FedEx has added 92 hybrid-electric trucks to its fleet, all of which are converted standard delivery trucks.

The increase represents a jump of 50 percent in the company’s hybrid fleet, bringing it to a total of 264 hybrid-electric vehicles. FedEx estimates that its hybrid fleet has saved an estimated 1,521 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions since 2004. That’s equivalent to taking 279 cars off the road annually.

The hybrid conversions, which retrofitted 2000 and 2001 model trucks, also helped boost green jobs in the Charlotte, N.C., area, creating 50 new, although temporary jobs, the company reported in an announcement today.

“FedEx and our suppliers have demonstrated that converted hybrids are a viable, lower-cost option compared to purchasing new hybrids,” said John Formisano, vice president, Global Vehicles, FedEx Express in the statement.

The retrofitted vehicles will be placed into service in San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles.

FedEx credited California with helping FeEx initiate its hybrid program in 2004 by providing incentives for hybrid vehicles.

In today’s announcement, Formisano urged the federal government to keep incentives alive to make projects such as the retrofits more scalable.

“We now need government incentives to end a Catch-22 situation: Production volumes are low due to high cost, and costs will only come down with higher production volumes,” he said.

The new hybrid trucks are projected to improve fuel economy by 44 percent. They will produce almost no particulate matter compared to the old combustion engine trucks (a 96 percent reduction) and also will have significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions, the company reported.

For more information on FedEx, which employs 280,000 people worldwide, its hybrid vehicles and other energy saving measures the company uses, see news.fedex.com

You know those smoggy, hazy days when you look toward downtown to find the skyscrapers obscured behind a  ripply, gray veil? What horrible pollution, you think. And it may be.

But watch out, those other days when the skyscrapers blaze brightly under clear blue skies may be deceptively hazardous to your health as well, or maybe more so.

An article just out in Science News, somewhat confusingly entitled “Bad Breath” (we get it, we just have to think about it) looks at how finer particle air pollution can seep deep into our lungs and into our blood, causing harm without us “seeing” that we’re in any danger.

The gist, according to the article by Janet Raloff:

“Even on a clear, sunny day, many tens of thousands — and potentially millions — of tiny particles cloud every breath you take. Some are nearly pure carbon. But reactive metals, acids, oily hydrocarbons and other organic chemicals jacket most of these motes.”

Ok, we’ll get back to what a “mote” is in a moment. But here’s the scary part, these micro particles of “particulate matter” — identified as particles that are 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller — may cause  premature aging and make us more susceptible not just to respiratory illnesses, but other health conditions as well. Even when they’re at levels currently deemed safe by government standards, they are able to do damage. In fact, their very microsopic nature is why they’re so insidious.

And now for the very bad news: A lot of these tiny particles and their nano cousins, known as “ultra-fine” particles apparently come from car and truck exhaust. The EPA and others have been exploring the problem of PMs for years, but it seems the science is now homing in on exactly why and how traffic fumes hurt us, and beginning to look at those ultra fine particles that have been less studied and are, even now, difficult to track.

Our government, too, is taking more of an interest in assessing the impact of traffic on our health. Recently, the EPA announced it would look at the air outside several elementary schools that were identified in a USA Today investigation as being located in high pollution sites, mainly near factories or freeways.

This week, the Centers for Disease Control launched a website called the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network that allows people to look at data on air pollution, and other environmental factors, in their area. You can, for instance, find the counties in your state where PM 2.5 pollution exceeded EPA standards during a selected year. And there’s information about how traffic pollution may worsen heart disease, already America’s number one killer, claiming nearly 1 million lives annually.

Meanwhile, the Science News article lists other studies looking at this emerging area of inquiry of how small particulate pollution particles alter our body’s ability to stay healthy. The studies have found that direct exposure doesn’t just aggravate lung conditions, it exacerbates inflammation throughout the human body, worsening heart and a host of other conditions.

A German study in 2007 that measured coronary artery calcification among nearly 4,500 middle-aged to elderly men and women found traffic pollution was a main culprit, according to the Science News article: “After controlling for other risk factors, that study showed that the closer people lived to a major road, the worse their atherosclerosis.”

Other studies, such as one completed in the US that released findings in March in the journal, Epidemiology, have found a similar, though not as strong, correlation between traffic exposure and arteriosclerosis.

The Science News article goes on to round up the latest research on the 2.5 micron PMs, chronicling how they worsen the situation for diabetics, cause kids more asthma attacks (you probably suspected that) and can lead to shortening of the telomeres on the ends of chromosomes, at least according to one study of traffic crossing guards. (When chromosomes have shorter end caps or telomeres, they can become less effective at replicating, which alters body chemistry in a way that weakens the immune system. Shorter telomeres, in other words, can age a person biologically.)

Some of this is new and much of it is intuitive, still it adds to the growing mound of  evidence that living near expressways or even busy surface streets can be unhealthy — something that lately appears to be getting  more research attention.

(Motes, btw, are small or tiny particles, per Websters. The term also is used to define “smart dust” — a science fictiony sort of particle that’s actually real, operates like a sensor and would take another article to explain.)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

A majority of Americans – about 75 percent – support regulating greenhouse gases from power plants, cars and manufacturing that would reduce global warming, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

But only a bare majority – 52 percent – support a cap-and-trade approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and 42 percent oppose such a program, which is the type of approach taken in the Waxman-Markey climate legislation expected to be voted on in the US House of Representations, possibly Friday.

Support for controls on emissions wavered even more as those polled were asked whether they’d pay higher electricity prices to help bring about reduced greenhouse gases.

Only 44 percent said they would back a cap-and-trade system if it meant monthly electricity bills would be $25 higher. Support was stronger, at 56 percent, if the proposed monthly electricity increase was just $10 a month, according to the randomized poll of 1,001 adults.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that regulating greenhouse gases would cost the typical household about $175 a year in 2020, when the shift to clean energy and emissions controls would be in high gear.

But opponents of the pending climate legislation, especially conservative Republicans, argue that costs will be much higher.

The poll found that people living in households making less than $50,000 a year were the most concerned about the costs of the climate regulation.

Young people were the most supportive of federal regulation to control climate-related emissions (about 60 percent said they supported cap-and-trade) and senior citizens the least supportive (about 40 percent said they favored cap-and-trade).

Cap-and-trade is a market-based approach to controlling GHG emissions. It sets caps on the amount of pollution companies are allowed and lets them bid for extra credits if they go over their emissions allowance or sell credits if they keep under pollution limits. Limits for everyone are lowered over time to reduce carbon emissions.

How do cars pollute? In two main ways, through inefficient mileage (guzzling a gallon of gas every eight or 10 or 14 miles) and through tailpipe emissions.

There’s the pollution associated with manufacturing, also, but to keep it simple let’s stick with emissions and mileage. Obviously, both affect the air. Think of mileage as a measure of your car’s pollution volume over time – if a gallon of gas doesn’t take you very far, you have to burn a lot more gas — and emissions as the chemistry of that pollution; if the mix is particularly noxious, your car will be a bigger offender than one with better tailpipe controls.

So if you want to buy the cleanest car you can — in the price range you need — you’ll look at both factors. Fortunately, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has already done this work, assigning a  “greenhouse gas” score to most models. Find it at the EPA’s Green Vehicles website.

The EPA’s “greenhouse gas” score considers how much a vehicle contributes to global warming via its full lifecycle emissions of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (NO2), and hydroflurocarbons (HFCs). The rating is mainly a function of a car’s gas mileage, but the analysis also looks at the fuel a car uses (gasoline, natural gas, diesel, ethanol) to factor in emissions.

Cars are given a score between 1 and 10, with 10 being the highest (the Prius solos at this rating) and 5 being not so hot (the Lincoln Town Car) and 3 (the GMC Sierra 15 gasoline model) being about as low as it goes. (The Sierra 15 jumps to a 6 on ethanol though.)

At the same site, the EPA chart also breaks out a column that considers just regulated tailpipe emissions — which doesn’t capture all the greenhouse gases and considers some outputs that aren’t greenhouse gases — giving each model an “air pollution score” as well. A diesel, say, might not score as well on this scale as it would on the greenhouse gas scale.

Interested in seeing just the EPA’s gas mileage ratings? Look to fueleconomy.gov, courtesy of the Department of Energy.

The U.S. Geological Survey has released a study showing an increase in mercury emissions from human sources is affecting the fish population in the Pacific Ocean.

Scientists have predicted a 50 percent increase in mercury levels in the Pacific Ocean by 2050, if mercury emission rates continue as projected. Human contribution to mercury pollution includes coal burning power plants and waste incineration. The water sampled for this study — released May 1 — shows that the mercury levels in 2006 were already approximately 30 percent higher than the same samples in the 1990’s.

The paper presents the first evidence linking current atmospheric mercury deposition to methylmercury (the compound that mercury gets converted into) in Pacific Ocean fish. Scientists say it is plausible that a reduction in ocean mercury levels would follow if mercury emissions were decreased.

In the U.S., about 40 percent of all human exposure to mercury is from tuna harvested in the Pacific Ocean. Other previous studies have shown that 75 percent of human exposure worldwide to mercury is from the consumption of marine fish and shell fish. In 2004, the EPA and FDA released guidelines on fish consumption for pregnant women and children.

Many studies have been conducted involving mercury levels in freshwater; but less is known about mercury in marine environments. This study was one of the first to thoroughly analyze mercury levels in ocean waters, concluding that the methylmercury contamination could not just be from natural sources, as some have theorized.

According to the study, methylmercury is produced at mid-depth ocean waters from mercury that “originates from atmospheric fallout to the ocean surface”, and taken up the food chain by predators like tuna. For this study, scientist sampled Pacific Ocean water from 16 different sites. The results showed the increased mercury emissions were particularly high in off the coasts of Asia.

“It appears the recent mercury enrichment of the sampled Pacific Ocean waters is caused by emissions originating from fallout near the Asian coasts,” said USGS scientist and coauthor of the study David Krabbenhoft.

Don’t forget to read our story on How to shop for seafood before you head to the store.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

(Photo credit: NOAA)

With the Environmental Protection Agency back in full action again after years of humming in neutral, things are happening, and some important beneficiaries could be America’s school children.

USA TODAY reports today that the EPA is expected to run tests of the air quality outside some 62 schools in 22 states to see whether the sites are polluted beyond healthy thresholds. (See the list of schools.)

The EPA’s sampling comes in response to a USA TODAY investigation that found many schools were located in “toxic hot spots.” The newspaper’s investigating reporters used government records to determine that some 435 schools across the nation were surrounded by air more polluted than that found at a school in Ohio which had been shut down because of its poor air quality.

“Your stories raised important questions that merit investigation and that’s what we’re doing,” EPA administrator Lisa Jackson told the paper on Monday. “We want parents to know that the places their children live, play and learn are safe.”

The testing will take place at schools in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas and several smaller cities and will cost an estimated $2.25 million.

Many of the schools identified in the USA TODAY package as being in high air pollution zones sit near busy freeways or freeway junctions, or near industrial polluters like steel foundries and cement plants. In some cases, the schools have been located in industrial zones for years; in others, they were recently sited there because no better land could be found or because the land was less expensive. Needless to say, the series pointed out that air laden with smog, heavy metals and other pollutants can be especially harmful to kids whose lungs are still developing.

And that school that was closed? It was Meredith Hitchens Elementary, in Addyston, Ohio — shut down in 2005 after the Ohio EPA found levels of carcinogens 50 times above what the state considered acceptable.

Sure there will be people who say the EPA will just be spending money for naught. Actually, there are already people saying exactly that in comments on the USA TODAY website. We Americans love to trash our federal government.

And after all, what can be done? It’s not like the U.S. could fine air polluters, say under the Clean Air Act. Or cause them to pay for dumping into the atmosphere, through a cap-and-trade or carbon tax program. Or build more public transportation, or cleaner cars, or buses with reduced diesel emissions.

Seems this one issue does raise “important questions” — dozens, or even 435, of them.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

The Bay Area is on notice that it’s exceeding new federal air standards for asthma-aggravating particles.

Federal transportation funding is on the line if the Bay Area doesn’t shape up. The problem is nearly invisible soot in the area that can lead not only to asthma, but also to bronchitis and heart disease.

>> Watch now

There are already undeniable legacies of the 2008 Olympic Games: eight gold medals hanging around U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps’ neck, for instance, or the otherworldly sprint that helped Jamaican runner Usain Bolt break Michael Johnson’s record in the men’s 100 meter race. There are visual reminders, as well; the Olympic pavilions, Bird’s Nest and Water Cube will remain a part of central Beijing life for decades.

Perhaps the most crucial legacy, however, is yet to be played out. As hotels empty, athletes and television crews return to their home countries, and Beijing goes back to a life more sheltered from the world, the lingering question is this: Will the enormous and by most accounts successful efforts to reduce the city’s pollution during the Olympic games continue in some fashion, improving life for those who live there and reducing the city’s footprint on the global environment?

“Beijing will be built into a livable city,” said Du Shaozhong, deputy head of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau in a press conference the day before closing ceremonies.

“We will take some new measures to ensure that air quality will reach a new level after the Olympic Games,” he said. “Whether it is automobile emissions reduction, or construction site dust reduction or coal pollution reduction, I believe that the requirements will be more stringent.”

Shaozhong and state media were pleased to note that the numerous, complicated and costly measures taken to help reduce the city’s smog had resulted in the clearest skies in a decade. (See picture above at the beach volleyball competition: credit: Sadat/Xinhua; Beijing 2008 Olympics.) Those measures had included closing hundreds of factories in and around Beijing and taking half of the city’s cars off the road daily. Their efforts were aided by several days of rain, which eased the haze that had been worrisome enough that world-record holder Haile Gebrselassie withdrew from the marathon and some American athletes wore black breathing masks when they first arrived in the city.

State officials did not announce the details of what they said would be strict new measures, saying they would do so after they had properly studied the results of the Beijing efforts. But Du said that companies that pollute the air heavily would need to address their pollution problems before they reopened.

“If they can’t resolve the pollution problems, they must stop or limit their production,” he said.

Construction-site dust, vehicle emissions and coal pollution would also be targeted, Du said.

The skies over Beijing had been one of the deepest concerns before the Olympic Games began. News organizations found independent ways to monitor daily levels of particulate matter in a city whose air at times far exceeded the levels the World Health Organization (WHO) deems safe for ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide and other pollutants. Despite the reassurances of the International Olympic Committee’s medical commission chairman, Arne Ljungqvist, that the air would be clear in time for the Games, track and field teams trained outside of the city. Athletes with asthma took extra precautions, and officials said that it would be possible to reschedule outdoor events if the pollution was too dangerous on any given day.

Instead, China’s “blue sky” index – which is different from the air quality index used in the United States – rated air quality in the capital between excellent and fairly good on most days of the Olympics.

“We have had 100% compliance days in August and nine great single days,” Du told BBC News. “Without these measures … the current air quality would have been impossible.”

The BBC was one of the organizations doing its own monitoring of particulate matter, and determined that the city met the strictest WHO standards for particulate matter in six out of the first 11 days of the games. By the end of the Games, the Air Pollution Index (API) had dropped by more than 20 percentage points compared with the same time period in 2007, from about 80 points in August 2007 to around 56 points in 2008.

Nitrogen oxide related to vehicle emissions fell 61 percent, according to the city environmental protection bureau.

One possibility for future action would be making the odd-even license-plate driving restrictions permanent beyond September 20, the original end date, but it remains to be seen whether that would be possible once workers need to return to the still-closed factories and construction sites.

Perhaps the most poignant measurement of the air improvements showed up in the behavior of the city’s population: Beijing residents opened their windows, spent time on their balconies, watched sunsets over the mountains and saw the stars overhead at night for the first time in years.

Zhou Manjun, who lives in Beijing, told China View news that he could sleep with his bedroom windows open during the Olympics. “I never did that in the past, because I didn’t want to wake up to a room full of dust,” he said. “But now it’s all so clean.”

Wang Weihua, a Beijing taxi driver, agrees. “We can breathe much better,” she told Reuters news service. “These restrictions show the difference the cars make.

“It will get worse once they are back on the road, but it could still be better than it was, because of the environmental measures taken regarding the factories,” Wang said.

Zhou and Wang’s reactions, and those of the 15 million residents of Beijing, will play a key role in deciding whether the city’s skies change permanently, said Matthew Fraser, Associate Director for Research and a professor in Arizona State University’s Global School of Sustainability.

“It’s most important to note that this was clear it was meant to be a temporary program,” Fraser said. “It’s very different to fix things long term.

“To me, the interesting thing is whether the people of Beijing now have the political clout with the authoritarian regime there to require change, or whether it will go back to business as usual.”

There is a substantial economic cost to shutting down the city’s industrial engine, even for a short time. Job creation and economic growth are paramount to China, which has the world’s fourth largest economy. Tao Dong, chief Asia economist for Credit Suisse in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg News that China may have lost as much as 3 percent of its estimated $585 billion gross domestic product by shutting down Beijing-area factories.

The World Bank has said China has 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities. Many of its industries – cement plants, power plants, and steel mills, for instance – are heavy polluters. Because the environment and the economy of Beijing go hand in hand, the positive effects of the city’s vacation from pollution will last only as long as the vacation does, Fraser said. “There might be some short-term health benefits,” he said. “But the atmosphere is transient. You expect that as soon as the emissions come back, the air quality will rapidly reach the levels of before.

“If they were to keep some of the dirtier factories shut, that would have an effect,” said Fraser. “That would be kind of a shift in the stated or unstated national priorities for China.

“I think that’s really what it’s going to take. It’s going to need to be either recognition from above or demand from below, and it’s very different there because of the authoritarian regime. In the United States, it’s really demand from below,” Fraser said.

The 2008 Games were not the first summer Olympics to focus intense attention on pollution. The Los Angeles games in 1984 imposed some similar actions to reduce traffic and industrial smog, with similar results: clearer skies and a happier populace. In Athens in 2004, the city built mass transit, planted thousands of trees and closed factories for the month of August.

The Atlanta Games in 1996 provided an opportunity to study not only the results of such efforts, but also the effect on a population’s health. Ozone pollution and severe traffic congestion in the steamy capital city inspired officials to add car-pool lanes, ban traffic from downtown, increase the city’s mass transit ability and add natural-gas buses to the fleet. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study of the four weeks before the Olympics, the 17 days of the games and the four weeks afterward found reductions not only in the levels of pollutants but also in the rates of emergency asthma events in children ages 1-16. The CDC monitored two pediatric emergency departments, the HMO database, Georgia Medicaid claims and the hospital discharge database, and found that acute asthma events dropped by 11% in some areas to 44% in others.

One study of the Beijing results will continue through Sept. 30. Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of UC San Diego are sending unmanned aircraft equipped with sensors into the skies above the city to gather information about pollutant levels and their effects on the rays of the sun and meteorological events. The scientists hope to measure the activity of China’s pollution “plumes,” or the transport paths that particulates and smog follow as they make their way around the world. The unmanned planes will take off from South Korea’s Cheju Island and fly directly into the plumes.

“Thanks to the concern of Olympic organizers, the Chinese government, and the cooperation of the Korean government, we have a huge and unprecedented opportunity to observe a large reduction in everyday emissions from a region that is very industrially active,” said Professor V. Ramanathan in a press release from Scripps.

In an interview shortly before the Beijing Games began, Dr. Albert J. Polito, director of The Lung Center at Mercy and chief of the Division of Pulmonary Medicine at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, discussed the effects of pollution on the human respiratory system. He spoke about not only the athletes, who would be in the city for a relatively short period, but also the residents.

“It will be very interesting to see how this plays out,” Polito said. “I know Beijing has done a lot, and you have to give them credit for trying to make some progress in this regard. You hope that it’s going to be a long-lived thing, not just for the Olympics.”

Worldwide comment and opinion has not been lost on Chinese officials.

“We have noticed overseas and domestic public opinion has pinned high hopes on the efforts,” Du Shaozhong said

What can the United States learn from Beijing’s efforts?

“That things can be done in the short term to really improve the environment,” Fraser said.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

They could all be fine.

Or they could suffer allergic reactions, coughs, asthma attacks, respiratory infections, oxygen debt and cramps. Their performances could slip,

Photo: Frank Wechsel / triathlon.org
 
Jason Shoemaker competes at the 2007 BG Triathlon World Cup

their chances for world records could suffer. And predicting medal winners could prove more difficult than usual, since the secret weapon may well be the cleanest lungs or the sturdiest respiratory system.

As the 2008 Olympics open in Beijing tonight, questions remain about whether the estimated $20 billion effort the Chinese have made to improve pollution levels will work. Clear skies made on-and-off appearances in the last week, partly in response to rain and partly in response to the measures China has taken, which include closing more than 100 industrial sites and halving the number of cars on the road. But the sky was more often murky, recorded by dozens of webcams and news organizations monitoring pollution levels on a daily basis.

Will there be blue skies, as China has promised and worked for? Or will the world’s endurance athletes have to deal with the effects of ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide in their lungs and respiratory systems?

No one really knows for sure. And that makes everyone nervous.

“When we got off the plane, we immediately noticed the pollution,” Spanish cyclist Alejandro Valverde told Bloomberg News. “Because of the conditions of the heat, humidity and pollution, it is going to be very demanding.” When several members of the U.S. cycling team arrived at the Beijing Capital Airport Tuesday, they wore black breathing masks across their noses and mouths. They didn’t expect the reaction the masks ended up causing, and Wednesday apologized to Olympics organizers for any offense. U.S. officials, however, said wearing the masks would continue to be each athlete’s prerogative.

Photo: Olympic Committee
 
Arne Ljungqvist, Olympic Medical Chairman

The International Olympic Committee’s medical commission chairman, Arne Ljungqvist, said this week that pollution levels are not as dangerous as the media has reported.

“I’m confident the air quality will not prove to pose major problems to the athletes and to the visitors in Beijing,” Ljungqvist said. Should the pollution levels be too high on any given day, however, the International Olympic Committee has said it could reschedule events.

What is certain is that outdoor athletes, especially those taking part in events that last for longer periods of time, will be breathing in air that at times exceeds the levels the World Health Organization (WHO) deems safe. How their lungs and muscles respond to the contents of that air is everything.

“I think the biggest impact on the athletes is going to be impaired performances, primarily for those who are endurance athletes, who are relying on their incredible lung capacity, their efficiency and their ability to take in oxygen,” said Dr. John M. Balbus, Chief Health Scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. “Most of these pollutants – all in slightly different ways – will diminish their performance,” he said.

While carbon monoxide and particulate matter affects people fairly consistently, ozone is a different matter, Balbus said. “With ozone there are big differences in susceptibility within the population.

“Ozone could be somewhat of a spoiler. Ozone creates oxidated damage, and people differ genetically in the ability to detoxify toxic oxygen,” Balbus said.

The science behind peak performance helps explain the difference between a regular person – even an active one – and an Olympian.

“It’s sort of a twofold thing, why endurance athletes and elite athletes are as good as they are, and what it really comes down to is that the training that they’ve done has resulted in better efficiency of how their lungs and their muscles work together,” said Dr. Albert J. Polito, director of The Lung Center at Mercy and chief of the Division of Pulmonary Medicine at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore.

It’s Primarily Pulmonary

Take the lungs first.

“Probably the best measure we have of athletic performance from a physiological standpoint is the VO2 max, which is the maximum oxygen consumption by the body that you can attain. When you measure this in someone who’s an elite athlete, it’s very, very high,” Polito said. “Their lungs and how their body utilizes the oxygen they pull in is dramatically different. The rest of us have a very low V02 max. We’re not able to have the same level of oxygen consumption.”

Every molecule of oxygen that that athlete consumes affects how his or her muscles work. Replace some of those molecules with carbon monoxide, ozone or particulate matter and you’ve decreased the amount of material the athlete’s body has to work with.

“Carbon monoxide can displace the oxygen in the atmosphere,” Polito said. “Breathing that in can bind carbon monoxide molecules to our red blood cells where oxygen normally binds and hinder your oxygen consumption and your performance.”

And that, in turn, hinders how the muscles work, which is the second part of the equation.

“So much has been written about Lance Armstrong and his Tour de France wins,” Polito said. “There’s some thought that he really trained his muscles in such a way that they very efficiently used oxygen. (An elite athlete) can get that much more strength and endurance from every molecule of oxygen that you take in.”

In understanding the effects of smog on an athlete’s lungs, it helps to understand how the lungs work normally. Picture your lungs in the shape of an upside down tree. When oxygen enters the nose or mouth and travels through the trachea, larynx and bronchi, it is like water following the main trunk of a tree. The oxygen then gets routed into the lungs and into a system of narrower and narrower bronchioles, similar to a tree’s branches, and finally reaches the tiny alveoli, which are as prolific in your lungs as leaves are on a healthy tree. That’s where the exchange of gases takes place, where healthy lungs expel carbon dioxide and send fresh oxygen into the bloodstream to circulate throughout the body.

How Pollution Plays Saboteur

A healthy molecule of oxygen has two oxygen atoms. When ultraviolet light from the sun splits such a molecule, it becomes two single, free-agent atoms. Should one of those single atoms collide with another intact oxygen

Photo: Oldlens Wang/dreamstime
 
Beijing Industry

molecule, the resulting three-atom molecule is ozone. There are differences between “good,” naturally occurring ozone in the highest levels of our atmosphere, which protects the earth, and “bad,” man-made ozone in the lower layers we inhabit. The latter is produced most often by vehicle exhaust and industrial emissions, and is concentrated in the heat of the day. Ozone at high enough levels in the lungs has a direct effect on the body’s performance and efficiency.

In an interview almost eight months before the Olympics were set to open the 2008 Games, George Thurston, a professor of environmental medicine at NYU School of Medicine, told the New York Times that the body reacts immediately to pollution.

“Your body says, ‘This air is bad; breathe less of it,’ and that’s a defensive mechanism,” Thurston said. “For athletes, that means they will go into oxygen debt sooner and will start cramping up. At an event like the Olympics, that could be disastrous,” Thurston said.

Oxygen debt happens when a person needs more oxygen than he or she is taking in. If it goes on for any length of time, the body becomes anaerobic, lactic acid builds up, muscles cramp and severe fatigue sets in, causing the athlete to need to stop and recover until the oxygen levels have caught up with the body’s needs.

The other primary concern of those watching smog levels in Beijing is that of particulate matter – tiny particles of dust, sand, dirt, mold, pollen, metals and organic compounds that are suspended in the air. Particulate matter counts there have sometimes been as high as five times what is considered safe.

“Particulate matter is actually breathed in, and the particles deposit on the lungs and can actually pass through the lungs and into the bloodstream,” Thurston said. “Both (ozone and particulate matter) can cause acute reactions in people exposed to them.”

“Particulates affect not so much the oxygen, but how our bronchial tubes, our airways react,” Polito said. “The typical example would be an asthmatic. Asthma is a situation in which you are reacting to your environment, your airways tighten up, the bronchi restrict in response to what they get exposed to.”

Four-time Olympian British archer Alison Williamson, who won a bronze medal in the 2004 Olympic Games, told BBC Radio Wednesday that the situation worries her.

“I suffer from asthma, and I’m having to take supplements to protect my lung lining,” she said. “Our competition lasts 6-8 hours a day for a whole week, so the build-up could have a bearing.”

Hoping For Gold, Praying For Blue

However, Polito said, “even people who are not asthmatic can find themselves with some reaction. We may have people who have never had trouble before, but they have been training and living in places that are much cleaner.”

American triathlete Jarrod Shoemaker has trained and competed in Beijing the last three years. He told NPR that the effect of the smog was noticeable.

“You can really feel the particulate stuff getting into your lungs,” Shoemaker said. “After the race, when we tried to talk or laugh or cough, it was pretty tough. You could feel it in your lungs. There was a burning…”

Are there long-term risks? Probably not for most athletes, who are doing much of their pre-Olympics training at camps set outside Beijing – the U.S. track team, for instance, is working out at Dalian University, a campus in a resort town about 300 miles away – and who will be exposed to the higher levels of pollution for relatively short times. Many will compete in indoor events only. Those who develop sore throats, coughs or respiratory infections have the immediate care of team doctors available.

Triathletes, rowers, cyclists and runners will spend the most time outdoors. Many of the shorter races – sprints, for instance – schedule heats over several days, which adds a cumulative effect to the amount of exposure athletes face. Beijing’s summer heat and humidity are widely acknowledged as being rugged opponents in themselves. And the men’s marathon is scheduled for the last day of the Games, making any possible rescheduling more difficult. There has been some discussion that if conditions were dangerous on that last day, the marathon could be moved to another city.

The world record holder in the men’s marathon, Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, suffers from exercise-induced asthma and withdrew in February from participating in the marathon because he felt the conditions might damage his health. He will run in shorter events. Portuguese cyclist Sergio Paulinho, who won a silver medal in Athens, withdrew Tuesday due to a respiratory problem that could worsen in Beijing. All of the Australian Olympic athletes have been given permission to withdraw from any event if they feel their health would be compromised by participating. And on Wednesday, an Oregon company said they shipped three hand-held air monitors to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing so U.S. diplomats can check air quality themselves.

Tuesday, the pollution index in Beijing was between 90 and 110; the city considers any reading under 100 to be a “blue sky day.” By Wednesday, readings were cooperating with the city’s efforts, and had fallen even farther. On Thursday, however, a BBC reading estimated particulate matter at being 191 micrograms per cubic meter, more than three times what the WHO considers safe.

The first outdoor events begin Friday, with archery, badminton, beach volleyball, cycling, equestrian, rowing, sailing, shooting, soccer and volleyball competitions. Track and field events begin on Aug. 15, a week after opening ceremonies. They end on the 24^th with the men’s marathon, not long before the closing ceremonies.

Every Olympics has its challenges, said scientist Balbus, recalling smog worries in Los Angeles in 1984, traffic concerns in Atlanta in 1996 and security issues in Athens in 2004.

“Every Olympics site has its particular characteristics, and with Beijing, air quality is a factor,” he said. “Altitude was a factor in Mexico City. Elite athletes need every last edge on their side to do their best, and this is the issue for this Olympics.”

Baltimore pulmonologist Polito believes it may be harder this year to predict which athletes will take home the gold medals. It’s never rare to see Olympians finish within hundredths of a second of one another, despite different backgrounds, coaches, training regimens and equipment. But this year, picking out the athletes with the biggest advantages will be impossible: An athlete’s respiratory hardiness isn’t obvious at the starting line.

“We will not see as many world records, certainly in the outdoor endurance events. And we may see a bit of variability in terms of who is expected to win, because health is such an unpredictable factor. Exposure to pollutants and what that does to our bodies and our lungs and how we react is very different from individual to individual.,” he said.

“It will be very interesting to see how this plays out,” Polito said. “I know Beijing has done a lot, and you have to give them credit for trying to make some progress in this regard. You hope that it’s going to be a long-lived thing, not just for the Olympics.”

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