![LAX_[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/lax_1.jpg?quality=83)
Congested freeways crawling with cars and trucks are notorious for causing smog in Los Angeles, but a new study finds that heavy airplane traffic can contribute even more pollution, and the effect continues for up to 10 miles away from the airport. The report, published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, has serious implications for the health of residents near Los Angeles International Airport and other airports around the world.
Scott Fruin, D.Env. P.E., Neelakshi Hudda and colleagues note that past research has measured pollution from air traffic before, but most of these studies only sampled air within a couple of miles, at most, from airports. Not surprisingly, these analyses have found higher levels of pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides and small (ultrafine) particles less than 0.1 micron (about one-thousandth of the width of a human hair), that scientists attributed to airplane emissions.
This added pollution is potentially a major public health issue. Ultrafine particles, which form from condensation of hot exhaust vapors, are of particular concern because they deposit deeply into the lungs and can enter the bloodstream. The oxidative stress and resulting inflammation appear to play a role in the development of atherosclerosis (blocked arteries) and can make other health conditions worse, especially for people with existing cardiac or lung conditions including asthma.
Fruin’s team at the Keck School of Medicine and the University of Southern California suspected that residents near LAX, the sixth busiest airport in the world, were getting exposed to excessive doses of pollution from airplanes even farther from the runways than previous research had considered. During its busiest times, 40 to 60 jets take off and land every hour.
Over a period of 29 days, the scientists drove the area within 10 miles downwind of the airport to measure levels of air pollutants. The area included densely packed residential neighborhoods flanked by three major freeways.
They found that over a 23-square-mile area, particle number (PN) concentrations were double the background levels (that is, the PN concentrations without the LAX contribution). Over 9 square miles, levels were five times higher than background. And within nearly 2 miles east of the airport, PN levels were nearly 10 times higher. Based on other researchers’ calculations of PN levels from one of the local freeways, Fruin estimated that this is equivalent to 174 to 491 miles of freeway traffic. For reference, the entire area of Los Angeles County has a total of about 930 miles of freeways.
Based on their calculations, scientists concluded that within the area they found to have elevated pollution from the airport, automobiles contributed less than 5 percent of the PN levels. “Therefore, the LAX should be considered one of the most important sources of PN in Los Angeles,” the scientists state in the journal article.
The researchers acknowledge funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Environmental Protection Agency. Fruin and Hudda collaborated with colleagues at the University of Washington.
The paper is freely available as an ACS Editors’ Choice selection at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es5001566.
“now”…now confirmed by peer reviewed science.
“I think shutting down LAX, La Guardia, JFK, Midway and O’Hare. would be a great start to “solving” what is a clear crisis.”
Dulles and Reagan first!
Think food rationing. A lot of produce flies into and out of LAX and for years the poverty development people have been promoting the consumption of locally grown food claiming that the transport of it contributes to global warming.
Perhaps to inject a little sensibility here, this is about actual pollution….something that does have serious implications. While air quality in TinselTown has improved a hundredfold since the smog-laced Sixties, some stuff remains. Moreover there should be no equivocation between pollution and CO2, which also remains. The question is, is how ultimately serious is JetA exhaust as an overall cost/benefit circumstance? Probably not very.
I would be more interested in results from autopsy reports of folks living near LAX or other major airports.
Yet the California Air resources Board is more concerned about putting restrictions on my lawnmower.
It seems to me that they found some data on particulates, but the ran an alarmist piece bent on connecting non-existent points, in that they forgot to do the epidemiological study to determine whether the particulates represent an unhandled new problem, or merely interesting facts.
Lance – thanks. It looks like the authors applied their diesel expertise to airplanes.
Barbara – it may be a little indirect, but how about shutting down Hollywood first?
Lance Wallace – good point, the ultrafines also have an understood possible metabolic pathway but I don’t know if the epidemialogical data is there? Also Lance – maybe current Euro controls don’t get ultrafines but I thought DPFs were effective? (so, post-2007 onroad USA diesels and post-2010 offroad?)
Finally Bill – I agree, i’ve seen a study before about the large #s of diesel equipment at airports…
Don Newkirk – good point, though that would be someone else’s study typically. The studies have been done (and criticized) for PM2.5, but not sure about ultrafines.
tadchem says:
May 29, 2014 at 9:41 am
Horse-drawn airplanes?
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Ugh! That makes me think of a new kind of pollution, that could be much worse.
I’ve never understood why the Greens et al do not campaign vociferously against air travel. Couldn’t be because of the foreign junkets of course…
Epidemiological studies are the bane of our existence. The public lives their lives in fear of weak correlations that researchers grasping for grant money or to puff up their egos inflate to immense and unproven proportions.
An epidemiological (or observational or cohort) study should only be used to isolate items for further study and never attempt to prove cause and effect. Just too many confounders are possible without controls.
People may want to read Matt Briggs’ takes on the epidemiological studies that purport to show health harms from airborne particulates.
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=8720
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=4587
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=4353
tadchem says:
May 29, 2014 at 9:41 am
Horse-drawn airplanes?
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The correct answer is, “Unicorn-drawn airplanes”!
You can pretend you’re a celebrity by using “airport transportation Bakersfield ca“. I think that’s as close as some of us are going to get!
Shut it down.
And the harbor, sail boats ONLY.
And the trains.
And the roads.
These morons need to experience what they want.
They won’t be happy till those non-essential to running their utopian world, are back in caves.
So, here we are.
Again.
I think that given that “Scott Fruin, D.Env. P.E., Neelakshi Hudda and colleagues” have outright stated that they realise the damage they are doing, that everyone who lives within 10 miles downwind of any airport file suit against them if they ever get on an airplane again. I’m sure that damages in the range of 10,000,000USD per victim are appropriate. If they claim to not be guilty, or plead ignorance, one need only to point to this study.
Well, most arrivals do set you up on final just south of downtown, but the departures generally keep you several miles out to sea until you climb through 8 or 10,000.
http://155.178.201.160/d-tpp/1406/00237LOOP.PDF
Must be bodies laying everywhere. Wait . . . what?
Interesting how the study totally seems to ignore the very real issue of lead pollution from gasoline powered piston airplaines from general aviation airports. Read Mother Jones “Lead : the Criminal Element”. Lead has been conclusively linked to violence (and don’t anyone comment until they have read the article!) by causing learning disabilities and ADHD at relatively low levels. The real epidemiological proof of this thesis was been found in retrospect as crime rates declined first in areas which banned leaded gasoline first with areas banning leaded gasoline later experiencing a drop a few years after those cities and states that banned leaded gas sooner. The problem is that aviation gas is the one form of gasoline that still uses lead tetraethyl oestensibly for safety reasons, making the flight paths for GENERAL aviation airports islands of lead posoining for children unfortunate enough to grow up under them. (Again, just google and read the article, folks. It dosen’t come out of a particularly Green agenda, but out of the kind of serendipitous discovery that REAL science is made of. In fact it throws other Green causes such as anti-vaccination into a cocked tin-foil hat.)
If this study is focusing on L.A.s major jet airports, there may be a not so hidden agenda at work here. California’s high speed rail project runs right by Palmdale, which was going to be the site for the new LAS until the Sierra Club persuaded LA to abandon the project in I believe 1973, in favoour of shoehorning more jets into LAX. A couple years ago, the neighbourhoods around LAX (particularly Westchester and North Inglewood, which have become cool to live in) were successful in putting a cap on passengers per year for LAX. What this means is that a) the only way for LAX to expand more oucrative flights to places like Asia is to cancel the large number of short haul flights to San Francisco and b) if high speed rail makes it possible to reach Palmdale from Downtown LA and UCLA and Hollywood in 15 minutes, LAX can be closed in favour of an international airport (and perhaps if Elon Musk and Bert Rutan have their way, a spacepor to Earth orbit) at Palmdale extending to Bakersfield, Fresno and SF ( probably the East Bay, the Peninsula envies Marin’s County’s splendid isolation too much to tolerate something as tawdry as high speed rail). With high speed rail under political fire, maybe that is the real reason this study is coming out now of all times.
Typical Final Approach
http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/LAX/IAP/ILS+OR+LOC+RWY+24R/pdf
Gamecock, if you somehow found yourself on the ground between JETSA and ARBIE (see chart above) you’d be right. That’s a pretty rough neighborhood. 😉
“Bob Johnston says:
Epidemiological studies are the bane of our existence. The public lives their lives in fear of weak correlations that researchers grasping for grant money or to puff up their egos inflate to immense and unproven proportions”
This we all are going to die from small particles, is an huge pile of adult bovine fecal matter. Smoking one cigarette you take in at least 100 to 150 days of PM particles. To take in as much as some who smokes on year you would have to live over 1500 years. Yet the studies of cigarette smokers show that the chances of a smoker dying from PM in the first 10 years is basically nil. Yet the grants roll on for these types of Epidemiological studies. I you really want to know the danger you only have to study smokers, of course if they did they would not get the answers they want.