The secondhand smoke you’re breathing may have come from another state
Scientists estimate that each year in the U.S., outdoor air pollution shortens the lives of about 100,000 people by one to two decades.
As it turns out, much of this pollution originates not in a person’s own neighborhood, but up to hundreds or even thousands of miles away in neighboring states. And, absent strong federal regulations, there’s very little Americans can do about it.
In a study published on Feb. 12, we used state-of-the-art modeling to estimate the number of air pollution-related deaths that combustion emissions – those from any kind of burning, from cook stoves to car engines to coal power plants – from each state have caused in every other state over the past 14 years.
On average, 41% of these air pollution deaths in the U.S. resulted from what we call “secondhand smok...