Connecticut had 31 days of unhealthy air — what can be done about it?

The Connecticut Council on Environmental Quality Annual Report, released April 17, showed that we all breathed unhealthy air for 31 days last year. We knew that last summer had 30 days of temperature 90 degrees or higher — but now we also know that we had even more days than that of bad air. Our air was heavily polluted with groundlevel ozone.

Ground-level ozone is created when car exhaust is mixed with sunlight, which is why ozone levels are higher in the summer months.

However, the majority of Connecticut’s ozone pollution comes not from our automobiles but from the coal-fired power plants of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky, where their emissions flow eastward into Connecticut.

Connecticut is taking a proactive stance on this issue by petitioning the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require dirty midwestern power plants to clean up their emissions. The Connecticut petition is being joined by Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Pennsylvania.

What are the health effects of ozone and why is it important to reduce our exposures?

Ozone, even small amounts, affects our lungs and our breathing.

Ozone can cause the muscles in airways to constrict, trapping air and leading to wheezing and shortness of breath. Ozone can cause coughing and sore throats, it can make lungs more susceptible to infection, inflame and damage airways, increase the frequency of asthma attacks, aggravate emphysema, chronic bronchitis, asthma and cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.

Long-term exposure to ozone is likely to be one of the many causes of asthma. Long-term exposures to higher concentrations of ozone may be linked to permanent lung damage and abnormal lung development in children.

A New York University Study, published May 8, 2016, in the American Thoracic Society and Marron Institute Report, estimated 168 people die every year in Connecticut from bad air and about 472 people have a major health event due to air pollution, according to the report.

The 31 days that Connecticut’s air was laden with ground-level ozone is a serious problem for our health. What can be done to help Connecticut’s citizens on these bad air days?

1. Attorney General George Jepsen is doing his part by petitioning the EPA to clean up the midwestern power plants and to threaten to bring the EPA to court if they do not comply.

2. On bad air days, when it is hard to breathe, the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection could declare no wood-burning. Wood smoke also causes breathing problems because it contains chemical-laden particulates that also go deep into the lungs.

The largest single source of outdoor fine particles in many American cities is from wood smoke. Wood smoke and tobacco smoke are quite similar in their chemical composition. According to the EPA many components of wood smoke are carcinogenic and have many of the same components as cigarette smoke. The particles of wood smoke are so small they can penetrate into the deepest recesses of the lungs. These particles become efficient vehicles for transporting toxins into the lungs where they pass directly into the bloodstream.

Both ground level ozone and wood smoke are detrimental to lung function and both have serious health implications. The combination of being exposed to two serious lung damaging agents at the same time is a recipe for creating serious human health impacts. Adding wood smoke emissions to ozone-laden air is a lethal combination that is enough to send many to emergency rooms.

Environment and Human Health Inc. commends the CEQ on its informative report. EHHI also commends the Connecticut attorney general for working to curb pollution that comes into Connecticut from midwestern power plants, and EHHI continues to ask the Connecticut DEEP to restrict wood burning on “bad air days” for the sake of all of us and our health.

“No other New England state had more than 11 days with unhealthful levels of ozone,” the Council On Environmental Quality reports says.

Connecticut had 31 days.