When U.S. Emissions Dropped, Mortality Dropped Dramatically

U.S. air pollution emissions dropped dramatically from 2008 to 2014, driven in part by the closure of coal-fired power plants. Now researchers have documented that health damages from air pollution dropped just as dramatically during that time.
“Not only have the emissions decreased, but the damages—the health damages—from those emissions have decreased very rapidly, more than 20% over the course of six years,” said Inês M.L. Azevedo, an associate professor in Stanford University’s Department of Energy Resources Engineering.
The study, published in PNAS, contains very good news for utilities—which radically reduced the damage they do to public health and the economy, Azevedo said—but it contains very bad news for agriculture.
“Particularly noteworthy is that the utility sector gross external damages fell by more than 50% over a six-year time period,” said Azevedo, who collaborated with researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University. “This is really enormous.”
Utilities reduced the damage they do to the economy without reducing the value they add to the economy, Azevedo said in a video (below) released this month by Stanford. Three factors played a role: “The first, the use of air pollution control technologies— your scrubbers. The recent closure of coal power plants, and fuel switching to natural gas.”
Utilities had damaged the economy most through the emission of sulfur dioxide (SO2), which can harm the lungs directly or combine with ammonia to form particulate matter. The EPA estimates that PM 2.5—the deadliest particulate matter—is responsible for 90 percent of the 100,000 premature deaths caused by air pollution annually in the U.S.
Premature death carries a significant social cost, and Azevedo and her colleagues calculated the reduction in gross external damages from air pollution across the economy. (They did not assess some other forms of economic damage, such as climate damage.)
Damage to the economy from emissions dropped from $1 trillion to $719 billion from 2008 to 2014, Azevedo said.
“This is not trivial. These damages would correspond to something like 6% of GDP in 2008. And they are down to a little bit over 4% in 2014. So the good news is that through 2014, the U.S. economy continues to be on its path to be less pollution-intensive, and with lower consequences.”
Overall emissions also dropped—albeit less dramatically—in the transportation, manufacturing, and agriculture sectors, but agriculture’s emission of deadly 2.5 PM increased, Azevedo said, to the point that “at the margin,” the economic damage done by agriculture exceeds the value farms add to the U.S. economy.
Read more about that here:
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Learn more about this research, including discussion of its methods and uncertainties, by watching Azevedo’s seminar at Stanford: