Tag: air quality

Commentary: Bias Lurks in Study Linking Bronchitis in Children with Poor Air Quality

Michigan Star Staff
People wearing masks

A new study by a team of University of Southern California researchers claims that children exposed to poor air quality are at greater risk of (self-reported) bronchitis symptoms than are adults. But this health claim is tenuous.

Published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the study uses data sets from a 30-year-old Southern California Children’s Health Study cohort—with a long length of time between exposure and presumed response of self-reported bronchitis.

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EPA Inspector General Report Finds Contractor Manipulated Air Filter Data

Admin
White smoke emitting from a couple of buildings

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General found that a laboratory contractor with the Office of Research and Development inappropriately manipulated air filter data and failed to follow the appropriate guidance for data of 95 air filter samples, rendering them unusable.

The EPA said the data “drives regulatory decisions, and therefore, it is crucial to accurately assess the quality of data being collected.”

According to the Feb. 16 OIG report, in November 2018, the contractor “misidentified” a subset of filters that they had weighed “during either the loading process in the automated weighing system or by the manner of recording the weight of the filters after they were weighed.”

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Commentary: The Countries with the Cleanest Environments in the World Are Also the Most Economically Free, Research Shows

Michigan Star Staff

One of the most frequently raised arguments against capitalism is that it is the primary driver of environmental pollution and climate change. But if we compare Yale University’s ranking of countries with the highest environmental performance with the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, a very different correlation emerges.

For more than 20 years, Yale University has been publishing the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and ranking countries according to their environmental health and ecosystem vitality. The EPI uses 32 performance indicators across eleven issue categories:

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