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One Big Benefit of the Clean Air Act: Longer Lives

Ben Jervey
By Ben JerveyApr 30, 2011
Ben Jervey
Ben is a writer and editor covering climate change, energy, and environment, and is currently the Climate and Energy Media Fellow at Vermont Law School. He was the original Environment Editor at GOOD Magazine and his work has appeared regularly in National Geographic News, Grist, DeSmogBlog, and OnEarth. He recently worked with the non-profit Focus the Nation to publish an Energy 101 primer. When living in New York City, he wrote a book, The Big Green Apple, on how to live a lower impact life in the city. A bicycle enthusiast, Ben has ridden across the United States and through much of Europe.
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Over the past three decades, American life expectancy has increased by more than two and a half years. The majority of that improvement is attributable to the diminishing popularity of smoking and to improved medicine and socioeconomic conditions. But pollution reduction—mostly due to the Clean Air Act—makes a significant contribution.

As Scientific Americanreports:

A 2009 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that efforts to reduce fine particle pollution from automobiles, diesel engines, steel mills and coal-fired power plants have added between four and eight months to the average American’s life expectancy in recent years.

Since the seminal environmental law was passed in 1970, levels of all major air pollutants are down. Are we're living longer for it.

healthenvironmentlife expectancyclean air actpollution and waste

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