The effects of air pollution from construction equipment in California are "staggering," according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The environmental group concluded that at least 1,100 premature deaths and half a million work and school absences in 2005 were caused by people breathing emissions from older tractors, bulldozers and other diesel equipment -- at an estimated public health cost of $9.1 billion.
The report was one of two studies released Tuesday on the severe health hazards of exposure to the soot in diesel emissions.
"This is the first time the health and economic impacts of construction-related air pollution in California have ever been analyzed," said Don Anair, author of the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report urged state regulators to quickly require owners to retrofit or replace older equipment.
"Construction equipment being used to build our hospitals shouldn't fill them up.... This is a bill being footed by everyone in California, and particulate pollution is a silent killer," Anair said, citing asthma attacks, cancer and heart disease.
The Los Angeles air basin fared the worst among 15 statewide, with 731 estimated premature deaths, both in the city and in suburban areas such as Santa Clarita, Temecula and Murietta, where there has been large-scale construction to accommodate fast-growing populations.
Heavily populated and fast-growing parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego and the San Joaquin and northern Sacramento valleys also experienced high health costs from construction equipment, the union of scientists' report found.
The second study, by Brigham Young University professor Arden Pope and a team of doctors, found a sharply elevated risk of heart attacks for people with clogged arteries after just a day or two of exposure to diesel soot pollution.
The study was published in Cardiology, the nation's leading peer-reviewed journal of heart science. One coauthor said the results should prompt heart doctors to advise those with coronary disease to stay indoors as much as possible on particularly sooty days, or even to change jobs or move.
The fine particulate matter that is spewed from diesel engines and tailpipes lodges "like tiny razor blades" deep in human lungs, said Kevin Hamilton, a Fresno-based respiratory therapist who reviewed the findings.
Clouds of soot emitted by 750-horsepower excavators can travel downwind for miles, then drift into heavily populated areas, Anair said.
