Tell Your Leaders Healthy Air Is Health Care

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Tell Your Leaders Healthy Air Is Health Care
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Join us in calling on local, state, and national leaders to act now to protect our kids by addressing the health impacts of air pollution and climate change!

Access to healthy air is health care and essential to good health. When you can’t breathe, nothing else matters. Kid’s developing lungs are especially vulnerable to dirty air because they breathe more than grownups. This leads to kids suffering from asthma, infections, and stunted lung growth. Black and brown children suffer even more because our country built highways, factories, and refineries right in their communities. Air pollution cost the U.S. $600 billion in 2018 (CREA) and it is estimated that unchecked climate change will cost well over $800 billion per year (Medical Consortium/NRDC).

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF AIR POLLUTION.

This same dirty air making our children sick, is causing the climate to change, leading to more flooding, stronger storms, fires, displaced families, infectious diseases, and heat illness.

Our children's health and future are at stake – we need leaders at every level of office to protect health and act on climate change by cleaning up the air NOW!

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Tell Your Leaders Healthy Air Is Health Care!

Your Senators, Your Congressperson, Your State Legislators, Your Mayor

Subject: Healthy Air Is Health Care

Message:

Dear Elected Official, Air pollution causes more than 15% of U.S. deaths and harms health, and climate change is devastating the country with hurricanes, floods, heatwaves, and wildfires. Air pollution cost the U.S. $600 billion in 2018 and NRDC estimates that unchecked climate change will cost well over $800 billion per year. It also costs us billions in crop losses each year. Fields that are within 125 miles of a coal plant that closes produce 2 billion more bushels of corn. Access to healthy air is health care and essential to good health. When you can’t breathe, nothing else matters. Both air pollution and climate change are health emergencies, caused by the same thing: burning fossil and biomass fuels. We need as urgent a response for climate as our response to COVID. According to the American Lung Association, over 40% of Americans breathe dirty air, which causes heart and lung disease, strokes, dementia, and death. Kids are more vulnerable to air pollution because of their growing organs and faster respiratory rate. Kids also spend more time outside and need others to keep them safe. Black or Brown children are more likely to live in communities with high levels of air pollution. Air pollution costs the economy by reducing crop yields and affecting worker productivity, especially for outdoor workers in agriculture and construction. When a coal power plant closes, corn fields within 125 miles produce 1.8 billion more bushels of corn. The stock market actually goes down on days when New York has high air pollution levels! Just a 1mcg/m3 increase in PM2.5 causes almost a 1% decrease in GDP. Please ACT NOW to protect our children's health and the economy, by investing in our infrastructure which is also an investment in health. We can put people back to work while also reducing the serious health impacts and suffering of air pollution and climate disasters. Please support actions which: - Reduce air pollution, which can be as damaging as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. - Electrify school fleets. Children riding on diesel buses are exposed to 4 times more air pollutants than the general population. Diesel exhaust can cause respiratory illness and trigger asthma attacks. Asthma is a leading cause of school absenteeism. Diesel buses also affect children’s ability to learn in school. Electric school buses have lower operating costs — 19 cents per mile compared to diesel buses at 82 cents per mile. - Site and build sustainable schools. Ensuring schools are built efficiently and to minimize exposure to pollutants is necessary for children’s health and academic performance. - A serious increase in clean renewable energy and energy efficiency. Our response to Covid shows we can make major changes quickly. We must take what we have learned from Covid and use that energy and knowledge to make the necessary investments to deal with the health emergency of climate change and air pollution. Thank you so much for your time. Sincerely,

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