JAY SHIMSHACK-"SCHOOL BUSES, DIESEL EMISSIONS, AND RESPIRATORY HEALTH"

This past week the Oxy economics department brought Jay Shimshack to campus to discuss his paper entitled "School Buses, Diesel Emissions, and Respiratory Health." The main focus of his paper was to look at local air pollution given off my diesel run school buses and examine the health effects when the number of buses were reduced. His approach to this question was to perform a study. Shimshack looked at counties in Washington state that implemented the Clean School Bus Program, which retrofitted busses with new technologies in order to reduce the amount of diesel fumes that were emitted. He then matched bus details with health data in the same area to determine what the actual effects on health were. He compared data between counties that were similar other than the fact that some initiated the clean bus program while some didn't. Ultimately, the data revealed that retrofitting the buses and limiting the emissions did indeed reduce the number of health problems. During the presentation, I asked him if his results had influenced other counties to implement these programs. I though that with such strong data, there should be no reason that these programs are not becoming more widespread. Shimshack said that this would be his goal, change has not yet been seen primarily because his paper has not yet been published (it is currently sitting in the offices of many prestigious economic journals). Hopefully though, sooner rather than later we can use these results to implement policy to require the retrofitting of buses all over the country.

--Sara McKnight