Debunking 3 myths about air pollution | Nat Geo Explores

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Ever think of how many breaths of air you take in a day? It's a lot, like 20 thousand, give or take a few. All day, all night, our bodies are at work bringing in the good (bell dings) and kicking out the bad (buzzer sounds). But as important as this is to our very existence, there's still a lot that many of us misunderstand about what's really in our air.

(upbeat music) - Most people don't know very much about air pollution. We don't sort of see this invisible connection between that pollution and very real health problems. (man coughing) I'm Beth Gardiner, I'm an environmental journalist and author of the book "Choked, Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution." (pages flipping) (bell dings) Air pollution is killing millions of people around the world. The World Health Organization estimates seven million annually, and causing a long list of illnesses.

(keyboard clicking) (somber music) Air pollution affects almost every biological system in our bodies. Increased rates of air pollution are linked to higher rates of heart attacks, strokes, premature birth, multiple different kinds of cancer, Alzheimer's disease, cognitive problems in kids, diabetes, and obesity, and the list just goes on and on and on and on. The pollutant that scientists have really honed in on in recent years as the most worrying is called particulate pollution.

• [Scientist] If this man is continuously exposed to this sort of atmosphere, then there will be a buildup of these particles.

It's tiny particles called PM2.5. They are less than 2.5 microns in diameter; that is about a 30th of the width of a human hair. PM2.5 and even smaller ones, which are called ultra fine, are so small that they can actually penetrate deep down into the lungs, all the way into the tiny little sacs called alveoli, where the air within our lungs crosses into the bloodstream. Once they're in the bloodstream, they can travel all around the body and impact all of our different organs.

(keyboard clicking) A lot of people really associate air pollution with cities, that this is an urban problem. Air doesn't know any boundaries; it doesn't stop at the city limits. These tiny particles can actually travel thousands of miles. There are a lot of different pollutants mostly related to burning things: oil, gas, diesel, wood, coal, and garbage.

(mellow country music) Agriculture is another unexpected but pretty significant contributor to air pollution. The different chemicals that come off of fertilizers and manure combine in the air with other pollutants.

• [Vintage Cartoon Narrator] And the smell can be a real nuisance to your neighbors.

So it's a lot of different things in the air, whether you're living close to a factory farm or hundreds of miles away from them. (birds singing) But this is not a problem that is equally distributed. It's not just cities; it's where you're going to end up living if you have lower housing costs. The neighborhoods that are most heavily impacted very often are poorer, people of color, immigrants, people who lack the ability to move somewhere cleaner. Those tend to be the places where these really polluting facilities get sited. So this is really a problem that tracks very much with the fault lines of economic inequality and racial injustice.

(keyboard clicking) (happy music) When we talk about environmental challenges and how to fix them, the conversation often gets really, really focused on what it's gonna cost. (cash register dings) In terms of public health, productivity, and longer life spans, the benefits in dollar terms of cleaner air are dozens of times greater than the costs. But of course, the costs have to be paid up front by industries. And the benefits are reaped years later across society.

(presidential music) The United States has historically been an impressive global air quality success story. Because of this very strong, very innovative law, the Clean Air Act, supported, by the way, by both Democrats and Republicans. That started with getting lead out of the air. Lead was in gasoline. There's 70 percent less pollution in the air than there was in 1970 because of this law. The lesson that comes from that is that we know what works. This is not an impossible problem. Science-based regulations that prioritize public health work. All these illnesses and deaths can feel sort of overwhelming. But it's also quite inspiring when you look at what has been achieved so far.

• [Narrator] There are also innovative solutions in the works to drastically reduce pollutants before they even get into our air. Bold ideas that take us away from burning things to cleaner energy. Re-imagining urban spaces that are friendlier to bikers and pedestrians. And shifting to electric vehicles to get us everywhere else. That kind of ingenuity might be the difference between breathing dirty air now (man coughs) or truly fresh air in the future.