JenniferSpartzAnnotation5AssessingOzone

Annotation 5 Assessing Ozone – Related Health Impacts Under a Changing Planet Many people contributed to this article. All of whom were located in prominent research universities in studies of climate and atmosphere or health, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. This gives a wide variety of knowledge which gives the impression there is expertise behind the study. These people came together to create a study to assess the impacts that climate change has on ozone concentration in a given area as well as the mortality rates due to this change. Some related studies led to this study. For example, the UK did a study on the potential impact of O3 on health and found that there was a 10% increase of premature death. This group of people decided to do a similar test in the area around New York City. The group did this by creating simulations of hourly regional meteorology and the O3 concentration over the course of five summers. They studied it in the 1990’s and, based on predictions of groups like the EPA and the Center for International Earth Sciences Information Network, they were able to simulate possible environments of the New York City area in 2050. The mortality assessments showed that there was more distribution of O3 along the coast and the mortality rates due to ozone followed the same pattern even though this was mostly due to the fact that there was a higher population in those areas. In the test where ozone was due to climate change as well as other emissions, the mortality rates were not as high in the urban areas; however, overall mortalities were more spread out into the suburban areas. The primary findings of this study were that regional climate change could increase the rates of mortality (without population as a factor) by 4.5% and when population change was considered the rate increased to 59.9%. As the population increases, the spread of mortality travels from urban areas to the surrounding areas. “O3 projections for the 2050s show that counties with the highest percent increases in O3 mortality in the 2050s, relative to the 1990s, spread beyond the urban core into less densely populated suburban counties…”(Knowlton). It was also learned that population was the largest factor of summer O3 mortality rates. The implications of this study were that not all the effects on health by O3 are studied, only mortality rates. This shows that there could be many more problems due to ozone other than just death. There are also many sources of uncertainty due to alternative modeling possibilities, estimating baselines, assuming impacts only occur over the summer, and not considering the surrounding areas’ air quality impact on a region. Obviously the future is uncertain so it is impossible to exactly predict what will happen, however there is too much error to call the results conclusive. However, since so much of the data is coming from government, there is a general acceptance that the data is true. The main trend that was a precursor to the study was the increase of hospital visits over the summer for respiratory illnesses. This article can contribute to the shared questions since it talks about the depth and layers of the issue. In the discussion of the uncertainty and the overall experiment, there was discussion of compiling different subjects of research to reach the conclusions of the study. This helps us to see that there are many layers involved in the study of asthma and that it is not feasible to attempt to study them all in depth at the same time. Many smaller studies have to be placed together to get reasonable results. There is also the fact that air patterns in neighboring areas have an impact on the air quality of a given region. This means that when studying an area’s environment, one also has to study the surrounding environments to get a reasonable understanding of the severity of the given situation.