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Assessments of health and environmental effects of clean air and climate policies have revealed substantial health benefits due to reductions in air pollution, but have included few pediatric outcomes or assessed benefits at the neighborhood level.We estimated benefits across a suite of child health outcomes in 42 New York City (NYC) neighborhoods under the proposed regional Transportation and Climate Initiative. We also estimated their distribution across racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups.We estimated changes in ambient fine particulate matter (PMThe benefits varied widely over the different cap-and-investment scenarios. For a 25% reduction in carbon emissions from 2022 to 2032 and a strategy prioritizing public transit investments, NYC would have an estimated 48 fewer medical visits for childhood asthma, 13,000 avoided asthma exacerbations not requiring medical visits, 640 fewer respiratory illnesses unrelated to asthma, and 9 avoided adverse birth outcomes (infant mortality, preterm birth, and term low birth weight) annually, starting in 2032. The total estimated annual avoided costs are $22 million. City-wide, Black and Hispanic children would experience 1.7 times the health benefits per capita than White and Non-Hispanic White children, respectively. Under the same scenario, neighborhoods experiencing the highest poverty rates in NYC would experience about 2.5 times the health benefits per capita than the lowest poverty neighborhoods.A cap-and-invest strategy to reduce carbon emissions from the transportation sector could provide substantial health and monetized benefits to children in NYC through reductions in criteria pollutant concentrations, with greater benefits among Black and Hispanic children.

The presence of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in unprocessed natural gas (NG) is well documented; however, the degree to which VOCs are present in NG at the point of end use is largely uncharacterized. We collected 234 whole NG samples across 69 unique residential locations across the Greater Boston metropolitan area, Massachusetts. NG samples were measured for methane (CH

Oil and gas production is one of the largest emitters of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and a significant contributor of air pollution emissions. While research on methane emissions from oil and gas production has grown rapidly, there is comparatively limited information on the distribution of impacts of this sector on air quality and associated health impacts. Understanding the contribution of air quality and health impacts of oil and gas can be useful for designing mitigation strategies. Here we assess air quality and human health impacts associated with ozone, fine particulate matter, and nitrogen dioxide from the oil and gas sector in the US in 2016, and compare this impact with that of the associated methane emissions. We find that air pollution in 2016 from the oil and gas sector in the US resulted in 410 000 asthma exacerbations, 2200 new cases of childhood asthma and 7500 excess deaths, with $77 billion in total health impacts. NO2 was the highest contributor to health impacts (37%) followed by ozone (35%), and then PM2.5 (28%). When monetized, these air quality health impacts of oil and gas production exceeded estimated climate impact costs from methane leakage by a factor of 3. These impacts add to the total life cycle impacts of oil and gas, and represent potential additional health benefits of strategies that reduce consumption of oil and gas. Policies to reduce oil and gas production emissions will lead to additional and significant health benefits from co-pollutant reductions that are not currently quantified or monetized.

Objectives. To examine the impact of extreme heat on emergency services in Boston, MA. Methods. We conducted relative risk and time series analyses of 911 dispatches of the Boston Police Department (BPD), Boston Emergency Medical Services (BEMS), and Boston Fire Department (BFD) from November 2010 to April 2014 to assess the impact of extreme heat on emergency services. Results. During the warm season, there were 2% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0%, 5%) more BPD dispatches, 9% (95% CI = 7%, 12%) more BEMS dispatches, and 10% (95% CI = 5%, 15%) more BFD dispatches on days when the maximum temperature was 90°F or higher, which remained consistent when we considered multiple days of heat. A 10°F increase in daily maximum temperature, from 80° to 90°F, resulted in 1.016, 1.017, and 1.002 times the expected number of daily BPD, BEMS, and BFD dispatch calls, on average, after adjustment for other predictors. Conclusions. The burden of extreme heat on local emergency medical and police services may be agency-wide, and impacts on fire departments have not been previously documented. Public Health Implications. It is important to account for the societal burden of extreme heat impacts to most effectively inform climate change adaptation strategies and planning.

Solar radiation management (SRM) is a climate engineering strategy to reduce temperature increases due to global climate change. The most well-researched SRM methodology is stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), which involves increasing the concentration of aerosol particles in the stratosphere to reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth’s surface. The most considered and heavily researched aerosol for SAI is sulfate. SAI has been extensively modeled using various climate scenarios and investigated using data from previous volcanic eruptions, which provide an analog of the climate effects of SAI. Prior research has determined that SAI will not only decrease global temperatures but is likely to have direct impacts on ecosystem and public health. This review seeks to investigate the various ways by which SAI may impact global public health outcomes related to hydrologic cycling, atmospheric chemical cycling, frequency of natural disasters, food system disruptions, and ecological health through the pathways of water, air, soil, and biota. SAI has the potential to decrease negative health outcomes associated with rising temperatures but may have a myriad of impacts on global environmental systems. Anthropogenically altering the global climate, through both the release of greenhouse gases or through climatic engineering, has unknown consequences, many of which will likely impact global health and quality of life. A more holistic approach is necessary to understand the relative benefits and harms in using SAI as compared to the implication of global climate change.

Building electrification is essential to many full-economy decarbonization pathways. However, current decarbonization modeling in the United States (U.S.) does not incorporate seasonal fluctuations in building energy demand, seasonal fluctuations in electricity demand of electrified buildings, or the ramifications of this extra demand for electricity generation. Here, we examine historical energy data in the U.S. to evaluate current seasonal fluctuation in total energy demand and management of seasonal fluctuations. We then model additional electricity demand under different building electrification scenarios and the necessary increases in wind or solar PV to meet this demand. We found that U.S. monthly average total building energy consumption varies by a factor of 1.6×—lowest in May and highest in January. This is largely managed by fossil fuel systems with long-term storage capability. All of our building electrification scenarios resulted in substantial increases in winter electrical demand, enough to switch the grid from summer to winter peaking. Meeting this peak with renewables would require a 28× increase in January wind generation, or a 303× increase in January solar, with excess generation in other months. Highly efficient building electrification can shrink this winter peak—requiring 4.5× more generation from wind and 36× more from solar.

Aviation emissions from landing and takeoff operations (LTO) can degrade local and regional air quality leading to adverse health outcomes in populations near airports and downwind. In this study we aim to quantify the air quality and health-related impacts from commercial LTO emissions in the continental U.S. for two recent years’ inventories, 2011 and 2016. We quantify the LTO-attributable PM2.5, O3, and NO2 concentrations and health outcomes for mortality and multiple morbidity health endpoints. We also quantify the impacts from two scenarios representing a nation-wide implementation of 5% or 50% blends of sustainable alternative jet fuels. We estimate 80 (68–93) and 88 (75–100) PM2.5-attributable and 610 (310–920) and 1,100 (570–1,700) NO2-attributable premature mortalities in 2011 and 2016, respectively. We estimate a net decrease of 28 (14–56) and 54 (27–110) in O3-attributable premature mortalities across the U.S. in 2011 and 2016, respectively due to the large O3 titration effects near the airports. We also find that the asthma exacerbations due to NO2 exposures from LTO emissions increase from 100,000 (2,500–200,000) in 2011 to 170,000 (4,400–340,000) in 2016. Implementing a 5% or 50% blend of sustainable alternative jet fuel in 2016 results in a 1% or 18% reduction, respectively in PM2.5-attributable premature mortalities. Monetizing the value of avoided total premature mortalities, we find that a 50%-blended sustainable alternative jet fuel results in a 19% decrease in PM2.5 damages per ton of fuel burned and a 2% decrease in total damages per ton of fuel burned as compared to damages from traditional jet fuel. We also quantify health impacts by state and find California to be the most impacted by LTO emissions. We find that LTO-attributable PM2.5 and NO2 premature mortalities increase by 10% and 80%, respectively from 2011 to 2016 and that NO2-attributable premature mortalities are responsible for 91% of total LTO-attributable premature mortalities in both 2011 and 2016. And since we find LTO-attributable NO2 to be unaffected by the implementation of sustainable alternative jet fuels, additional approaches focused on NOX reductions in the combustor are needed to mitigate the air quality-related health impacts from LTO emissions.

The COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on human lives and the global economy, laying bare existing inequities, and galvanizing large numbers to call for change. Women are feeling the effects of this crisis more than others. This paper explores the pre-COVID relationships and amplified negative feedback loops between American women’s economic insecurity, lack of safety, and food insecurity. We then examine how COVID-19 is interacting with these intersecting risks and demonstrate how climate change will likely similarly intensify these feedback loops. The COVID-19 pandemic may be revealing vulnerabilities that societies will face in the wake of an increasingly warming world. It is also an opportunity to build resilience, inclusiveness, and equity into our future, and can help inform how to include gender equity in both COVID-19 and climate recovery policies. Finally, we identify possible strategies to build resilience, specifically highlighting that gendered economic empowerment may create a buffer against environmental health hazards and discuss how these strategies could be integrated into a women-centered Green New Deal.

Background Spatially accurate population data are critical for determining health impacts from many known risk factors. However, the utility of the increasing spatial resolution of disease mapping and environmental exposures is limited by the lack of receptor population data at similar sub-census block spatial scales. Methods Here we apply an innovative method (Population Allocation by Occupied Domicile Estimation – ABODE) to disaggregate U.S. Census populations by allocating an average person per household to geospatially-identified residential housing units (RHU). We considered two possible sources of RHU location data: address point locations and building footprint centroids. We compared the performance of ABODE with the common proportional population allocation (PPA) method for estimating the nighttime residential populations within 200 m radii and setback areas (100 – 300 ft) around active underground natural gas storage (UGS) wells (n = 9834) in six U.S. states. Results Address location data generally outperformed building footprint data in predicting total counts of census residential housing units, with correlations ranging from 0.67 to 0.81 at the census block level. Using residentially-sited addresses only, ABODE estimated upwards of 20,000 physical households with between 48,126 and 53,250 people living within 200 m of active UGS wells – likely encompassing the size of a proposed UGS Wellhead Safety Zone. Across the 9834 active wells assessed, ABODE estimated between 5074 and 10,198 more people living in these areas compare to PPA, and the difference was significant at the individual well level (p =

In 2016, air pollution from oil & gas (O&G) production in the U.S. resulted in 7,500 (95% CI: 4,500 - 12,000) excess deaths among many other health impacts, valued at $77 billion ($2016 USD) (95% CI: $27 billion - $170 billion). An ambitious methane reduction policy in 2028 would result in 1,400 (820 - 2,300) deaths compared to 2028 business as usual, while other policies would have modest effects. Regions without O&G activity experienced impact from the sector and benefits from emissions reductions. On a per ton basis, the health co-benefits per methane reduction from each policy were ~5x lower than health co-impacts from the whole production sector, since policies only apply to specific O&G production processes. We show that there are still substantial health co-benefits to policies that reduce methane emissions, however the health co-benefits can be enhanced if emissions reduction policies cover more components of O&G production.

Background The association between maternal exposure to gaseous air pollutants and congenital heart defects (CHD) remains unclear. The concentration-response relationship and the time windows of susceptibility to gaseous pollutants may vary by pollutant species and CHD subtypes. Objective We aimed to examine the relationship between maternal exposures to four species of gaseous pollutants (NO2, O3, SO2, and CO) and atrial septal defect (ASD), which is a common subtype of CHD, and to determine the critical time windows of susceptibility for each gaseous pollutant. Methods Among 1,253,633 infants born between October 1, 2013 and December 31, 2016 in China, 1937 newborns were diagnosed with isolated ASD, a prevalence of 1.55‰. Maternal exposures to the gaseous pollutants were estimated by matching the geocoded maternal addresses with the gridded ambient concentrations. The adjusted odds ratios (aOR) between exposures and ASD were quantified by using mixed-effects logistic regression models. Results We found significantly positive associations between ASD and maternal exposures to NO2, O3, SO2, and CO during entire pregnancy, first-, second-, and third-trimester. However, no statistically significant association was found between maternal exposure to PM2.5, PM2.5-10 and ASD risk (P > 0.05). In the fully adjusted model with respect to average exposure over entire pregnancy, the adjusted odds ratios (aOR) for each 10 μg/m3 increment of NO2, O3, SO2 were 1.33 (95% CI: 1.22–1.45), 1.13 (95% CI: 1.10–1.16), 1.28 (95% CI: 1.20–1.35), respectively; the aOR for each 100 μg/m3 increment of CO was 1.10 (95% CI: 1.06–1.15). The observed concentration-response relationships varied by exposure periods and pollutants, with the strongest association for NO2 during the 1st-8th embryology weeks, for O3 during the third trimester, for SO2 during the second trimester, and for CO without obvious variation. Conclusions The findings suggest an increased risk of ASD in association with maternal exposures to four common gaseous pollutants. From the perspective of birth defects prevention and ASD risk mitigation, it is critical to reduce maternal exposure to gaseous pollutants especially during the most susceptible time windows.

National, state, and local air quality authorities issue warnings urging residents to stay indoors or to take other precautions when pollutant levels are expected to exceed defined thresholds. Previous work explores the impact of warnings on specific activities but not the health improvements that might result if individuals fully responded to the recommendations. We estimate these potential health impacts using recent pollution data in three U.S. locations: Denver, Colorado; Los Angeles, California; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We focus on mortality risks among the elderly, who are particularly vulnerable. Under the strong assumptions of no infiltration and no offsetting indoor sources, we estimate that the benefits associated with avoiding ambient ozone and fine particle exposure are generally less than $14 per person for one additional hour spent indoors on days when air quality thresholds are exceeded. These estimates are sensitive to assumptions regarding the relationship between decreased exposure and mortality risks. Individuals' decisions to stay indoors likely depend on the value of the health benefits compared with the value of forgone work and leisure activities. While the national warning system provides flexibility and allows individuals to tailor their responses to personal circumstances, our analysis suggests that its benefits under typical conditions are small. The benefits of warnings under wildfire or other extreme conditions may be much greater.

In their study “Assessing Agreement in Exposure Classification between Proximity-Based Metrics and Air Monitoring Data in Epidemiology Studies of Unconventional Resource Development” Hess et al [...]

Climate policies increasingly focus on the building sector to reduce its energy and emission footprint, since building energy use is a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) and air pollution emissions. The most ambitious climate policy focusing on the building sector is New York City (NYC)'s local law 97 (LL97). LL97 requires all mid-size and large buildings (>25,000 ft2 (2,323 m2)) to reduce the GHG emissions associated with their energy use, 40% by 2030, and 80% by 2050. This study uses several models and regulatory datasets to build novel NYC building energy use and GHG emission profiles based on LL97 and to investigate the impacts of LL97 on energy, climate, and health. Results show that climate impacts of 2018 energy use in LL97-covered buildings is ∼$3.24 billion USD. The premature mortality due to exposure to 2017 NYC stationary fuel combustion emissions were 1.73–3.42K deaths ($19.9–39.2 billion USD). From this total premature mortality cases in stationary sectors (industry, electricity, and buildings), 0.838–1.87K deaths ($9.62–21.5 billion USD) were from buildings. To achieve emission reduction goals and enable beneficial building electrification, the grid should be decarbonized. Additionally, LL97's apparent exclusion of biomass is a key gap, with potentially adverse effects on health and broad implications for energy/climate policies. Biomass has an outsized adverse health impact; NYC biomass use alone caused 0.707–1.55K deaths ($8.12–17.8 billion USD) in 2017. Yet LL97 does not explicitly mention biomass, and may inadvertently incentivize the use of this fuel, for instance by enabling the use of renewable energy credits from biomass for compliance. This can lead to increased adverse health impacts from biomass combustion. Our findings demonstrate the necessity of including health in energy and climate policy design.

Buildings consume nearly 40% of primary energy production globally. Certified green buildings substantially reduce energy consumption on a per square foot basis and they also focus on indoor environmental quality. However, the co-benefits to health through reductions in energy and concomitant reductions in air pollution have not been examined.We calculated year by year LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification rates in six countries (the United States, China, India, Brazil, Germany, and Turkey) and then used data from the Green Building Information Gateway (GBIG) to estimate energy savings in each country each year. Of the green building rating schemes, LEED accounts for 32% of green-certified floor space and publically reports energy efficiency data. We employed Harvard's Co-BE Calculator to determine pollutant emissions reductions by country accounting for transient energy mixes and baseline energy use intensities. Co-BE applies the social cost of carbon and the social cost of atmospheric release to translate these reductions into health benefits. Based on modeled energy use, LEED-certified buildings saved $7.5B in energy costs and averted 33MT of CO2, 51 kt of SO2, 38 kt of NOx, and 10 kt of PM2.5 from entering the atmosphere, which amounts to $5.8B (lower limit = $2.3B, upper limit = $9.1B) in climate and health co-benefits from 2000 to 2016 in the six countries investigated. The U.S. health benefits derive from avoiding an estimated 172-405 premature deaths, 171 hospital admissions, 11,000 asthma exacerbations, 54,000 respiratory symptoms, 21,000 lost days of work, and 16,000 lost days of school. Because the climate and health benefits are nearly equivalent to the energy savings for green buildings in the United States, and up to 10 times higher in developing countries, they provide an important and previously unquantified societal value. Future analyses should consider these co-benefits when weighing policy decisions around energy-efficient buildings.

In 2012 Pennsylvania's legislature increased the unconventional natural gas (UNG) well-to-building setback requirement from 200 ft to 500 ft through Act 13. To evaluate this policy, we identified all setback incident locations where a UNG well was within 500 ft of a building both before and after the implementation of Act 13. Using an interrupted time series design, we found that Act 13 did not significantly alter how wells were sited in relation to nearby buildings. Of the 1042 wells that contained a building within 500 ft – equating to ~10.1% of UNG wells (n = 11,148) and ~14.7% well pads (n = 479) – a total of 371 well setback incidents occurred after Act 13, likely due from the existing well pad exemption (35%) and a combination of landowner consent and regulatory variances rather than encroaching building construction. Overall, our study suggests that exemptions are an important and underappreciated aspect of oil and gas well setback rulemaking and highlights the relevance of other health-protective regulatory tools often promulgated alongside setbacks. New or amended setback regulations should revisit exemption procedures and where warranted, impose additional mitigation measures to ensure setback regulations provide adequate protections for health and safety as intended.

Local and state policymakers have become increasingly interested in developing policies that both reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and improve local air quality, along with public health. Interest in developing transportation-related policies has grown as transportation became the largest contributing sector to GHG emissions in the United States in 2017. Information on current emissions and health impacts, along with trends over time, is helpful to policymakers who are developing strategies to reduce emissions and improve public health, especially in areas with high levels of transportation-related emissions. Here, we provide a comprehensive assessment of the public health and climate social costs of on-road emissions by linking emissions data generated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reduced complexity models that provide impacts per ton emitted for pollutants which contribute to ambient fine particulate matter, and the social costs of GHG emissions from on-road transportation. For 2017, social costs totaled $184 billion (min: $78 billion; max: $280 billion) for all on-road emissions from the eight health and climate pollutants that we assessed in the continental U.S. (in $2017 USD). Within this total social cost estimate, health pollutants constituted $93 billion of the social costs (min: $52 billion; max: $146 billion), and climate pollutants constituted $91 billion (min: $26 billion; max: $134 billion). The majority of these social costs came from CO2 followed by NO x emissions from privately owned individual vehicles in urban counties (CO2 contributed $51 billion and NO x contributed $16 billion in social costs from individual vehicles in urban counties). However, it is important to note that not all the attention should be placed solely on individual vehicles. Although the climate social costs of individual vehicle emissions are higher than those from commercial vehicles in urban counties (by two to eight times depending on the climate pollutant), the health social costs of individual vehicle emissions are roughly equal to those from commercial vehicles in urban counties. Regardless of each pollutant’s contributions to the social costs, the highest social benefits from reducing 1 ton of CO2 and its co-pollutants would occur in urban counties, given their high population density.

The private sector is interested in contributing to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); however, they lack credible objective metrics to measure progress, which hinders making a case for financial investing toward the SDGs. A set of science-based metrics could allow corporations and interested investors to meaningfully align their actions with the SDGs in locations around the world where they can make the greatest positive impact. Using existing data on country-level electricity generation and land transportation, we develop a set of simple-to-implement and user-friendly metrics to evaluate the benefits that investments in renewable electricity generation and improvements in land transportation can make toward reducing CO2 and air pollutant emissions and the health impacts of air pollution. We then apply these metrics to a set of renewable electricity companies and find meaningful differences in their progress toward the SDGs on health, energy, and climate. We found that under half of the renewable energy companies in our dataset disclose country-level data on where equipment is being sold, and that there is substantial variability in the CO2 reductions and health benefits of renewable energy based on where these companies have installed capacity. There was not a close statistical relationship between country CO2 emissions rates and country health impact rates, indicating that these metrics cannot serve as good proxies for one another. Future improvements to this methodology should be to implement explicit tracking of air pollution from sources to the locations where it has eventual health impacts, updating the underlying dataset, and improving the degree of detail in emissions inventories. Application of this methodology across the renewable energy sector is limited by the availability of country-level data on where a company has renewable energy capacity installed. The methodology developed here can serve as a basis for better measurement of progress toward climate, energy, and health-related SDGs in financial investing and other applications.

Emissions of particulate matter from fires associated with land management practices in Indonesia contribute to regional air pollution and mortality. We assess the public health benefits in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore from policies to reduce fires by integrating information on fire emissions, atmospheric transport patterns, and population exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5). We use adjoint sensitivities to relate fire emissions to PM2.5 for a range of meteorological conditions and find that a Business‐As‐Usual scenario of land use change leads, on average, to 36,000 excess deaths per year into the foreseeable future (the next several decades) across the region. These deaths are largely preventable with fire reduction strategies, such as blocking fires in peatlands, industrial concessions, or protected areas, which reduce the health burden by 66, 45, and 14%, respectively. The effectiveness of these different strategies in mitigating human health impacts depends on the location of fires relative to the population distribution. For example, protecting peatlands through eliminating all fires on such lands would prevent on average 24,000 excess deaths per year into the foreseeable future across the region because, in addition to storing large amounts of fuel, many peatlands are located directly upwind of densely populated areas. We also demonstrate how this framework can be used to prioritize restoration locations for the Indonesian Peatland Restoration Agency based on their ability to reduce pollution exposure and health burden. This scientific framework is publicly available through an online decision support tool that allows stakeholders to readily determine the public health benefits of different land management strategies., Key Points Current trends in Indonesia's fire activity would lead to 37,000 excess deaths per year across the region from air pollution exposureRestoring peatlands could reduce fire‐related mortality by nearly 70%Our integrative scientific tool can be used to support land management strategies most beneficial for public health

In the last decade, the transition away from coal and to fossil gas and biomass in the U.S. has had a major influence on greenhouse gas emissions, especially from electricity generation. However, the effect of this transition on the public health burden of air pollution is not well understood. We use three reduced complexity models (RCMs) and emissions inventory data to reconstruct the changes in health impacts due to PM2.5 exposure from stationary fuel combustion sources in the U.S., from 2008 to 2017. In 2008, the health impacts of air pollution from stationary sources was largely driven by coal combustion. By 2017, the contribution of coal has dropped precipitously, and the health burden of stationary air pollution sources is shared among a mixture of source types and fuels—largely gas and biomass in buildings and industry, and the remaining coal-fired electricity generation. Nationwide, in 2017, health impacts of biomass and wood combustion are higher than combustion of coal and gas individually. Industrial boilers had the highest emissions and health impacts, followed by residential buildings, electricity, and then commercial buildings. All three RCMs indicate that biomass and wood are the leading sources of stationary source air pollution health impacts in 24 states, and that the total health impacts of gas surpass that of coal in 19 states and the District of Columbia. We develop a projection method using state-level energy consumption data for 2018 and show that these trends likely continued. The RCMs had high agreement for 2008 emissions, when sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants were the predominant air pollution source. However there was substantial disagreement between the three RCMs on the 2017 health burden, likely due to pollutants less well-characterized by the RCMs having a higher proportionate share of total impacts.

Renewable energy and energy efficiency (EE/RE) can have benefits to both climate and public health by reducing emissions of both greenhouse gases (GHGs) like carbon dioxide (CO2), and air pollutant...

Current air quality monitoring networks rely on stationary sites, which do not effectively capture transient and localized pollutants such as methane leakage and anthropogenic volatile organic comp...

The practice of selecting and managing financial assets based on their social and environmental performance is undergoing rapid growth and fundamental change. Investors are increasingly pressed by asset owners to prove how one company's practices are materially more or less sustainable than those of another. Yet, the basic information that companies declare is hardly standardized and is difficult to verify, with unreliable assertions ( 1 ) that are widely criticized as “green washing.” Metrics are mainly restricted to documenting changes to internal business practices but offer limited guidance on whether a company's actions, products, and services promote human well-being or preserve environmental integrity in the external, real-world domain, fueling reluctance on the part of otherwise enthusiastic investors ( 2 , 3 ). It is here where science can play an important role. Our consortium of an asset owner, an asset manager, and two research universities is designing a next generation of traceable indicators to quantify external context and impact of investments and place these into a decision-making framework useful to investors. Tests of these science-based sustainability metrics are under way on a $2.1 billion portfolio of public equities invested on behalf of a large European pension fund.

Clean energy can provide different health and environmental benefits depending on location. Modelling shows that renewable energy and energy-saving projects could deliver annual benefits of up to US$210 million across six locations in the USA.

Clean electricity generation is good for the climate and improves the quality of the air that we breathe. An analysis of US power plants shows that the magnitude of the resulting health benefits depends greatly on the carbon standards adopted.

Transportation decisions have health consequences that are often not incorporated into policy-making processes. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a process that can be used to evaluate health effects of transportation policy. We present a rapid HIA, conducted over eight weeks, evaluating health and economic effects of proposed fare increases and service cuts to Boston, Massachusetts’ public transportation system. We used transportation modeling in concert with tools allowing for quantification and monetization of multiple pathways. We estimated health and economic costs of proposed public transportation system changes to be hundreds of millions of dollars per year, exceeding the budget gap the public transportation authority was required to close. Significant health pathways included crashes, air pollution, and physical activity. The HIA enabled stakeholders to advocate for more modest fare increases and service cuts, which were eventually adopted by decision makers. This HIA was among the first to quantify and monetize multiple pathways linking transportation decisions with health and economic outcomes, using approaches that could be applied in different settings. Including health costs in transportation decisions can lead to policy choices with both economic and public health benefits.

We estimated PM2.5-related public health impacts/ton emitted of primary PM2.5, SO2, and NOx for a set of power plants in the Mid-Atlantic and Lower Great Lakes regions of the United States, selected to include varying emission profiles and broad geographic representation. We then developed a regression model explaining variability in impacts per ton emitted using the population distributions around each plant. We linked outputs from the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model v 4.7.1 with census data and concentration–response functions for PM2.5-related mortality, and monetized health estimates using the value-of-statistical-life. The median impacts for the final set of plants were $130,000/ton for primary PM2.5 (range: $22,000–230,000), $28,000/ton for SO2 (range: $19,000–33,000), and $16,000/ton for NOx (range: $7100–26,000). Impacts of NOx were a median of 34% (range: 20%–75%) from ammonium nitrate and 66% (range: 25%–79%) from ammonium sulfate. The latter pathway is likely from NOx enhancing atmospheric oxidative capacity and amplifying sulfate formation, and is often excluded. Our regression models explained most of the variation in impact/ton estimates using basic population covariates, and can aid in estimating impacts averted from interventions such as pollution controls, alternative energy installations, or demand-side management. Keywords: CMAQ, Air quality, Impacts of electrical generation, PM2.5, Atmospheric modeling

The type, size, and location of renewable energy (RE) deployment dramatically affects benefits to climate and health. Here, we develop a ten-region model to assess the magnitude of health and climate benefits across the US We then use this model to assess the benefits of deploying varying capacities of wind, utility-scale solar photovoltaics (PV), and rooftop solar PV in different regions in the US—a total of 284 different scenarios. Total benefits ranged from $2.2 trillion for 3000 MW of wind in the Upper Midwest to $4.2 million for 100 MW of wind in California. Total benefits and highest cost effectiveness for CO2 reduction were generally highest for RE deployment in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic US and lowest in California. Health was a substantial portion of total benefits in nearly all regions of the US Benefits were sensitive to methane leakage throughout the gas supply chain.

There are numerical errors in the first two sentences of the “Policy Implications” heading under the Results and Discussion section. The correct sentences are: We found that for a moderately stringent, highly flexible policy scenario similar to the final U.S. Clean Power Plan, the monetized value of health co-benefits alone exceed estimated costs for the U.S. by $12 billion per year in 2020. When the social cost of carbon is included, the benefits increase from $29 billion to $50 billion with national net benefits of $33 billion per year in 2020.

The use of cardiovascular imaging is growing inexorably and concerns have been expressed about its cost and radiation safety. In this study, the relative environmental impact of MRI, single photon emission tomography and cardiac ultrasound (echo) for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease were examined. The results emphasise that echo causes the least environmental impact at each stage of its life cycle. The effect of one echo on human health, ecosystem effects and resource use was of the order of 1-20% of those of the alternative methods. Although there are circumstances in which one imaging modality is preferred on clinical grounds, when everything else is equal, these results support the selection of echocardiography as the preferred test on environmental grounds.

Each stage in the life cycle of coal-extraction, transport, processing, and combustion-generates a waste stream and carries multiple hazards for health and the environment. These costs are external to the coal industry and are thus often considered "externalities." We estimate that the life cycle effects of coal and the waste stream generated are costing the U.S. public a third to over one-half of a trillion dollars annually. Many of these so-called externalities are, moreover, cumulative. Accounting for the damages conservatively doubles to triples the price of electricity from coal per kWh generated, making wind, solar, and other forms of nonfossil fuel power generation, along with investments in efficiency and electricity conservation methods, economically competitive. We focus on Appalachia, though coal is mined in other regions of the United States and is burned throughout the world.

State and regional climate policies in the United States are becoming more prevalent. Quantifying these policies’ health co-benefits provides a local and near-term rationale for actions that also mitigate global climate change and its accompanying harms. Here, we assess the health benefits of a carbon fee-and-rebate policy directed at fuel use in transport, residential and commercial buildings and industry in Massachusetts. We find that the air pollution reductions from this policy would save 340 lives (95% CI: 82–590), 64% of which would occur in Massachusetts, and reduce carbon emissions by 33 million metric tons, with 2017 as an implementation year, through 2040. When monetized, the benefits to health may be larger than the benefits from climate mitigation, but are sensitive to valuation methods, discount rates, and the leakage rate of natural gas, among other factors. These benefits derive largely from lower transportation emissions, including volatile organic compounds from gasoline combustion. Reductions in oil and coal use have relatively large benefits, despite their limited use in Massachusetts. This study finds substantial health benefits of a proposed statewide carbon policy in Massachusetts that carries near-term and direct benefit to residents of the commonwealth and demonstrates the importance of co-benefits modeling.

Objectives. We evaluated the spatial and temporal patterns of traffic-related air pollutants in an urban neighborhood to determine factors contributing to elevated concentrations and to inform environmental justice concerns. Methods. In the summer of 2007, we continuously monitored multiple air pollutants at a community site in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachussetts, and local high school students conducted mobile continuous monitoring throughout the neighborhood. We used regression models to explain variability in concentrations, considering various attributes of traffic, proximity to major roadways, and meteorology. Results. Different attributes of traffic explained variability in fixed-site concentrations of ultrafine particles, fine particulate matter, and black carbon, with diurnal patterns and meteorological effects indicative of a greater local effect on ultrafine particles and black carbon. Mobile monitoring demonstrated that multiple traffic variables predict elevated levels of ultrafine particles, with concentrations of ultrafine particles decreasing by 50% within 400 meters of 2 major roadways. Conclusions. Unlike fine particulate matter, ultrafine particles demonstrate significant spatial and temporal variability within an urban neighborhood, contributing to environmental justice concerns, and patterns can be well characterized with a community-based participatory research design.

© 2017 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd. Background: Significant mitigation efforts beyond the Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs) coming out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement are required to avoid warming of 2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures. Health co-benefits represent selected near term, positive consequences of climate policies that can offset mitigation costs in the short term before the beneficial impacts of those policies on the magnitude of climate change are evident. The diversity of approaches to modeling mitigation options and their health effects inhibits meta-analyses and syntheses of results useful in policy-making. Methods/Design: We evaluated the range of methods and choices in modeling health co-benefits of climate mitigation to identify opportunities for increased consistency and collaboration that could better inform policy-making. We reviewed studies quantifying the health co-benefits of climate change mitigation related to air quality, transportation, and diet published since the 2009 Lancet Commission 'Managing the health effects of climate change' through January 2017. We documented approaches, methods, scenarios, health-related exposures, and health outcomes. Results/Synthesis: Forty-two studies met the inclusion criteria. Air quality, transportation, and diet scenarios ranged from specific policy proposals to hypothetical scenarios, and from global recommendations to stakeholder-informed local guidance. Geographic and temporal scope as well as validity of scenarios determined policy relevance. More recent studies tended to use more sophisticated methods to address complexity in the relevant policy system. Discussion: Most studies indicated significant, nearer term, local ancillary health benefits providing impetus for policy uptake and net cost savings. However, studies were more suited to describing the interaction of climate policy and health and the magnitude of potential outcomes than to providing specific accurate estimates of health co-benefits. Modeling the health co-benefits of climate policy provides policy-relevant information when the scenarios are reasonable, relevant, and thorough, and the model adequately addresses complexity. Greater consistency in selected modeling choices across the health co-benefits of climate mitigation research would facilitate evaluation of mitigation options particularly as they apply to the NDCs and promote policy uptake.

The leak of processed natural gas (PNG) from October 2015 to February 2016 from the Aliso Canyon storage facility, near Los Angeles, California, was the largest single accidental release of greenhouse gases in US history. The Interagency Task Force on Natural Gas Storage Safety and California regulators recently recommended operators phase out single-point-of-failure (SPF) well designs. Here, we develop a national dataset of UGS well activity in the continental US to assess regulatory data availability and uncertainty, and to assess the prevalence of certain well design deficiencies including single-point-of-failure designs. We identified 14 138 active UGS wells associated with 317 active UGS facilities in 29 states using regulatory and company data. State-level wellbore datasets contained numerous reporting inconsistencies that limited data concatenation. We identified 2715 active UGS wells across 160 facilities that, like the failed well at Aliso Canyon, predated the storage facility, and therefore were not originally designed for gas storage. The majority (88%) of these repurposed wells are located in OH, MI, PA, NY, and WV. Repurposed wells have a median age of 74 years, and the 2694 repurposed wells constructed prior to 1979 are particularly likely to exhibit design-related deficiencies. An estimated 210 active repurposed wells were constructed before 1917—before cement zonal isolation methods were utilized. These wells are located in OH, PA, NY, and WV and represent the highest priority related to potential design deficiencies that could lead to containment loss. This national baseline assessment identifies regulatory data uncertainties, highlights a potentially widespread vulnerability of the natural gas supply chain, and can aid in prioritization and oversight for high-risk wells and facilities.