Evaluating the Effectiveness of Air Quality Interventions

Abstract

Evaluating the extent to which air quality regulations improve public health--sometimes referred to as accountability--is part of an emerging effort to assess the effectiveness of environmental regulatory policies. Air quality has improved substantially in the United States and Western Europe in recent decades, with far less visible pollution and decreasing concentrations of several major pollutants. In large part, these gains were achieved through increasingly stringent air quality regulations. The costs associated with compliance and, importantly, the need to ensure that the regulations are achieving the intended public health benefits underscore the importance of accountability research. To date, accountability research has emphasized measuring the effects of actions already taken to improve air quality. Such research may also contribute to estimating the burden of disease that might be avoided in the future if certain actions are taken. The Health Effects Institute (HEI) currently funds eight ongoing studies on accountability, which cover near-term interventions to improve air quality including (1) a ban on the sale of coal, (2) replacing old wood stoves with cleaner ones, (3) decreasing sulfur content in fuel, (4) measures to reduce traffic, and (5) longer term, wide-ranging actions or events (such as complex changes associated with the reunification of Germany). HEI is also funding the development of methods and research to assess regulations that are implemented incrementally over extended periods of time, such as Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, which reduces sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants in the eastern United States.

Meteorological detrending of primary and secondary pollutant concentrations: Method application and evaluation using long-term (2000–2012) data in Atlanta

“…Policy makers design regulations to reduce the adverse impacts of air pollutant emissions on human health and the environment. The effectiveness of the regulations are assessed based on measured pollutant concentrations and estimates of impacts on health endpoints related to exposure to these pollutant concentrations [26]. However, given the number of factors that affect a measured air pollution signal (e.g.…”

A framework for integrated environmental health impact assessment of systemic risks

“…Policies need to be more integrated both because the problems themselves are complex and interconnected, and because they cut across traditional policy-making structures, and require collaboration by different agencies, in different policy areas, at different levels of administration and different spatial scales. At the same time, both the costs of policies and the costs of getting them wrong are increasing, so demands for financial accountability and public transparency of policies have grown [ 5 , 6 ]. In addition, the broad scope of systemic risks inevitably means that many different stakeholders are implicated – as purveyors, victims or managers of the risks [ 7 ].…”

Municipal bylaw to reduce cosmetic/non-essential pesticide use on household lawns - a policy implementation evaluation

“…As part of environmental policy implementation, we would encourage parallel efforts to evaluate impacts. In keeping with the growing emphasis on effectiveness [ 67 ] and public accountability [ 68 ], funding should be included for indicators in different relevant domains. Comparable reporting of both absolute as well as relative changes and controlling for relevant covariates would also be helpful.…”