Tyler Environmental Prize Winners
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Tyler Environmental Prize Winners: Pollution's Effects
Far-Reaching
Mike O'Sullivan | Los Angeles
May 09, 2012
Two California scientists have been honored for their research into
air pollution, outdoor and indoor. This year’s winners of the
$200,000 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, John
Seinfeld and Kirk Smith, have shown the far-reaching nature of the
problem.
***
Nearly half of the world’s people use biomass fuels such as wood
or dried dung to cook their food, and many cook indoors.
Professor Kirk Smith of the University of California, Berkeley
studies environmental impacts on human health, and wondered
about the impact of smoke on the families. In the early 1980s he
was studying energy use in rural Asia.
“And during that time, I noted the very smoky conditions in
village households," said Smith. "I came back and I thought, well
somebody must have looked at the health effects of this, and I
could find nothing in the literature. My students and I looked. So
we did some back-of-the-envelop calculations to figure roughly
what kind of air pollution levels might exist, and we could not
believe the results of our simple models.”
Later measurements confirmed the estimates: household cooking
produces as much smoke as 1,000 cigarettes burning per hour. His
studies show that this leads to nearly two-million premature
deaths a year, especially among women and children, and the
emissions contribute to climate change.
Air pollution in one part of the world affects the air in another,
says the other recipient of this year's Tyler Prize, John Seinfeld of
the California Institute of Technology.
“Emissions from Asia will make it across the Pacific, will be in the
air over the United States, and even in some cases be tracked out
over the Atlantic heading to Europe," said Seinfeld. "And so you can think of the northern hemisphere as a big backyard.”
He says the southern hemisphere has the same mixing, and there
is long-term interaction between the hemispheres.
Seinfeld says natural and man-made substances interact.
“Every particle in the air anywhere on earth is a little kitchen sink
of compounds that come from everywhere," he said. "So I got
interested in understanding what this was, and it was very clear
the atmosphere is just a big reactor.”
He says the interactions are complicated. Human-produced
greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are warming the
atmosphere. Other man-made and natural substances can
accelerate the process, or sometimes slow it. " The compounds
they produce can be harmful to human health.
The scientists say environmental research requires careful
measurement. In Guatemala, India, China, and other countries,
Kirk Smith has overseen studies to measure household emissions
and assess the long-term effects on those exposed to smoke from cooking.
Research teams are also assessing the effectiveness of
low-pollution stoves, and Smith foresees widespread use of that
technology when the results are in. He notes that many devices
being distributed by non-profit organizations have not been fully
tested.
“The motto of my research group is, you do not get what you
expect, you get what you inspect," he said. "So it looks good, but
we have to inspect before we can know what to expect.”
He sees the financial burden being shared, as it is now in parts of
China, where one third of the cost of a stove is paid by the family
that uses it, one third by provincial authorities and one third with
credits from the international carbon market.
He says stoves that are proven to be effective at reducing
emissions will benefit families and communities and help to clear
the air around the world.
