Medicine in Nashville, Tenn., said he doesn’t believe that the dangers of air pollution are taken seriously enough.
If airplane crashes killed as many people, “it would be on the front page of the paper and people would be marching in the streets trying to fix it,” he said.
One problem is that air pollution is a slow killer, Christman said. “You don’t feel it right away, but clearly we can see excess mortality in folks,” he said. “People aren’t aware that this is slowly burning away at their health.”
Christman is also concerned that the current move to reduce pollution standards could reverse the progress that’s been made. “In terms of PM2.5, it’s 41% better than it was in 1999, and that’s a huge victory, and that’s a lot of lives saved,” he said.
Reducing pollution even more would save many more
