Blog 9

1. I knew that air pollution greatly affects sensitive populations (elderly, very young, asthmatics, people with COPD...), but I didn't recognize that they can increase the chance of cancer. In terms of how to reduce air pollution, choosing to use public transportation, carpool, bicycling, or walking is a much better choice than driving your own car. It's also important to think about online shopping - especially from places that have one or two day delivery (like Amazon) that place stress on the environment and create excess pollution. Being intentional about where we buy products from, and attempting to buy locally as much as possible in order to decrease pollution due to transportation, are important methods of attempting to reduce our footprint.

2. Scorecard's website was down for maintenance when I tried to look at it, but I did pull up the EPA's search tool. I live at USF and so I searched USF specifically - there wasn't a lot of information on USF but one thing that I found interesting was that USF is in a non-attainment area for ozone, particulate matter, and carbon monoxide. Non-attainment meaning that it is a area with high concentrations of pollution, or more than the average.

3. Parents can be taught risk reduction strategies. If parents have the ability to get their kids out of industrial areas for play, or at least away from high traffic areas, that would be helpful to decrease exposure to air pollution. Kids at increased risk can wear masks while outside, and should limit outside time during days that have very poor air quality. In addition, patients should not smoke around their kids or allow others to smoke around their kids. Parents can also avoid using perfumes, etc with strong fragrances around their kids.

Comments

  1. WiniKaksOctober 14, 2019 at 7:34 PM

    "Non-attainment area for ozone" is a new term. Air quality in Northern California ranks the worst. It is now being compared to China and India that regularly rank the worst. As the massive wildfires become common, health risks continue to increase.

    ReplyDelete

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