Environmental regulation has been in the news lately, and it makes me think back to two of my own experiences-one personal, the other professional. 20 years ago, I was a fifth-grade teacher in Monterrey, Mexico. I had planned to stay for several years, but at the end of the first year, I had to leave: the government's failure to regulate air pollution had caused me to have an entire year of non-stop respiratory infections and asthma attacks. Before I moved there, I had only heard of asthma attacks, and since I left Monterrey, I have never had another.
Years later, I worked with a research team to capture the economic impacts of air and water pollution. In our 2011 article, "Why Metrics Matter," we looked at damage caused by nitrogen-containing pollutants in the Chesapeake Basin. Pollution damage takes many forms: medical costs, missed work, and productivity losses from pollution-related illnesses; premature death; damage to materials (cement bridges, car tires, buildings, etc.); damage to fisheries, agricultural crops, forestry, and tourism, along with countless other forms of economic damage. The results of our analysis were staggering. While the costs of pollution damage are more difficult to measure than the costs that utilities pay to comply with regulation, they are just as real, and far larger. This has been found in study after study and in location after location.
Recently, bills have been introduced in the U.S. Congress, attacking the Environmental Protection Agency (House of Representatives Bill 861), and in the Minnesota legislature, attacking the Pollution Control Agency (House File 551). If we destroy these agencies, then we no longer have any real way to protect our health and our livelihoods, and that has a very high price, both in quality of life and in dollars.
Melissa Birch
Pequot Lakes
