An early study from Harvard University linking dirty air to the worst coronavirus outcomes has quickly become a political football in Washington. Presidential candidates, agency regulators, oil lobbyists and members of Congress from both parties are using the preliminary research to advance their own political priorities — well before it has a chance to be peer-reviewed.
The stakes are high because the study’s tentative findings could prove enormously consequential for both the pandemic’s impact and the global debate over curbing air pollution. The researchers found that pollution emanating from everything from industrial smokestacks to household chimneys is making the worst pandemic in a century even more deadly. A gas flare from the Shell Chemical LP petroleum refinery in Louisiana. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Democrats and the Harvard researchers have argued that the findings – which showed coronavirus patients living in counties with higher levels of air pollution were more likely to die from the respiratory disease – should help convince the Trump administration to cut down air pollution and stop rolling back environmental regulations.
Yet Trump officials and industry allies are emphasizing the data about covid-19 is too raw and the Harvard model is too rickety for the government to make drastic changes to its environmental policy. “This is not a model that is ready for prime time,” said Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox, a consultant and member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board, a group that advises the agency on the science underpinning regulation. Yet Paul Billings, a senior vice president at the American Lung Association, says the heat the study is getting is just “part of a larger running attempt [by polluting industries] to discredit” science.