Air, water focus of past, future forums hosted by Shell Center for Sustainability

Air,
water focus of past, future forums hosted by Shell Center
for Sustainability

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

Houston’s
air quality — or lack of it — took on a somewhat
mythic status a few years ago when the city’s smog
supplanted Los Angeles’ as the worst in the nation.
But for all the talk and headaches the problem generates,
the health effects, root causes and solutions to Houston’s
air pollution are still a mystery for most residents.

To help answer
some of these questions, the Shell Center for Sustainability
hosted a series of four air quality seminars last semester,
bringing together leading experts from academia, government,
community groups and public health facilities.

“As the
Shell Center was being formed last year, one of the things
I heard over and over was that Houston lacked a forum for
this kind of discussion,” said Christian Holmes, the
center’s executive director. “That’s the
main reason we decided to host the fall series on air quality,
and a new series on Texas water this spring.”

The air quality
seminars focused on the causes, effects and regulatory issues
surrounding Houston’s air pollution. Panels featured
a mix of academics who are trying to measure and model Houston’s
complex interplay of auto emissions, industrial emissions
and weather patterns, together with state regulators and
public policy experts who discussed what the state and federal
government are doing to clean up the city’s air.

The final seminar,
held Dec. 19, focused on the health effects of Houston’s
air pollution and featured a panel of public health and
health policy experts, as well as representatives from industry
and community action organizations.

Keynote speaker
Winifred Hamilton, the director of the Chronic Disease Prevention
and Control Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine,
cited more than a dozen recent studies that documented the
negative health impacts of air pollution, both in Houston
and in other major urban centers.

For example,
one local study found that Houstonians were between 16 and
83 percent more likely to have a headache on days with high
levels of air pollution. Two separate studies in Los Angeles
have found that for every 1 million residents, some 1,250
new cases of cancer will occur each year due to elevated
levels of diesel particulates, benzene, butadiene and formaldehyde.
Studies in other cities have also linked exposure to air
pollution during pregnancy with increased risk of low birth
weights, and researchers have found that children who play
outdoor sports in areas with increased ozone are 3.3 times
more likely to develop asthma than other children.

Hamilton said
there is no question that Houston needs cleaner air.

“While it’s
true that Houston only exceeds federal standards for ozone,
many studies are finding major health effects for cities
that are below the standards,” she said.

Hamilton said
local public health officials lack a comprehensive understanding
of the health effects of Houston’s air pollution, in
part because Houston hasn’t been studied. She noted
that the only large-scale study of the public health effects
of Houston’s air pollution was conducted more than
20 years ago, using data from the ’50s and ’60s.

Holmes said the
fall seminars on air quality were a rousing success, with
an average attendance of more than 150, as well as some
lively discussions involving both panel experts and the
audience.

Holmes also noted
that approximately 1,000 people attended last year’s
Shell Center-sponsored seminars and conferences dealing
with air quality, gas hydrates and international sustainable
development.

“We’re
building upon that success with this spring’s series
on Texas water,” Holmes said. “Our opening seminar
Feb. 10 will focus on water supply, an issue that will become
increasingly important with the population growth that’s
anticipated in Texas during the coming decades.”

Other seminars
in the series will focus on potable water quality (Feb.
24); coastal and surface water quality (March 11) and flooding
and watershed management (March 23). For more information,
see <www.ruf.rice.edu/~eesi/scs/TexasWater.htm>.