Welcome to Debunker, a weekly breakdown of misleading (and sometimes flat-out wrong!) news from the worlds of science, health, and more—for Beast Inside members only.
On Monday morning, President Trump took to Twitter to congratulate himself on America’s lack of air pollution.
“America: the Cleanest Air in the World - BY FAR!” Trump proclaimed, alongside a map with the same title.
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That map, originally released by the World Health Organization (minus the title), purportedly showed that when it comes to PM 2.5—a group of minuscule pollutants that have been linked to premature death, heart attacks, and respiratory disease—the U.S. fares far better than most countries, especially those in North Africa and the Middle East.
In a caption Trump pasted on the original map, the president offered another self-congratulatory statistic: “91% of the world’s population (none in the U.S.) are exposed to air pollution concentrations above WHO suggested level.”
The problem? Both the tweet—which was later retweeted by acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler—and the caption are inaccurate and misleading. Here’s why:
That Data Is From 2016, Before Trump Took Office
No matter the credibility of the data, one thing is clear: Trump can’t take credit for any of it. That’s because the map he cited is based on data from 2016—the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency.
While a revised version of the WHO document that includes the map was published in April 2018—which explains Trump’s citation—the document clearly states that the data used in the map is from 2016.
But more importantly, according to Joshua Apte, an assistant professor of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Texas, that success can’t be credited to any one president alone (especially a president who came into power after the data was gathered).
Instead, he explained, the relative purity of the United States’ air is the result of two decades of smart climate policy—most notably, the effort to move away from coal and towards other fuel sources, like natural gas and renewable energy.
“The president is right to be proud of our progress on clean air,” Apte said. But “if we don’t continue to pay attention to the problem, it will come back.”
And despite his tweets and statements, it doesn’t appear that Trump is fully comprehending that progress; since taking office, he’s actively pursued policies that would reverse it. That includes his plan to scrap Obama-era standards for coal plants and fuel efficiency.
As a result, air pollution levels have gotten worse. As the Wisconsin State Journal reported, the days with an unhealthy level of soot and smog jumped from 97 to 179 between 2016 and 2017.
“There is some cognitive dissonance in taking credit for clean air that is the direct result of policies that the president doesn’t seem to support,” Apte noted dryly.
The U.S. Isn’t First—It’s Tenth
While the United States does have some of the cleanest air in the world when it comes to PM 2.5, it’s not first place, as President Trump claims—it’s tenth. According to the WHO data, the U.S. had a higher median annual concentration of PM 2.5 in 2016 than nine other countries, including New Zealand, Finland, Iceland, and Canada.
And ‘lowest amount of PM 2.5’ doesn’t necessarily mean cleanest, Apte noted. There are other major pollutants—like ozone and nitrogen dioxide—not included in PM 2.5 measurements that also pose a risk to human health and have raised concern amongst environmental scientists.
45 Cities in the U.S. Have Pollution Exceeding the WHO Guidelines
In a 22-tweet thread, Senior Attorney for the National Resource Defense Council John Walke resoundingly contradicted Trump’s claim that “[no one] in the U.S.” is exposed to pollution above the WHO standard of 10 micrograms per cubic meter.
As WHO data cited by Walke shows, 45 U.S. cities housing more than 10 million Americans have air pollution levels exceeding the WHO’s guidelines. The pollution in Bakersfield, California, is almost double the limit, clocking in at 18 micrograms per cubic meter (in 2016, the United States’ average was 7 micrograms per cubic meter).
Those cities, he said, didn’t show up on the map because of the scale of the shading. But he tweeted another map, from a 2018 report by the Health Effects Institute’s State of Global Air, that shows it much more clearly.
There are also significant differences between cities, Apte added.
“As you might expect,” he said, “if you live near a major freeway, you’re going to experience a much higher level of air pollution than you would if you lived in a cleaner suburb.”
And those differences matter. “The most exposed Americans may have a substantially higher risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke compared to the least exposed Americans,” Apte said.
We Need to Worry About Our Air
Above all, Trump’s tweets and statements imply that since our air is among the cleanest in the world, Americans don’t need to worry much about pollutants. The evidence says otherwise.
“Air pollution is still a major killer today, even though most places in the U.S. do meet our EPA standards and do meet the WHO guidelines,” Apte explained, noting that pollution levels “even well below the WHO guidelines” are dangerous to human health. His letter in the journal Environmental Science and Technology estimated that the average American’s life span is reduced by four months due to outdoor air pollution.
Just last week, Politico notes, Trump’s own EPA released a 1,900-page report offering evidence that PM 2.5 at concentrations as low as 5 micrograms per cubic meter—less than the median concentration for any country in the WHO’s 2016 data—are linked to adverse health effects.
And a second graphic from Walke shows that the U.S. experiences anywhere from 80,000 to 130,000 deaths annually (although it’s important to note that the U.S. looks worse than other nations largely because it just has more people).
But despite all the misinformation packed into one Trump tweet, Apte did find solace in one thing—if Trump’s tweeting about air pollution, at least it means he’s paying attention.
“It’s fantastic that the president so shares our opinion that air pollution is [something that] we’ve got to prioritize,” he said with a laugh.
