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EHHI Testimony on SB 119, An Act Concerning Clean Cars

Monday, February 23, 2004

CO-CHAIRMAN SENATOR DON WILLIAMS, REPRESENTATIVE PAT WIDLITZ, AND MEMBERS OF THE ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE:

Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning in support of SB. 119. My name is David Brown Sc.D., and I am a public health scientist with Environment and Human Health Inc. I live in Westport, CT and I have worked at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Connecticut State Department of Health, NESCAUM, which is a multi-state air collaborative, and I teach a course in Ethics in the Environment at Fairfield University. I am a co-author of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment’s (CFE) reports on Clean Cars in Connecticut.

Environment and Human Health, Inc. (EHHI), is a nonprofit organization made up of doctors, public health professionals and policy experts dedicated to the purpose of protecting public health from environmental harms through research, education and the promotion of sound public policy.

Passage of Clean Car standards is essential. The average added cancer risk to a Connecticut resident from hazardous air pollution is the ninth highest in the country. In the past decade, the prevalence rate of childhood asthma in Connecticut has continued to increase. We now have, on average, 1 out of 10 school children with asthma or 64,000 children in Connecticut with the disease.

Vehicle emissions are a major contributor to the increase of lung disease and heart attack health risks facing Connecticut. The CFE “clean car” studies show that an inordinate amount of our State's hazardous air pollution comes from mobile sources. These exposures would greatly be reduced by the passage of this legislation.

The health science alone demands that the State legislature approve this bill. Our work shows that motor vehicle emissions, presently found in Connecticut, are at hazardous levels, and these high levels are found throughout the state.

Motor vehicles are the major source of human exposures to many toxic compounds. Current compounds from auto vehicle emissions found in the air in Connecticut are capable of producing cancer, asthma and heart attacks. Because motor vehicle emissions are responsible for much of Connecticut's current exposures, without this bill the current 40% proportion of pollution attributed to motor vehicle emissions will increase over the next 20 years, as the number of vehicles increase. With this bill these levels will actually decrease.

I would like to use two examples that will put the severity of this health problem in context. In the last four years health scientists have found that theoretical concerns based on risk assessments have been confirmed with actual identification of heart attacks and asthmatic attacks occurring within hours of high ambient concentrations of motor vehicle pollutants. For example, with respect to heart attacks, health researchers in Boston found that brief hourly exposures were sufficient to trigger heart attacks that caused hospitalization. With respect to lung disease, in the Connecticut River Valley, health scientists at Yale found that the same is true for asthma. Increased hospitalizations and attacks in asthmatic children were directly linked to increased levels of the same pollutants emitted by motor vehicles.

Children and the elderly are most at risk. The CFE clean cars reports show that people living near heavily trafficked highways are more likely to experience the highest levels of exposures.

There are a large number of studies such as these throughout the world in which heart attacks and asthmatic attacks have been directly traced to episodic increases in pollutant exposures near victims' homes. The toxic compounds of higher concern are 1,3 butadiene, only found from motor vehicles, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and benzene, all coming primarily from motor vehicles. Three of these are carcinogens but also important is the fact that they are also known to produce the acute effects of increased asthma and increased heart attacks. The clean car studies show that, substantive decreases in the specific compounds of most concern, will occur with the passage of this legislation.

I consider this bill to be one of the most important that Connecticut will address this year. It affects three of the most important health issues the state must face: environmental lung disease; environmental cardiovascular disease; and environmental cancer. Only the legislature can correct the motor vehicle problem. The DEP hasn't the resources or the authority to change motor vehicle configurations in the magnitude needed.

Thank you. I'll be happy to answer questions.

David Brown, Sc.D.

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