A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The State Department says it will stop publishing global air pollution data. With more, here's NPR's Emily Feng.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Clean air advocate Abid Omar first moved to Beijing in 2012.
ABID OMAR: And I'd point out the sun, or the space where the sun should be. And, you know, I'm pointing to this yellow, toxic sky.
FENG: Covered by a choking smog. Erica Thomas was a State Department official at the time stationed in the Chinese capital until 2014. She helped run a network of high-quality sensors measuring air pollutants and posted the information on social media daily. At first, China was furious.
ERICA THOMAS: This environmental awakening had happened. And everybody there, they may have been frustrated with us from a political standpoint, but they had to breathe the air. Their kids had to breathe the air. They really cared.
FENG: China ended up amending its own environmental air standards in response to public anger. And there were other knock-on effects. Omar went back to his home country, Pakistan. And inspired by the Beijing embassy's monitoring, he began the Pakistan Air Quality Initiative. But he says the State Department data remained the gold standard.
OMAR: The weight of the EPA is behind them in terms of the quality control of the data.
FENG: In the last decade, the U.S. expanded its air monitoring program from Beijing to more than 35 countries. And Andrea La Nauze, an associate professor of economics at Deakin University in Australia, found an average 10% drop in air pollutants in cities with State Department air monitors. They increased public awareness and thus pressure on local governments. With her coresearcher, Akshaya Jha at Carnegie Mellon, she found this could save the State Department nearly $1,500 per diplomat per year.
ANDREA LA NAUZE: U.S. diplomats are paid what's called a hardship differential for living in conditions that are worse than those in the United States. Because those conditions improved, we actually show that the hardship pay declined in these cities.
FENG: Meaning she found the program paid for itself.
Emily Feng, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
