© 2023
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
WWES 88.9 FM, Mt. Kisco, is currently off-air due to maintenance.

Air pollution kills nearly 3,000 people a year in Massachusetts, study finds

The power outage snarled traffic.
Cars and other vehicles are responsible for the majority of air pollution in Massachusetts.

IQ loss in children is another consequence of breathing fine particles in the air

Air pollution is responsible for almost 5 percent of deaths in Massachusetts each year, according to a new study.

Researchers at Boston College analyzed data and estimated that there were 2,780 deaths a year from causes such as lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke that manifest as a result of breathing invisible airborne particles.

Boston College Professor of Biology Dr. Philip Landrigan is the lead author of the study. He spoke with WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill.

The study can be found here: https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/centers/schiller-institute/sites/masscleanair.html

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.