October 11, 2023

Is bad air quality slowly harming us? (with Richard Bruns)

1 hour 24 minutes

Read the full transcript here.

How bad is the air quality in the US and around the world? What's the evidence that certain kinds of particles in the air lead to negative health outcomes? Are there differences in air quality among urban, suburban, and rural areas? And if so, then to what extent are negative health outcomes attributable to air quality rather than to (e.g.) poverty, education, or other confounding factors? What are "PM 2.5" particles? Can some particles be too small to matter? Are all particles of a certain size harmful, or only specific types of particles? Do damaging particles accumulate in the body over time? What can the average person do to reduce their exposure to unhealthy air? Opening windows in our homes can let in fresh air, but it can also let in harmful particles; so is opening windows a good idea or not? How relatively bad are trans fats and saturated fats? Does the FDA regulate drugs too much or not enough? Why do side effect labels usually list all possible side effects without any indication of how common those side effects are? What should a bureacracy be and not be? How can bureacracies train employees to follow rules and produce consistent outcomes without stifling individual initiative and creativity?

Richard Bruns is an economist who specializes in cost-benefit analysis of novel public health policy. He is currently a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which is an Open-Philanthropy-funded think tank devoted to protecting the world from catastrophic biological risks. For the past few years, much of his work has been focused on how indoor air quality improvements can protect us from disease. Before that, he was an economist in the food part of the Food and Drug Administration. Feel free to email him at [email protected] about any topic in this episode, or learn more about him at his website.

Staff