ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 11, 1996 TAG: 9605130080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
ROANOKE WAS RANKED 25TH out of 239 metropolitan areas in the country for dirty air and cardiopulmonary deaths, but you may not want to worry quite yet.
The Roanoke Valley's air quality hasn't busted a federal limit since 1979.
So state officials were shocked this week when a national environmental group ranked Roanoke as the 25th-dirtiest metropolitan area in the country, beating out industrial centers such as Pittsburgh, Newark and Detroit.
"I really don't know why Roanoke would be that much higher," said Bob Saunders, compliance and enforcement specialist with the Roanoke regional air division of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
Saunders and other DEQ officials on Friday were still trying to get a copy of the report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit group based in New York.
The group ranked 239 urban areas according to their annual levels of particulate matter - specks of dust invisible to the naked eye that can cause breathing problems and sometimes death.
The council's report said dirty air causes 64,000 deaths every year. On average, 141 people in the Roanoke area die each year from cardiopulmonary diseases attributable to particulate air pollution, said Deborah Shprentz, author of the group's report.
The council used the report to call on the federal Environmental Protection Agency to set stricter standards for dust pollution.
But the group's findings on health effects should be read with caution, said Brian P. Leaderer, a medical expert at Yale University who is conducting a separate study on indoor air quality in Roanoke and other parts of Western Virginia.
"It's risk assessment, and there's a lot of errors and uncertainties" associated with determining the health risks of pollution, said Leaderer, who has read news accounts of the report but not the actual data. Dust is only one kind of airborne pollutant that could affect health, Leaderer said. And assessing risks involves making assumptions at almost every step.
Particulate matter such as soot comes from coal-fired power plants, auto exhaust, wood-burning stoves and industry, and is measured in microns. One micron equals 1-25,000th of an inch. States must monitor their air for particles less than 10 microns in size to meet federal air quality standards. Five other common pollutants are also measured - lead, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and ground-level ozone.
The DEQ has air pollution monitors on top of Roanoke city hall and at Cherry Hill Circle in west Roanoke. The yearly average of dust pollution from 1990 through 1994 was 33.7 micrograms per cubic meter of air, Saunders said. The federal EPA says anything below 50 micrograms is acceptable.
The San Joaquin Valley in California took the top spot in the council's report, with a yearly average of 60.4 micrograms. Chicago tied Roanoke; Indianapolis ranked 50th, at 31 micrograms.
Saunders said one reason for the Roanoke Valley's seemingly high level is thermal inversions - weather patterns that trap air in the valley.
"That does give the ability to sort of stack up the pollution as it comes into the valley," he said.
Preliminary results from a long-term EPA study in Roanoke on cancer risks from air pollution show that pollutants tend to build up in the valley, Saunders said. Roanoke was selected for the study, begun in 1988, because residents burn a lot of heating oil, which gives off trace amounts of carcinogens, and because of the hill-and-valley topography.
For the Natural Resources Defense Council study, Shprentz said she looked at the dust pollution levels in the 239 U.S. urban areas and the number of cardiopulmonary deaths there. Then she applied analytical methods similar to those used in a comprehensive, long-term 1995 study by the American Cancer Society and Harvard Medical School to estimate the air pollution-related deaths in the country's major metropolitan areas.
Shprentz said thousands of lives could be spared every year if the EPA lowered the standard for particles to less than 10 microns. The group is also calling on the EPA to set first-time standards for the finest of the dust particles - as small as 2.5 microns.
The EPA is reviewing standards for dust pollution, with a decision expected by November.
More information on the NRDC's "Breath-Taking" report can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.nrdc.org/ find/aibresum.
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: chart - How Roanoke Rates. STAFFby CNB