Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) Rule October
27, 2022 Testimony Before the California Air Resources Board
Richard J Jackson MD MPH
I am Dr Richard Jackson, a Pediatrician and
Professor emeritus at the UCLA Fielding School of Public
Health. I have
interacted with CARB many times and I thank the Board for its
leadership over the years. My past service includes as the California State
Public Health Officer, and my federal service includes nine years
as Director of the Centers for Disease Control’s National
Center for Environmental Health. I join you today to urge the Board
to adopt the strongest possible Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF)
rule.
You may have heard about something that many
young families in America are now confronting: we are in the midst
of a large RSV, Respiratory Syncytial Virus, outbreak. This infection, which is a
nuisance for healthy adults, can make very young children deathly
ill. Latest CDC data
indicates that 58,000 children have been hospitalized with it, and
with over 200 deaths of children under age 5.[i] Why do children suffer so
much more? It goes
back to what we learned in middle school, when you decrease he
radius of a circle, you decrease its area as a square function:
that is, if the radius declines from 3 to 1, you decrease the area
by nine times. These
numbers are fundamental to a child’s breathing. The cross-sectional area
of a pipe, including the pipes in our lungs (the bronchi and
bronchioles), determines air flow. Small constrictions of children’s already
narrow pipes cause large decreases in air flow. One effect we see
is “air hunger” --terrifying for the child and her
parents.
But not just viruses slow air flow, so do
irritants like nitrogen oxides and particles. Relative to their body
weight children move 2-3 times more air than do adults, and
children need to play and exercise outside—then they move ten
times or more air. Up
until about age six, the young child’s lungs are growing
their lifetime supply of new alveoli, the little air sacs essential
to gas-exchange. These early years of life are critical for lung
growth, and remain important when older. Early life lung damage reduces lifelong ability
to cope with intensive exercise or respiratory infections. n my PBS television series,
I interviewed families and children near the ports of Oakland and
Long Beach, and in Boyle Heights near the Freeway tangle in
LA. The Board members
know better than anyone that some of California’s worst air
quality is in areas with large numbers of heavy-duty vehicles
including Class 8 diesel tractor trucks which emit 62 percent of
nitrogen oxides and 57 percent of fine particulates. Children need the Board to
move the Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) rule four years earlier: four
years is a preschooler’s lifetime. Delaying means cheating children of the lung
function they need now, and for the rest of their
lives.
Richard J Jackson MD MPH
2617 Le Conte Ave, Berkeley, CA 94709 Dickjackson@ucla.edu
510 295 5674
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