The latest red flag for these Georgia doctors? Poor air quality

Caption

Dr. Preeti Jaggi adjusts a pin made by her child that reads "Healthy Climate, Healthy Kids" at the CleanMed conference in Atlanta on May 6.

Credit: Sofi Gratas/GPB News

Some Georgia health care providers are urging the state and federal government to get serious about pollution. 

That’s because toxins in the environment can penetrate tissues and cells in the human body, causing chronic diseases. Higher rates of asthma, heart attacks and reproductive issues have all been linked to pollution, according to leading health agencies including the World Health Organization and National Institute of Environmental Health Science. 

Environmental pollution can also be deadly. One study published in scientific journal The Lancet estimates that a decade ago, pollution in the air and from chemicals caused 9 million premature deaths globally. 

The providers raising red flags are members of Georgia Clinicians for Climate Action, Mothers and Others for Clean Air and other international advocacy groups and consortiums. 

“Georgia's air quality crisis is not just a local problem, it's a global environmental health emergency,” said Preeti Jaggi, an Atlanta-area doctor. “Health professionals are here to lead the response."

At a recent conference in Atlanta which focused on moving toward cleaner and greener practices in the health care sector, the coalition of providers warned that failing air quality grades are leading to sick patients. 

That includes more kids and adults presenting with asthma, they said, whose symptoms are more likely to flare up on “orange” and “red” days — labels from the Air Quality Index that indicate poor air quality. Those flare-ups can cause serious complications, and days in that range are becoming more common.

Internal medicine physician Earl Stewart shared stories of patients he’s seen, highlighting conditions he attributes to environmental factors, including respiratory diseases from working at a car shop or living near a power plant. 

“All of these people are minorities … and they have a variety of different underlying conditions that rendered them susceptible to the ravages of poor air quality and environmental injustice,” Stewart said. 

Disparities in the impact of pollution are well documented, and are usually found across socioeconomic lines. For example, poorer communities are typically closer to industrial activity, sometimes a result of historic segregation.

The physicians warned that funding and staff cuts to federal agencies, including to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency, will make it harder to find solutions to chronic diseases or respond to cases of environmental disaster.

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Pediatrician Michael Greenwald said the coalition’s latest fight is public opposition to a plan from Georgia Power to keep its two coal-fired power plants in North and Middle Georgia online for years longer than expected. 

In its Integrated Resource Plan, or IRP, which lays out the next decade or so of operations, Georgia Power cites rising energy needs as the reason why Plant Scherer in Juliette and Plant Bowen near Cartersville should stay open.

The company is also balancing the extension of those operations against its investments in “cleaner” natural gas and nuclear power. 

“But if our priority is our health, then we need to transform ourselves into an economy that actually sustains us with our health in mind as well,” Greenwald said. 

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In a lawsuit against Georgia Power, several residents of Juliette in Monroe County had alleged that their exposure to coal ash in the water system had caused debilitating, and sometimes fatal, health effects. The parties reached a settlement late last year.

Georgia’s Public Service Commission is holding a public comment hearing in Atlanta later this month on the IRP. Greenwald said the coalition of physicians for climate action have been encouraging public comment online ahead of the meeting.