Medical Association, provincial and federal governments, lung associations and other groups regularly cite these kinds of figures in support of calls for new regulatory initiatives. These death and hospitalization rates are astonishing. It is like suffering a 9/11-sized terrorist attack every 10 months.
But is it really true? The estimates are derived by taking correlations in the epidemiological literature between observed pollution levels and health indicators, like hospital admission rates, and then extrapolating across populations to estimate how many deaths and illness diagnoses can, in theory, be attributed to pollution. In other words, the numbers come from statistical models, not from direct observations. That means we need to pay close attention to how the statistical modeling is done.
Together with my coauthors Gary Koop of Strathclyde University and Lise Tole of the University of Edinburgh, I have just published a peer-reviewed study in the journal Environmental Modelling and Software that does just that. What we found gives us reason to believe that the kind of statistical modeling behind common claims about air pollution may need a careful second look.
There are hundreds of studies in the epidemiological literature that have reported correlations between air pollution and health measures. But there are some common weaknesses to this literature. First, the results are not consistent across studies. Some studies find particulate matter (PM) affects health, but not sulphur dioxide (SO2) or carbon monoxide (CO). Others reported SO2 has an effect, but not PM. Another reports CO has an effect but not ozone (O3), while another finds O3 matters in some cities but not others. One large U.S. study found PM increased mortality risk a little bit across the U.S., except in 20 out of 88 cities in which it actually reduced mortality risk. These kinds of inconsistencies should not occur if the health effect is based on a real physiological response. This is a second puzzling aspect of the literature: Despite decades of testing, clinical investigations have not found experimental support for the idea that current ambient air pollution levels cause lung disease or mortality.
…
We found, not surprisingly, that smoking is bad for lung health. We found that regions with higher Gross Domestic Product (GDP) tend to have higher hospital admission rates, depending on the model specification, which may indicate that those regions have more hospital services. And we found evidence that hot days with high air pressure tend to produce more hospital admissions.
What we did not find was any evidence that increases in air pollution levels are associated with increased rates of hospital admissions. We looked at the data every which way imaginable. If we were to cherry pick, by looking only at a sub-sample of the time or by picking just the right form of the model, we could find evidence that CO or nitrogen dioxide (NO2) have positive effects on lung disease, but those results do not get strong support in the data. The models that get consistent support either show no pollution effects or — paradoxically — negative effects. In other words, in some cases as air pollution rises, hospital admissions go down. As odd as that sounds, we are by no means the first to report negative coefficients in the literature. Nobody is trying to argue that air pollution is good for you: this is either just noise in the data, or it might be an effect from “averting” behaviour, where people who are susceptible to lung problems stay indoors on days with bad air quality.
Based on our analysis, we could estimate what the effect on hospital admissions would be if all the pollution currently observed in Toronto air were to disappear. Toronto Public Health claims about 6,000 fewer hospitalizations would occur. But this claim gets no support in the data. We found that there would be no reduction in lung-related hospitalizations. If anything there might be somewhere between 20 and 200 more admissions, if we apply the statistical results in a mechanical fashion.
Very few studies over the past decade have controlled for socioeconomic covariates (including smoking), fewer still have looked at long data panels back to the 1970s and fewer still have dealt with model uncertainty. Those that have addressed one or more of these issues typically find the effect of air pollution shrinks or disappears outright. Thus our results are actually quite consistent with the relevant group of previous studies. The popular idea that current ambient air pollution has a powerful effect on lung health might look like it is based on a large empirical foundation, but on closer inspection the pile contains a lot of weak results.
So the bottom line is that, for the purpose of assessing the link between air pollution levels and hospital admissions, one needs to look closely at the kinds of studies being done and how they did the statistical modeling. More studies need to be done using long time series that go back to the 1970s or earlier, more studies need to control for socioeconomic covariates and more studies need to take account of model uncertainty. Based on evidence to date, as these things begin to happen, we should not be surprised if current estimates of the health effects of air pollution turn out to be in need of major revision.
Ross McKitrick is a professor of economics at the University of Guelph.
Read complete article: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/03/17/where-are-the-bodies.aspx#ixzz0in3quaUy
Great article that exposes the level of quality of ‘statistically-based’ science (how on earth can a study that does NOT control for smoking and income be used to make inferences about pollution?). Omg. Really. Post-modern science I gather is alive and well.
As to pft – he is probably tired of reading the comments – but sure does reveal the strength of the template upon which he bases his beliefs. The results of the analysis are incomprehensible to him. They don’t fit his notion of what is ‘correct’ and ‘true’ (didn’t mention ddt and alar tho) – so are rejected out of hand.
My message to pft is – I admire you posting your beliefs here. Takes some nerve to expose yourself to criticism. Its admirable.
Some of the comments flamen ok. But I suggest – a deep breath, perhaps a glass of wine and carefully re-read and ponder what Prof Dr McKitrick is saying here. It really is enlightening.
Good luck to you. I hope this is a teachable moment. Really.
Steve Keohane (09:46:47) :
I would be curious to control in this study for genetic background. I have a theory that people with northern European vs. African genetics have a disparate rate of cancer from smoking, because the Europeans spent more time in smokey caves. This weeded out the weaker lung genetics in the Europeans, so they have lower cancer rates from smoking.
————–
Interesting theory. One need not go so far back as cavemen, however. The chimney was not invented until the 9th century (apparently a monastic invention) and did not become widespread until the 12th century. (Even those master engineers, the ancient Romans, missed this one.) Through most of the year, then, families would be huddled in a smoky, one room hovel for warmth when not performing work outdoors. Hard to test your theory after the fact, though – perhaps it will have to be left as an intelligent conjecture.
The fact remains, however, that in the West, people have probably not experienced such clean air for most of their lives as they are currently enjoying. We probably have cleaner lungs (non-smokers, that is) than our ancestors. Aside from the fact that most people were exposed to high levels of indoor pollution, both at night and for varying portions of the day, in urban centres air pollution was common. London England, for example, had smog days going back to the 14th century; people did not complain about wood smoke, so probably smog problems emerged earlier, but what prompted complaints was the burning of sea-coal, which produced black, very stinky emissions.
By the 18th century there were complaints of reduced visibility and breathing problems due to the “fuliginous vapours” that hung over the city of London – John Turner’s famous paintings of ships on the Thames, with the gorgeous sunset haze around them, were a result of viewing these ships through smog. The first air pollution laws in England were passed in the 14th century, and more were passed in later centuries, but none were effective until nuclear power began to replace coal-fires in the later 1950s.
As Mike Haseler remarked above, what we are seeing today ‘is an over-sensitivity to risk due to the absence of real risk in modern society’. Incidentally, around the turn of the last century, over a hundred childhood deaths a year resulted from exploding coal-fired stoves in the U.K. This was accepted as one of the risks resulting from the use of necessary technologies. Probably there are no stats regarding how many children burned to death from open fires in previous centuries.
“Wren (09:45:33) :
DirkH (04:50:37) :
[…]
high life expectancy. So what they’re saying is more than 5% of all deaths are caused by outdoor pollution….
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I’m not sure that’s exactly what they are saying. The “1,700 premature deaths” due to air pollution suggests 1,700 would have lived longer if not for the pollution.”
For me, “premature death” is definitely a description for dying, being dead afterwards, no more amongst us. My arithmetic was a quick estimate anyway… i would just say that Public Health authority sounds two magnitudes off.
“DirkH (11:32:35) :
[…]
anyway… i would just say that Public Health authority sounds two magnitudes off.”
So they estimate a mortality increase of about 5 % due to air pollution… why not 50%? Sounds unbelievable. Why not 0.5% ? Nobody would be interested. 5% is just the right order of magnitude to justify some drastic measures… i don’t think that that’s a coincidence, probably every politics student learns in the first semester that you should always have a 5% incidence as ammunition for anything you want to push through. Command the scientists you pay accordingly. Make sure no smart ass statistician checks the numbers.
[dude do you have anything constructive to add? ~ ctm]
Dude Yes I do.
Who is paying your bills these days?
Reply: I work ten hour nights as a service worker. You? ~ ctm
Quit being so Angelic.
Look at this:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/04/texas_academy_of_science_getti.php
Reply: People angry at someone that says killing 90% of humans would be a good thing? Go figure. Hadn’t heard of this till now. Next! ~ ctm.
Or how about this beauty?
Whats with you guys?
[link contains excess profanity ~ ctm
Reply: Not relevant. Link contains profanity. ~ ctm
So like how do I show how you people are attacking scientists with horrible and despicable emails If i cannot reference them?
Reply: We don’t like spewing venom here as you initially tried to do. Showing us that venom is spewed elsewhere is not relevant and in fact well known. Go check out realclimate, pharyngula, climateprogress, and open mind for lots of examples. I’m leaving for awhile. Someone else will be dealing with you. ~ ctm
My take from this post is confirmation that it pays to examine any scientific ‘fact’ published by the media with a large dose of sceptical critical reasoning.
Be especially vigilant in looking behind any scientists back to see if he’s holding an axe to grind!
Wren (09:17:37) : I have noticed a lack of correlation between the temperature in my house and the temperature outside.
Obviously someone else pays your electric bill if your thermostat is set at 65F year round. Our thermostat is set at 80 in summer and 50 in winter, correlating very closely to outside temps.
+
Right; I say “ban them” too, after my experiences walking about this winter … WHAT is these people are burning in those things that makes the smoke so noxious!? (Maybe it’s not just wood??)
As to ‘bodies’, I have a new policy of ***avoiding*** those streets where such smoke is encountered, THAT’S why your supposed ‘body count’ is low …. reduce/elimination the exposure.
.
.
In case anyone is interested …..
The Obama USEPA has recently proposed to lower the ozone standard to somewhere between 0.060 and 0.070 ppm, relying heavily on epidemiology studies such as the ones Professor McKitrick has concerns about.
The data and studies the USEPA cite are the same ones the Bush USEPA used to lower the standard from 0.085 to 0.075 ppm. in 2008. Administrator Jackson has made it clear that she gives more weight to a small set of studies, that imo are rather statistically inconclusive.
The comment period on this proposal closes tomorrow, 3/22.
search for docket # EPA-HQ-OAR-2005-0172 at regulations.gov
or for more information go to http://www.epa.gov/air/ozonepollution/actions.html#jan10s
Sir,
Once you start questioning, you never know where you will end up. Such stats as 1700 premature deaths (however you define that) and an additional 6000 hospital visits, are so soft yet so effective in public presentations and budget fights. I’m not surprised they are not justified by hard data. They are intuitively obvious to the overly sensitive or eco-committed. Pollution is bad, bad must cause harm, therefore pollution cause harm. Yet, now you have identified yourself in the eco-media minds as not just anti-Earth with your questions about global warming, but anti-human by your evidence that the current Toronto pollution cannot be used to justified more health sites, more industrial regulation and more anti-capitalist ideology. A pariah in your own town, province, country, continent and planet. This is the reason Voltaire had to escape Paris at least twice. The truth earns you a noose, not a nice tie.
roger samson (04:58:12) :
On the wealth issue, obesity is the third biggest killer in North America,
Claims made by the health industry may be as outrageous as those made by the climate advocates.
And for much the same reason. It’s all about social change.
Henry (12:28:50) :
So like how do I show how you people are attacking scientists with horrible and despicable emails If i cannot reference them?
…—…—…
And when these “scientists” are attacking us with 1.3 trillion dollar schemes to steal our money … Are their own (saved and archived for FOIA) emails not despicable and even more horrible when leaked by a heroic whistle-blower?
You don’t “attack” scientists.
Just find the web address and try to convince them of the errors of their ways.
Just keep changing the angle of your point.
I have 30 NASA e-mail addresses plus a huge e-mail of politicians and scientist that I periodically let them know that I am still around with different science that have been missed.
And NASA keeps sending me e-mail alerts on the competition openings in their research departments. As they are not allowed to talk science as it could interfere with the competition process.
(Definition: Have no clue what your talking about, so I have no answer.)
I have explained that I do not fall into their qualification for a government grant (which you have to have) to talk with one of them as then the government owns the work.
Tom in Texas (12:36:31) :
Wren (09:17:37) : I have noticed a lack of correlation between the temperature in my house and the temperature outside.
Obviously someone else pays your electric bill if your thermostat is set at 65F year round. Our thermostat is set at 80 in summer and 50 in winter, correlating very closely to outside temps.
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Well no wonder it correlates! You change the thermostat to make it correlate.
My point: correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causality, and causality doesn’t necessarily mean correlation.
RACookPE1978 (16:06:27) :
Henry (12:28:50) :
So like how do I show how you people are attacking scientists with horrible and despicable emails If i cannot reference them?
…—…—…
And when these “scientists” are attacking us with 1.3 trillion dollar schemes to steal our money … Are their own (saved and archived for FOIA) emails not despicable and even more horrible when leaked by a heroic whistle-blower?
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Some shoppers whistle-blow merchandise into their pockets when they think no one is looking.
@Benjamin (01:49:20) :
“My anecdotal evidence: I’ve been to and through Toronto many, many times and I never thought they had a problem with air pollution, nor did any locals I interacted with ever complain about it. In fact, I’d have to say Toronto is almost surreal in how clean and neat it is compared to other North American cities.”
– – – – – –
My experience with my many visits to Toronto in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s is in agreement with Benjamin. Toronto’s air is not only unpolluted, but the city’s public areas are clean, neat and tidy. Buffalo, NY (~75 miles from Toronto – crow’s fly) on the other hand was a horrible smog zone in the 60’s and early 70’s. Traveling west on the NY State Thruway on the way to Toronto, you knew you were approaching Buffalo when you saw ahead of you dozens of tall smokestacks billowing out huge quantities of brown, gray, and black smoke. You turned off your air circulation blower, rolled up all of your windows, took a deep breath and then plugged your nose before hitting the smog zone. The odor was atrocious. I have never heard about any studies of how Buffalo’s formerly polluted air affected resident’s health. Just traveling through Buffalo a few times in the 60’s and 70’s was enough to give anybody respiratory illness. Fortunately, Buffalo’s air was cleaned up considerably, beginning in the mid 70’s. When traveling one night through Buffalo in 1978, I noted the atrocious odor was gone, but there was still considerable air pollution, the moon shone blood red. BTW, contrast CO2 to smog, which is real pollution. CO2 is a colorless, odorless gas. The AGW alarmists that label it pollution have likely never experienced real pollution.
It’s a good way for the EU vampire to suck more money out of the UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8578952.stm
My view of this matter is quite simple. No EU.
Itis said by many here that the Australian aborigines have a high incidence of alcoholism because they had not had a long time adapt genetically to its intake. The same is said of sugar and the high incidence of diabetes. So, there could well be tribal differences influencing the statistics. I suspect though that these are not a relevant influence on the paper’s findings.
Change of topic. When one used to land at the old Hong Kong airport, the smell of faeces was evident while the aircraft was still under brakes and it was not always because of bad landings by China Air pilots. So some pollution at least passed the aircraft filtration system. So much for closing the windows in Toronto. On a few visits from HK to inland China I travelled with experienced medicos and they pointed out quite a few cases of TB. This produces a persistent cough. The medical system in mainland China appeared unable to gain a high cure rate, perhaps retarded by traditional medicine of doubtful efficacy. Sure, there is a lot of smog-like pollution, but you need to collect, analyse and categorise it before you look at its disease potential. A study like Ross gives us might well have to control for different perturbations in China, but that was not the point of the study.
The point that I felt was important was the correct use of statistics and the limitation of the analysis to data amenable to analysis. The caveats put on the findings were also a lesson in good conduct.
Wren (18:48:50) :
RACookPE1978 (16:06:27) :
Henry (12:28:50) :
“Are their own (saved and archived for FOIA) emails not despicable and even more horrible when leaked by a heroic whistle-blower?”
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Some shoppers whistle-blow merchandise into their pockets when they think no one is looking.
When the store owner puts a sign on the merchandise saying “Free Samples” — it’s not shoplifting.
And when something is posted on an open server, that something is “free” — either to be read in place, or downloaded for future reading.
Excellent work by Dr McKittrick and team!
BBC’s TV1, just this morning, delivered a ‘news’ item that wind-generated electricity was making a significant impact on air pollution as part of an item that delivered the ‘information’ that McKittrick et al have just demolished. I sat with my mouth open, waiting for some genuine facts that might verify this incredible statement, but no! Given the tiny percentage of electricity generated from wind, I cannot see how that so-called significant impact was measured.
On the obesity front, the Body Mass Index is a joke – as an example, one of my sons is a body builder and sports strength training professional. His GP insisted he is obese, because ‘the BMI says so’. He is, in fact, superbly muscled and very, very fit with very little body fat but of short stature. Individuals with large bone mass typical of Northern Europeans are frequently rated as obese on this scale, while many in the UK of Asian descent with a smaller and lighter bone structure tend not to be classed as obese despite carrying quite high amounts of body fat.
According to the BMI, almost everyone of Samoan birth is obese as they are typically the largest physical specimens on earth. Sadly, many Samoans who eat a Western diet which includes too many fast food items do become obese.
Bill Tuttle (03:51:18) :
Wren (18:48:50) :
RACookPE1978 (16:06:27) :
Henry (12:28:50) :
“Are their own (saved and archived for FOIA) emails not despicable and even more horrible when leaked by a heroic whistle-blower?”
================
Some shoppers whistle-blow merchandise into their pockets when they think no one is looking.
When the store owner puts a sign on the merchandise saying “Free Samples” — it’s not shoplifting.
And when something is posted on an open server, that something is “free” — either to be read in place, or downloaded for future reading.
====
Better tell the UK police to stop the investigation. Tell them whoever did it only covered his tracks because he’s shy.