Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I'm oscoboid. Over the past couple of days,
Speaker 1: smoke coming from Canada's worst ever forest fire season has
Speaker 1: blanketed much of the country and spread southeast to the
Speaker 1: United States, smashing pollution records in both countries. On Wednesday afternoon,
Speaker 1: New York had the worst air quality of any city worldwide.
Speaker 1: As the smoke turnder sky are sickly orange. It looked
Speaker 1: like it was gloomy looking. It just I don't know,
Speaker 1: it looked like something out of a movie, apocalyptic type
Speaker 1: of movie.
Speaker 2: I think everyone in our school was freaked out. It
Speaker 2: was so dark first of all, and then everything was orange.
Speaker 3: It felt like weird, sort of horrifying to see, not
Speaker 3: only how much of an effect it has, just because
Speaker 3: I mean the entire city was lit yellow, and just
Speaker 3: how far everything travels and what that means for the environment.
Speaker 1: Wildfires are not new, but they are increasing in scale
Speaker 1: and intensity as we warm the planet, exposing more and
Speaker 1: more people to dangerous levels of air pollution. So today
Speaker 1: on zero, I'm talking with ACTUA about the effects of
Speaker 1: that pollution on the body and what you can do
Speaker 1: take yourself from it. Actually, currently more than four hundred
Speaker 1: fires are burning across Canada, with smoke blanketing cities across
Speaker 1: North America. And this is going to have huge impacts
Speaker 1: on people's health as they breathe in the polluted air.
Speaker 1: But North America isn't alone in this. How big is
Speaker 1: the problem of air pollution globally?
Speaker 2: It's actually quite big. You know, we're talking about it
Speaker 2: during a time of an intense event. But the World
Speaker 2: Health Organization estimates that nine million people die every year
Speaker 2: from air pollution. And just to put that in context,
Speaker 2: about fifty five million people die every year, So that
Speaker 2: means twenty percent of deaths annually are in some way
Speaker 2: linked to bad air. Because again the World Health Organization
Speaker 2: estimates that ninety nine percent of people alive today are
Speaker 2: breathing air that is bad. Some are breathing air that's
Speaker 2: very bad. So you said nine million people are killed
Speaker 2: anonally by this. What are the main sources of air pollution?
Speaker 2: So about fifty percent of those deaths are from indoor
Speaker 2: air pollution, and that is mainly from people burning wood
Speaker 2: and biomass, which is the choice of fuel in poor
Speaker 2: countries even today, but also things like gastos and even
Speaker 2: kerosene heaters. The other half is from outdoor air pollution,
Speaker 2: so that's things like industrial emissions or from exhaust of
Speaker 2: vehicles in cities and increasingly wildfire smoke. And when we
Speaker 2: say pollution, what kind of things are we actually talking about?
Speaker 2: What counts as pollution? That's right, Like air pollution can
Speaker 2: be a lot of things. So there's carbon monoxide, there's ozone,
Speaker 2: there's nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and all of those things
Speaker 2: can have harmful impact. But the one that we should
Speaker 2: focus on today is particulate matter pollution. And that's basically
Speaker 2: as the name suggests, these tiny particles. They are sometimes
Speaker 2: unburned fossil fuels or unburned wood or even dust that
Speaker 2: are very very small. You probably have heard the term
Speaker 2: PM two point five, where the PM stands for particulate
Speaker 2: matter and two five sands for the size of the particle,
Speaker 2: which is measured in microns, and two point five microns
Speaker 2: is tiny. Microns is one millionth of a meter, And
Speaker 2: one way to put it is, if you had to
Speaker 2: take a human hair, you could fit thirty different PM
Speaker 2: two point five particles on its width. So these are
Speaker 2: very tiny particles. When people inhale it, it first goes
Speaker 2: into their lung, but very quickly it's absorbed into the
Speaker 2: bloodstream and then it just ends up everywhere in the body.
Speaker 2: So ends up in the bloodstream, is traveling around your body,
Speaker 2: whatever the speed of blood is. That can't be good, right,
Speaker 2: and no, it's very bad. The thing is, the more
Speaker 2: we've studied about air pollution, the more we've found out
Speaker 2: just how bad it is. And it affects the body
Speaker 2: in many different ways. So one reason is because when
Speaker 2: these particles end up in different organs, the body thinks
Speaker 2: it's a virus or a bacteria and it starts attacking
Speaker 2: it and there's inflammation and that can cause organs to
Speaker 2: perform poorly or fail.
Speaker 1: Sometimes with any infection, what normally happens is you get
Speaker 1: that information, your body's immune system takes care of the
Speaker 1: bias of bacteria and they then disappear. But if you've
Speaker 1: got long term exposure to air pollution, it's constantly triggering
Speaker 1: your immune system, then you're going to have this constant
Speaker 1: negative response that damages parts of your body. That's right.
Speaker 2: I mean, in the short term, people who are exposed
Speaker 2: to air pollution experience coughing and stinging eyes, running nose, chest, pain,
Speaker 2: even headaches, and those difficulties can go away after you
Speaker 2: get to breathe clean air again. But if you're exposed
Speaker 2: to air pollution in the long term, which is the
Speaker 2: reality for many parts of the world even today, Delli,
Speaker 2: where my wife comes from, is blanketed in air pollution
Speaker 2: almost all through the year, and it's very bad air pollution.
Speaker 2: So in those places especially, the impact of air pollution
Speaker 2: can be increased risk of lung diseases, even cancer. There
Speaker 2: can be impacts on the brain because those particles can
Speaker 2: enter the brain, so there is risk of stroke, increased demas,
Speaker 2: and there are even studies showing cognitive impact on students
Speaker 2: who are exposed to air pollution and their performance in school.
Speaker 2: And there's intense impact on vulnerable people. So young people
Speaker 2: whose bodies are not fully developed can suffer developmental problems
Speaker 2: from breathing in air pollution. Old people who can't recover
Speaker 2: as quickly from these impacts will suffer because their health
Speaker 2: outcomes are worse and perhaps their underlying conditions become worse.
Speaker 2: And pregnant people have perhaps the worst outcomes because they
Speaker 2: are carrying an unborn child and that child is really
Speaker 2: developing very very quickly and air pollution can have pretty
Speaker 2: negative consequences.
Speaker 1: And on that topic in particular, our colleagues recently published
Speaker 1: the story and a documentary film to go alongside it
Speaker 1: about what they called bushfire babies, which is kind of
Speaker 1: a horrible term to have to use, but this is
Speaker 1: all about the lasting health impacts of Australia's twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty Black Summer bushfires, one of the worst
Speaker 1: bushfires on record. There No one's quick to link anything
Speaker 1: to the fires here, but yeah, I know in my
Speaker 1: heart that the breathing issues happened straight after the fires,
Speaker 1: if not during. In the short term. How do you
Speaker 1: protect yourself from air pollution? You know our masks back
Speaker 1: in Are we going back to COVID days? Yes, they
Speaker 1: kind of are. I mean ideally, in these conditions you
Speaker 1: shouldn't go out. You should be able to check your
Speaker 1: air quality index. You know, just google your city and
Speaker 1: air quality or even your neighborhood sometimes in air quality
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you a number. If that number is
Speaker 1: more than one hundred and fifty, it's actually a bad
Speaker 1: idea to go out. Yeah, So, just for context, on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: the air quality rating in New York was actually at
Speaker 1: around three hundred and fifty. That's right.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you do have to go outside, try
Speaker 2: and take care by putting on a mask, an N
Speaker 2: ninety five mask or something similar which titally fits is
Speaker 2: a good idea. You know, avoid activities that would cause
Speaker 2: you to breathe heavily, don't exercise, and if you can
Speaker 2: afford it, get an air filter indoors. So increasingly in
Speaker 2: cities like Delhi, people who can afford it buy air
Speaker 2: filters and run them constantly all through the day to
Speaker 2: be able to have cleaner air at least while they
Speaker 2: are at home.
Speaker 1: And then thinking a bit longer term, you know, last
Speaker 1: year we traveled to Ostwa together to interview Canada's Prime Minister,
Speaker 1: Justin Trudeau, and one of the things that we quized
Speaker 1: him on then was how over the last twenty years,
Speaker 1: because of the increased forest fires, Canada's forests have gone
Speaker 1: from a carbon sync to actually becoming a carbon source.
Speaker 1: So reducing forest fires is critical both for this topic
Speaker 1: of air polution we're talking about, but also for reducing
Speaker 1: carbon emissions. What can be done to actually reduce wildfires
Speaker 1: and try and stem this source of pollution it's a
Speaker 1: good question. And you know, when I asked Justin Trudeau
Speaker 1: this very question, he stumbled with an answer, and that
Speaker 1: just shows that even a climate progressive leader like him
Speaker 1: struggles in a country the size of Canada with such
Speaker 1: huge forests. Of course, the wildfires are naturally occurring events too,
Speaker 1: and some of it can be helpful to a forest.
Speaker 1: But what we need to do now is to understand
Speaker 1: how on a warming planet that these fires can become
Speaker 1: very intense, very quickly. And there are tools being developed
Speaker 1: both from ancient knowledge of managing a forest through prescribe
Speaker 1: burns as they are called, so that you can control
Speaker 1: the amount of fuel that's available when a fire does
Speaker 1: come along, but there are other ways in which you
Speaker 1: could map and have management around dousing fires quickly, something
Speaker 1: that the US West Coast is really at the forefront of,
Speaker 1: just given how intense those fires can be. And sometimes
Speaker 1: it's not people, it's infrastructure. So again in the West
Speaker 1: Coast there have been bankruptcies. So PGNE, a utility in California,
Speaker 1: has declared bankruptcy tied to having fires that were started
Speaker 1: by power lines, and so utilities are increasingly either if
Speaker 1: they can afford it put those cables underground, or make
Speaker 1: sure that the cables don't actually go and get in
Speaker 1: contact with trees and wood moving from moldfires. To air
Speaker 1: pollution more generally, the world actually has got a decent
Speaker 1: track record of fixing air pollution problems. London back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties was notorious for a smog that's since
Speaker 1: been fixed, and on a global level, in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: major industrial countries came together to sign the Convention on
Speaker 1: Long Range trans Boundary Air Pollution, which was targeting sulfur
Speaker 1: emissions that were contributing to acid rain. And that treaty
Speaker 1: was also a huge success, but still nine million people
Speaker 1: a year die from air pollution. So do we need
Speaker 1: a new kind of treaty to deal with this? Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that dealt with a very specific kind of pollutant,
Speaker 2: which is sulfur, and that was causing acid rain, and
Speaker 2: that had all kinds of impact, not just human health impacts,
Speaker 2: but also impacts on agricultural productivity, on the infrastructure and
Speaker 2: the quality of buildings. You know, there were places around
Speaker 2: the world, including the taj Mahal, that were turning yellow
Speaker 2: because of increased sulfur pollution. So that was a really
Speaker 2: interesting way in which we tackle pollution. There's another example
Speaker 2: of how we tackle air pollution in the Montreal Protocol,
Speaker 2: which is to do directly in a way with climate change,
Speaker 2: because the gases that go into refrigerators, for example, had
Speaker 2: a huge impact on creating a hole in the ozone
Speaker 2: layer but also warming the planet because they're very intense
Speaker 2: greenhouse gases, and this treaty forced companies around the world
Speaker 2: to come up with an alternative. So regulations, especially globally
Speaker 2: agreed upon regulations, can have a big impact. We are
Speaker 2: starting to see some experiments of that kind happening around
Speaker 2: cities to try and deal with air pollution from tailpipes.
Speaker 2: So we live in London, and London's kind of at
Speaker 2: the forefront of this because it's created what is known
Speaker 2: as the Ultra Low emission Zone. A bit of a mouthful,
Speaker 2: but really it just tells you that there are places
Speaker 2: in London where you cannot bring in a big polluting car.
Speaker 2: So either you bring in an electric car or a
Speaker 2: very new car that has a higher standard on particulate
Speaker 2: matter pollution, or if you have to bring in a
Speaker 2: polluted car, you have to pay a hefty fee to
Speaker 2: bring it in and that has made the air quality
Speaker 2: in London just get so much better over the past decade,
Speaker 2: and more and more cities, especially in Europe, are starting
Speaker 2: to adopt this method.
Speaker 1: And we're talking today about wildfire, smoke and evolution because
Speaker 1: of the events that are happening in Canada and that
Speaker 1: are impacting major cities like New York. But similar fiers
Speaker 1: do happen every year all around the world. Malaysia and
Speaker 1: Singapore suffer from these kinds of events most years. Deli,
Speaker 1: you've mentioned bushfires in Australia helped define their elections last year.
Speaker 2: Yes, nowhere is immune. That's what Arna Gretta Hunter of
Speaker 2: the Australian National University, told Bloomberg that she worries that
Speaker 2: people think there are privileged parts in the world that
Speaker 2: are not vulnerable to climate events and that's just not
Speaker 2: the case and what's happen right now proves it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Zero. If you've found this
Speaker 1: explainer useful, please take a moment to rate and review
Speaker 1: the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can email
Speaker 1: us at zero pod at Bloomberg dot net. We've linked
Speaker 1: to more reporting on this topic in the show notes
Speaker 1: zero's producers me Oscar Boyd and senior producers Christine driscoll Our.
Speaker 1: Theme music is composed by Wandy. Special thanks this week
Speaker 1: to Janet Babin for the voices from New York, as
Speaker 1: well as Kira Benjam, Sarah heirj Kendra, P. R. Lewis
Speaker 1: and Todd Woody. We'll be back next week.