Welcome back to Season Four of the Air Health Our Health podcast! It’s hard to believe we are already here. Sadly, as is increasingly common, the summer was marked by devastating fire events. I think we have all been shocked by what has occurred in Maui, and many throughout North America felt the significant toll of the Canadian wildfires over this past summer. I have vivid memories of the heavy wildfires in 2020 in which the air quality outside was beyond the hazard index, and I was with my three kids indoors and wondering how to keep them safe. We often have wildfires affecting our air quality, but I also know it’s important for the kids to be outside playing and not inside watching tablets or yelling at me about how bored they are. How do we decide when to let our kids outside when the air quality is poor? Where do we have them play? What happens at school? I worry about ensuring clean air in my own home, but my kids spend 8-10 hours per day breathing air at their school- how do I know if it is safe? Is anyone monitoring it? What are the air quality risks at school and in school activities? Fortunately, for this podcast episode and post, I had the opportunity to talk to a lung doctor for kids (pediatric pulmonologist) who also has three young kids herself. She suffers from asthma, and knows what it is like to have air quality affect her. Her research and work is geared to answering all these questions, so I am so delighted to kick off Season Four of the Air Health Our Health podcast with this super important back to school episode about the air quality where our kids spend a large amount of their days- in school.
Dr. Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir is chief of the pediatric pulmonary division at Columbia University and cares for patients and conducts research in the Department of Pediatrics and the Dept Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. After training in general pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Montefiore in the Social pediatrics program, she completed her pediatric pulmonary fellowship at NY Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia.
Her multidisciplinary and collaborative research is focused on understanding how environmental factors impact children with asthma, particularly in urban and minority communities. Her current work is funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Health Effects Institute. She recently served on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Act Scientific Advisory Committee as a member of the particulate matter panel in 2021. She is an elected member of the Society for Pediatric Research and in 2019 was recognized by the journal Pediatric Research for the Early Career Investigator Spotlight. She is also the recipient of the 2019 American Society for Clinical Investigation Young Physician-
Scientist Award and the 2021 Robert B. Mellins, MD Outstanding Achievement Award from the Pediatric Assembly of the American Thoracic Society (ATS). She is also a spokesperson for the American Lung Association.
On the podcast today, we discuss her research that put pollution monitors on children, and followed them. It turns out they are significantly exposed to pollution during school hours, so it is very important for schools to build clean indoor air infrastructure and to be aware of available resources, such as the EPA Air Quality flag program.
Dr. Lowinsky-Desir’s work is so important- she is working to answer the hardest questions that face all of us as parents and communities. With climate change, we will continue to have catastrophic wildfire events. Hopefully we will ensure our communities have clean air refuges and strong resiliency and mitigation plans. It is also important to decrease the chronic toll of air pollution, so that we have fewer members of our communities at risk for illness when sudden severe air quality events occur. I also hope we will limit our greenhouse gas emissions, so future generations do not have to face the events that we have seen unfold in Maui and in other places.
It is hard to not feel helpless as an individual in the face of all the devastation, but it is important to keep hope and remember to take action.
To Do:
1- Download the Airnow.gov app if you haven’t yet- familiarize yourself with the Air Quality Index and who is at risk.
2- Find out whether your school follows a flag program- if not, consider discussing with your school starting a flag program. You can obtain resources and information at airnow.gov/air-quality-flag-program.
3- The EPA offers significant educational materials geared for kids as well, you can find out more about those resources at Airnow.gov, including videos in Spanish and English about air quality.
4- Our climate is changing and leading to increased wildfire smoke events. Do what you can in your community to address climate change and help mitigation plans, such as plans for clean indoor air.
5- Learn more about the AQI from Dr. Rosser in the episode “What’s in an Index?” and about PM2.5 from “What’s in a Standard” episode with Dr. Costa. These are both available in Season Two of the podcast. Learn more about ozone, the other component of the AQI from the “Money & Lives” episode from last season.
6- Consider a donation to the American Lung Association, who in addition to supporting those with lung disease, is constantly fighting for clean air for all.
TLDR= Don't Light Things on Fire and Breathe them into your Lungs
References:
Lovinsky-Desir S, Jung KH, Rundle AG, Hoepner L, Bautista J, Perera FP, Chillrud SN, Perzanowski MS, Miller RL. Physical Activity is Associated with Greater Black Carbon/Soot Exposure and Lower Fractional Exhaled Nitric Oxide in a Cohort of Adolescents Living in New York City. Environmental Research. 2016, 151: 756-62.
Lovinsky-Desir S,Miller RL, Bautista J, Gil EN, Chillrud SH, Yan B, Perera FP, Jung KH. Differences in ambient polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon concentrations between streets and alleys in New York City: Open space vs semi-closed space. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health. 2016, 13: 127.
