What is the quality of air in New Delhi, Jakarta or Buenos Aires? By Tuesday, the Embassy of the United States could tell you in these cities.
However, Trump’s administration effectively excluded the global air quality monitoring program, ending over the decades of public data and reporting from 80 embassies and consulates around the world.
The information was supported by the research, helped thousands of external services officers working abroad to decide if it was safe to let their children play outside, and they directly led to an improvement of air quality in countries like China.
The State Department has said that the program has been suspended “for budgetary limitations”.
Health officials and environmental experts said they would end the air quality monitoring of Americans abroad, especially those who work for the US government.
“The embassies are sometimes located in very difficult circumstances of air quality,” said Gina McCarthy, who led the Environmental Protection Agency in Obama’s administration.
She, along with John Kerry, who at the time was the Secretary of State, spread throughout the world what was limited, but a transformation effort for air monitoring in China.
“You can’t send people to risk areas without information,” Mrs. McCarthy said. “We usually think about risky areas as war zones or something similar. But it is equally important to see if their health is worse because they are in place with such poor air quality. “
In 2008, the United States officials in Beijing installed air quality monitors on the roof of the US Embassy and eventually began to publish data at a clock on the levels of one of the most dangerous types of air pollutants, small particles known as PM 2.5. Particles can enter the lungs and bloodstream and are associated with respiratory problems, heart attacks and other serious health effects.
The information was revealed by what the locals already knew: if pollution was far worse than the Chinese government would have acknowledged.
“All the hell fell apart,” Mrs. McCarthy recalled. The Chinese government tried unsuccessfully to press the US embassy to stop publishing data, calling reading illegal and attacking the quality of science, she and others said.
Ultimately, Chinese officials relented. They set their own monitoring system, increased the budget for pollution control, and eventually started cooperating with the United States on air quality projects.
In 2015, Mrs. McCarthy and Mr. Kerry announced that they would expand air monitoring in US diplomatic missions, claiming that air pollution, such as climate change, required global data and solutions.
Study 2022 Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences They found that US embassies began to monitor local air pollution, the host country took action. The study revealed that since 2008, a significant decrease in the level of tiny particle concentrations in cities with the US monitor has resulted in a reduction of the risk of premature death by more than 300 million people.
Dan Westervelt, Professor of Research at the Observatory of Lamont-Doherty Earth University of Columbia, said many countries do not have the monitoring of public air and that the embassies from the researchers provided reliable information.
Dr. Westervelt said he worked on a project through a state department using air quality data from the Embassy in five West African countries, but received a stop order when President Trump took office in January.
“In my opinion, it threatens the health of foreign services officers,” he said. “But they also interfere with potential research and politics.”
The data appeared on AirThe website operated by both EPA and State Department, and also on Zephair, a mobile application led by a state department. The website was out of the net on Tuesday and the application was not shown on the application.
State Department said that air monitors at the embassies will continue to work indefinitely, but will not send live information to the application or other platforms “if/until the funding of the basic network is resolved.”
The embassies and other posts could retrieve historical data by the end of the month, according to the internal e -Star, examined by the New York Times.
