We expect drinking water . . . why not breathing air?
Originally published in The Sudbury Star on Dec. 11, 2021 as "When Faced With Polluted Air, Our Choices are Limited"
Everyone knows what’s meant by the term drinking water. Here in Northern Ontario, there are lakes everywhere, but for various reasons, whether microbial or chemical, most of the water isn’t safe to drink without treatment. Drinking water has to meet stringent public health standards, to ensure it won’t make us sick.
In lower income countries, reliable supplies of drinking water are not universally available. Water-borne diseases like cholera, typhoid fever, Hepatitis A, Giardia, and dysentery/diarrhea are all too common. Travellers can get sick even from water that’s safe for the locals. When I visit West Africa, I guzzle many a 750 ml bottle of “pamplemouse”, a locally-made grapefruit-flavoured pop. I assume it’s made with drinking water, and so far I’ve managed to stay well.
In higher income countries, people expect the water coming out of their taps to be drinking water. And for the most part it is, although some indigenous communities in northern Canada are still waiting for the permanent end of boil water advisories. During the November 2021 flooding disasters in British Columbia, the entire town of Merritt had to be evacuated due to failure of their sewage and water treatment facilities. The town was unable to provide citizens with safe drinking water. Four weeks later, many people are still unable to return home, and a boil water advisory remains in place for the foreseeable future. Under such circumstances, it’s possible to truck in limited supplies of drinking water as a temporary measure, assuming the roads aren’t blocked by mudslides or washed out by flooding rivers. Water is transportable.
Not so with air. The air we must breath is the air in the immediate vicinity of our mouths and noses at any given moment. If we are lucky, that air might be breathing air, clean enough most of the time. But many people are forced to breath chronically filthy air, within their homes on account of antiquated cooking technologies and dirty fuels, and/or outside thanks to industrial emissions, fossil fuel burning, and wildfires. Sometimes the sources are far away, the other side of an ocean or continent. When we are faced with polluted air, our choices are limited. It’s not like we can hold our breath and wait a few days for the air to clear. And it’s not like clean air can be gathered up from the mountain ranges and trucked into towns and cities that lack it. Affluent people may choose to stay indoors with their AC cranked up or climb into their air-conditioned cars and travel to less-polluted locales. But most people have no options, and precious little recourse. They just have to keep breathing.
The research coming in on air pollution is scary. It’s killing and sickening way more of us than was previously thought, even at very low levels. It’s increasing rates of prematurity and low birth weight; impacting the growth and development of babies before they’re even born; causing or aggravating pneumonias, asthma, and chronic lung disease; and raising our risk of heart attacks, strokes, and dementia.
But what gives? We all know about drinking water. Why doesn’t English have a term like breathing air? There were lawsuits over the lead contamination in Flint Michigan’s drinking water. Where are the lawsuits arising from the sickness and death inflicted on us by air pollution? How much suffering and death could be prevented, and how many health care dollars saved, by ensuring that everyone on the planet has access to breathing air?
And finally, how much headway could be made on reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by setting and achieving the goal of breathing air for everyone on the planet?