Air Pollution Study Called 'Editorial,' Not Science By John Rossomando CNSNews.com Staff Writer August 20, 2001

(CNSNews.com) - A Carnegie Mellon University study, appearing in the latest issue of the journal Science, claims "more people are being killed by air pollution than from traffic crashes." However, critics of the study say it has no credibility and one claims the authors of the study pulled their conclusions "out of a hat."

The Carnegie Mellon study, conducted by visiting Professor Dr. Devra Lee Davis, claims the burning of gasoline in automobiles has contributed to large numbers of premature deaths from asthma, heart disease, and lung disorders in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Mexico City; Santiago, Chile; and New York City.

Associated Press coverage of the issue has also drawn fire. In its story from last Thursday, the AP, citing the Carnegie Mellon study, reported that 64,000 lives would be saved over the next 20 years in those four cities if greenhouse gas abatement technologies were used to reduce emissions. According to A.P., 65,000 cases of chronic bronchitis would also be avoided.

"There are more than a thousand studies from 20 countries, all showing that you can predict a certain death rate based upon the amount of pollution," Davis told A.P.

However, Dr. Pat Michaels of the University of Virginia's Department of Environmental Science labels Davis' report "an editorial, not a paper,"

"The core of the [study] comes from non-referenced papers produced by a lobbying organization," Michaels said. "Davis and her colleagues don't even present their methodology."

Michaels also claims the Associated Press distorted the issue by inaccurately reporting that Davis' study referred to carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Michaels says he was unable to find such a claim in the study.

"I looked at the [Carnegie Mellon] article and looked for the word carbon dioxide, and [it is] not in the article," he said. "Devra Davis is a smart person, and she did not put carbon dioxide in her article because she knows that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant."

A Cato Institute scholar rejects the study's link between premature death and poor air quality. Steve Milloy, an adjunct fellow with Cato, has written extensively on the epidemiology related to air pollution, and says he has been unable to corroborate the scientific claims made in studies similar to Davis'.

"There is [not an existing] study that credibly links air pollution with premature death," Milloy said. "They've never measured the amount of air pollution that any of the study subjects have been exposed to. They are missing a lot of lifestyle [questions]. They are very crude studies [that come up with] very weak statistical results."

Milloy also labels Davis' claim that 64,000 lives would be saved through the installation of greenhouse gas abatement technologies, "complete nonsense."

"The studies have very weak statistics, and they are not scientific studies," Milloy said.

He claims researchers such as Davis use causal connections between mortality rates and the amount of air pollution to justify their results without determining which deaths are actually linked to air quality issues.

"There are many factors that cause a city to have higher death rates, and they don't look at other factors," said Milloy.

Milloy addressed a similar study conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a 1997 op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.

The EPA study used similar variables to the Carnegie Mellon study, and likewise connected air quality with premature death.

Milloy dismissed the study's findings saying, "It turns out that nobody has demonstrated how airborne particulates could cause higher death rates. Of course, epidemiology isn't designed to provide information about such biological mechanisms, but the EPA hasn't come up with any other credible research to fill in the gap.

"Taken in this context, the reported increase in risk [of premature death from air pollution] is only an artifact of statistics, called a statistical association," he wrote in 1997. Milloy says the Carnegie Mellon study is plagued with the same problems as the EPA study he criticized.

Several attempts were made to contact Davis for comment, but she did not return telephone calls.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001