The State Department is shutting down its air quality monitoring program after over a decade of collecting public data worldwide and reporting it from 80 embassies and consulates around the world.
The information was used for research, and to let foreign service officers decide if it was safe to allow their children to be outside. It has also prompted improvements in air quality in countries such as China.
The State Department told The New York Times that the program was being suspended because of “budget constraints.”
The department added that the air monitors at embassies would continue to operate for an undetermined period of time, but that live data collected would no longer be sent to an app previously operated and monitored by the department as well as other platforms “until funding for the underlying network is resolved.”
Health officials and environmental experts told The Times that the decision would harm Americans abroad, particularly those working for the U.S. government.
“Embassies are situated sometimes in very difficult air quality circumstances,” Gina McCarthy, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration, told the newspaper.
Alongside then-Secretary of State John Kerry, McCarthy expanded the program from China to encompass the wider world.
“You can’t send people in risky areas without information,” McCarthy told the newspaper.
“We generally think of risky areas as war zones or something like that. But it’s equally important to look at whether their health is deteriorating because they are in a place with such poor air quality,” she noted.
American officials in Beijing put in place air quality monitors on the roof of the U.S. embassy in 2008 and began sharing hourly updates about the levels of PM 2.5, a particulate matter that’s one of the most dangerous kinds of air pollutants. The particles can infiltrate the lungs and bloodstream and have been linked to respiratory issues, heart attacks, and other problems.
The information shared by the embassy showed that the air pollution was worse than what the Chinese government was willing to reveal.
“All hell broke loose,” McCarthy told The Times.
The Chinese government attempted to press the embassy to stop sharing the data, but were unsuccessful. Chinese officials argued that the readings were illegal, and they attacked the quality of the science, The Times reported.
In the end, the Chinese government set up its own monitoring system, boosted the budget for pollution control, and subsequently started working with the U.S. to improve air quality.
McCarthy and Kerry announced in 2015 that they were expanding the air monitoring project across other embassies and consulates around the world. They argued that air pollution, much like climate change, needed global data and worldwide solutions.
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed in a 2022 study that when U.S. diplomatic missions began sharing data on local air pollution, the host government enacted new measures. Since 2008, there had been reductions in fine particulate concentration levels in areas with an American monitoring program, leading to a lesser risk of premature death for more than 300 million people.
