By Henry Ehrlich
PM 2.5. It sounds like a robot telling time. But it’s not. It’s a term used to describe tiny units of particulate matter, as introduced to this website by Elizabeth Muller of Berkeley Earth. We have tried to give as much space as we can to the issue of air pollution as we can. Our contributor Caroline Moassessi has given us two accounts of life in the formerly pristine air of Nevada downwind from forest fires, one written in 2013 and one in 2014. Dr. Paul and Dr. Larry have joined together several times to write about bad air, once here when they analyzed a cover article in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, and most significantly when they took Kentucky Senator Rand Paul for stating on the floor of the U.S. Senate “air pollution has no connection to asthma.”
Now, Ms. Muller describes particulate matter that is so small that it passes right through your lung tissue and into your bloodstream. Asthma may kill “only” 3500 Americans a year, but air pollution kills 75,000. We have made great progress in cleaning our air. I imagine that no American city has air that is the equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, which is the case in Chinese cities. However, coal-fired power plants and diesel vehicles are not the only means of delivering carbon to lungs as wildfires ravage the American West.
Thanks to Elizabeth and to her whole organization for giving new impetus to this neglected topic.