One of the most striking aspects of air pollution is how invisible yet pervasive its effects are. Unlike more immediate environmental disasters, air pollution slowly chips away at public health, reducing life expectancy and quality of life, often without dramatic headlines. The comparison to starvation as a "frailty multiplier" is an interesting one; pollution doesn’t always kill directly but makes people more susceptible to fatal conditions.
Regarding the reduction in SO₂ emissions from shipping fuel, I’d love to see more discussion on how international regulatory pressure (e.g., IMO 2020) managed to enforce compliance in an industry notorious for cost-cutting. Was it simply a case of the alternatives being feasible enough, or did global coordination and monitoring play a stronger role than usual?
noneeeed 21 hours ago [-]
The other striking aspect for me is how, as has often been the case, those most affected are the poorest.
Levels of asthma in London are highest among kids in the vacinity of the docks where cruise and container ships and moor. They sit there running their engines for power, churning out SO2 and other pollutants. These areas are some of the poorest in London.
The same was the case in industrial cities during the industrial revolution. The poor factory workers lived close to the factories, and their kids grew up breathing the smoke. The wealthy owners moved to the outer suburbs (often upwind) where the air was clear.
There was a bit of an uproar a few years back about how many premiership football players were using asthma medication, a higher rate than the general population. The implication being that they were using them as performance enhacning drugs. But if you take into account that they disproportionately come from poor inner-city areas (not all, but many more), the proportion with asthma looks much more in line with the background rate.
Urban air pollution is insidious. Unlike the dreadful smogs of previous generations that lead to things like the Clean Air Act and the banning of open fires in urban areas, today's is invisible, and so doesn't create the same political problems. In fact if you try to do anything about inner city pollution you can pretty much guarentee an angry pushback.
pjc50 18 hours ago [-]
> Levels of asthma in London are highest among kids in the vicinity of the docks
Someone else pointed out that there's very little shipping in central London now. It's all cars and buses causing this pollution.
> In fact if you try to do anything about inner city pollution you can pretty much guarantee an angry pushback.
There are still cruise ships that dock, and they have been a big issue for local kids. They use a lot of power while docked. I believe the solution is to hook them up to the grid, but that requires that they and the dock both have the facilities.
There is a dock in the Greenwich area, and another one further down the Thames estuary.
macNchz 16 hours ago [-]
Here in NYC shore power for cruise ships has been a multi-decade effort. The Manhattan terminal still has no shore power system because it requires an entirely new electrical substation. The Brooklyn one (in proximity to a poor neighborhood) had a system installed some years ago (with an eight figure price tag), but which ships were seemingly not bothering to use. They’ve since mandated that ships actually use it, if they have the capability, and I think they have some kind of incentives for the cruise lines to retrofit their ships for it.
tpm 13 hours ago [-]
> Someone else pointed out that there's very little shipping in central London now. It's all cars and buses causing this pollution.
Or gas boilers, in the case of NOx pollution:
> Gas boilers now produce ~72% of NOx emissions in central London.
> There was a bit of an uproar a few years back about how many premiership football players were using asthma medication, a higher rate than the general population. The implication being that they were using them as performance enhacning drugs. But if you take into account that they disproportionately come from poor inner-city areas (not all, but many more), the proportion with asthma looks much more in line with the background rate.
That part can also be explained because asthma drug is used as masking agent when taking steroids and other PEDS, which is quite common at this level.
wswope 7 hours ago [-]
Lest anyone take this seriously, these assertions are confidently-misinformed, conspiracy-minded thinking.
No asthma medications whatsoever have utility as a chemical masking agent, nor are there any plausible mechanisms for that to happen.
Beta agonists (mostly clenbuterol) have been abused independently in the past as a way to cut weight in weightlifting/cycling/etc., since they theoretically provide a marginal boost to overall metabolism - but the effects are marginal. They're de facto useless as a general PED.
Widespread doping in high-level sports is absolutely commonplace, and it's very easy to not get caught - but asthma medications have absolutely nothing to do with that.
The article you gave, they only state the principle of PEDS evasion tactics, some used a fake dick when it's time to urinate, some used compound modified, but it can't possibly tell every single way that scientists found to avoid detection.
Froom is an actual athlete that got caught, that speak louder.
Beside i heard it too in completely unrelated sport circle, running (sprint) and boxing from athlètes competing.
doikor 17 hours ago [-]
> There was a bit of an uproar a few years back about how many premiership football players were using asthma medication, a higher rate than the general population. The implication being that they were using them as performance enhacning drugs. But if you take into account that they disproportionately come from poor inner-city areas (not all, but many more), the proportion with asthma looks much more in line with the background rate.
You can get asthma just from breathing really hard too much. Especially in cold climate. Due to this it is really common with endurance athletes.
> Levels of asthma in London are highest among kids in the vacinity of the docks where cruise and container ships and moor.
Wait, what? There are no container docks in London. The nearest container port serving London is Tilbury, near the coast. Occasionally a single cruise ship moors in the Pool of London against the HMS Belfast, but that's happening only one this month, for 12 hours on April 7, according to the Tower Bridge lift schedule: https://www.towerbridge.org.uk/lift-times
noneeeed 18 hours ago [-]
Cruise ships certainly used to moore up in the Greenwich stretch of the river at the and a few years ago there was quite a lot of coverage of the issue around it. Cruise ships require a lot of power while docked, and unless they connect to the grid they used to create a lot of air quality issues.
I know there was a push to develop a big new cruise port in the Greenwich stretch which was strongly opposed by locals for that reason.
nohuck13 16 hours ago [-]
Thanks, I didn't know that was a thing.
Still it's 3 to 4 cruise ships a month according to that article and, while probably hugely dirty, I would be surprised if the asthma rates of kids in affluent Greenwich and Blackheath are among "the highest in London" because of this.
noneeeed 15 hours ago [-]
It's a big issue there but it's very localised to that specific area (which is itself in the bottom 25% of areas in the UK). They are like having a whole load of idling lorries sat near your house all at the same time, normally for several days at a time. And all of that is on top of the general level of pollution from being in the centre of London. I'm going from a documentary and a couple of article from a few years ago, which I should try and find.
Hopefully with all the work on both improving the fuel used, and providing grid hookups so they can turn their engines off, that will have made a big difference. Hopefully the effects of the congestion charges have made a big difference too. A lot of the kids featured in the documentary had a really crap life because of it all.
16 hours ago [-]
alcover 20 hours ago [-]
> those most affected are the poorest
Please pardon my pedantry but this is by definition what poor is : having less means to escape material woes. Rich people are the ones that can elect to live in healthy areas.
graemep 18 hours ago [-]
In many cities a lot of rich people live in the city centre. London is an example. Take a look at house prices and rents in Westminster or the City, or even adjoining areas. The only poor people there are the ones in social housing who are a minority.
globular-toast 20 hours ago [-]
Yes, but if the air pollution we're talking about is invisible then why would the rich elect for less exposure? Some might look at air quality data, but I suspect what is really going on is they seek out quiet. Noise pollution is the thing people really hate and avoiding that will likely lead to getting better air quality too.
ArnoVW 19 hours ago [-]
Generally the pollution comes together with other indesirable effects. Stench, noise, etc.
The rich don't need to understand that roads or ships generate deadly air pollution. They don't like living next to a highway or a container terminal, full stop. They do however love living next to a park or a lake.
In fact, so do poor people. But they can't afford it.
Lutger 19 hours ago [-]
Exactly. The rich don't actively avoid air pollution, not really.
A very significant and underestimated source of pollution is burning of wood. BBQ, fireplaces and stove, even expensive modern 'ecodesign' heating solutions that burn wood: these all cause massive and dangerous air pollution. And it is often, in my country at least, somewhat of a luxury thing. As soon as you get out of the poorest of area's, you smell the burning of wood which can cause more than 50 percent of total pollution locally, even rivaling the effects of smoking.
0xEF 19 hours ago [-]
Do you have data on how much wood burning contributes to air pollution compared to, say, burning fossil fuels? On the surface, your comment sounds like more rhetoric trying to shift the blame from the companies to the consumer, an unfortunately common problem that is getting us nowhere in correcting environmental problems. That said, if there is data displaying this discrepancy, I'll happily change my mind.
It turns out that the previous 2015 regulations around the USA and Canada were also largely followed, even offshore - this is despite there being little monitoring capability away from ports (I worked on this study).
I am not an economist, but I suspect part of the compliance is a case of 'as long as everyone is forced to do it', we are okay with it as everyone can/has to raise prices.
TimByte 22 hours ago [-]
Also, the industry had a few years of lead time to prep, which probably helped avoid a full-blown logistical panic
xlii 21 hours ago [-]
I thought that this article will address an elephant in the room but either it missed it or I missed it.
My problem with pollution is that… you need to measure it, and those who pollute don’t do it consciously. Anecdotally I often drive through a small town. You can smell pollution, a plastic smell. In winter you can see column of smoke coming out of chimney. Sometimes it’s milky white, sometimes it thick black. There are many like that. I asked shop keeper is it happening often, she confirmed and said that no one is interested in doing otherwise, installing sensors was directly opposed by town council.
The town is not on a pollution map. Nearby cities are with medium-high pollution but that particular region is supposedly clean as reported by a single sensor positioned somewhere on a hill.
It’s not like there is one town like that in the world. There are nations that pollute heavily and don’t care and don’t meter the impact. I would be curious if all the effort, regulations etc. are worth it when applied to average Joe versus huge polluters.
rsynnott 19 hours ago [-]
> I asked shop keeper is it happening often, she confirmed and said that no one is interested in doing otherwise, installing sensors was directly opposed by town council.
One way to address this sort of localism (where there's a significant risk that the owners of the factory are slipping the town councillors the odd brown envelope) is a national regulator. The Irish EPA, which was created to take this sort of thing out of the hands of the local authorities, has been very effective in reducing nuisance pollution; the local authorities used to be mostly pretty useless. Any industrial facility of this sort would be required to self-monitor, and would be subject to inspection; it would have to respond to any complaints, and if the regulator wasn't satisfied it could demand improvements, on pain of withdrawing its operating license.
Tuna-Fish 18 hours ago [-]
> (where there's a significant risk that the owners of the factory are slipping the town councillors the odd brown envelope)
This is in no way necessary, and is almost never what's going on. All that is needed is the factory owner quietly telling the town councillors that if they are forced to clean up their emissions, they will not be able to compete with foreign competitors who don't have to do the same, and will be forced to close. Then the town council takes a quick look at just how much of the wages and tax revenues of the town come, directly or indirectly, from the factory, and make sure nothing threatens it.
Now that tariffs are the issue du jour, I'd like to propose that any environmental regulations or labor laws should always be combined with an automatic tariff on any competing products produced in countries that do no have such laws. To not have that means that you are not removing the problem, you are just moving it to somewhere without such laws.
rsynnott 17 hours ago [-]
> All that is needed is the factory owner quietly telling the town councillors that if they are forced to clean up their emissions, they will not be able to compete with foreign competitors who don't have to do the same, and will be forced to close.
Thing is, they're usually _lying_ when they say that. A while back I was looking at buying a house that was near a local authority recycling centre, so went on the EPA's website to see if there were any complaints about it, and went down a rabbit hole of reading regulatory action documentation (everybody needs a hobby). A very common pattern was, basically, company says "if we fix this, we'll have to close", regulator says "don't care, it's the law, fix it", company fixes it, and unaccountably fails to close like they promised, life goes on.
There are exceptions, of course, but a lot of "following the rules will make us unviable, so let us ignore the rules pls" rhetoric from companies is just rhetoric intended to marginally reduce costs. See RoHS; manufacturers acted like it would cause the collapse of modern civilisation, EU pressed ahead anyway, and 20 years later somehow modern civilisation is still there, albeit with somewhat less lead and mercury.
roxolotl 16 hours ago [-]
It doesn’t even have to necessarily be intentional lying. It is a strongly held belief that regulations are unfair and close businesses. Even many of those in favor of them think of them more as a bitter pill than as something that’s a genuine good. So everyone involved can just think “well if we do anything about this we’ll be out of jobs” and nothing will be done.
FalseNutrition 15 hours ago [-]
That's a very brave statement. The industry has moved abroad, we have never been less healthy, and it's still getting worse.
YuriW 15 hours ago [-]
Doesn't seem there is anything done in Dublin or other Irish cities though vs Europe? https://urbanaccessregulations.eu/userhome/map
I don't believe Dublin city air is all that clean given that the cars are primary mode of transportation.
rsynnott 13 hours ago [-]
Yeah, as you say, the main source of air pollution in Dublin is cars. Those are basically outside of the EPA's remit. It has been very effective in cleaning up _industry_, which is in its remit, though a lot of this was playing catchup with the rest of Western Europe.
The cars are basically some combination of the NTA's and the local authorities' fault; a massive expansion of Dublin's bus and commuter rail capacity, and a new metro system, are all years behind schedule, largely due to planning permission nonsense (though also due to disastrously incorrect government planning about 15 years ago, which assumed that Ireland would go back to its traditional perma-recession after the financial crisis, with the result that starting these expansions was delayed by about a decade).
matsemann 20 hours ago [-]
That small town might get even more pollution from all the cars driving through it, though. It's counter-intuitive, but columns of smoke from chimneys might often just be water, or be too high to really affect locally (but globally it matters, of course) compared to cars driving and flinging dust where people breathe.
fedeb95 19 hours ago [-]
why oppose installing sensors? Let's be sure of that.
cassepipe 15 hours ago [-]
For those who are worried about indoor air pollution like me, I found out thanks to this [dynomight post](https://dynomight.net/ikea-purifier/) that having an efficient air purifier is a low bar and is actually quite accessible to poor people like me !
passwordoops 15 hours ago [-]
Even cheaper is the DIY Corsi-Rosenthal box. We make a couple every few months and it does make a huge difference! Worked wonders during the wildfires a couple of years ago
Even better is a computer fan based cr box. Quieter, lower TCO etc.
mfro 14 hours ago [-]
I ended up purchasing a Lasko Air Flex[1]. It fits standard HVAC filters. It doubles as a white noise machine for me, it is quite loud. This review[2] indicates it works well but a bit power hungry, and it definitely gathered a visible amount of dust over a 1 year period.
Standard filters is interesting but it looks that the Ikea one has many advantages: it's smaller, discreet, less power-hungry, has textile pre-filter so that you filter will work longer, can accommodate activated charcoal filter and is not loud on 1
xnx 11 hours ago [-]
Air there any air filtration systems that use water (maybe by bubbling air through water or a fine mist) to remove particulates? Like a canister vacuum cleaner, I'd love to be able to see the dirt/dust/particulates/gunk that is being removed from the air.
stephen_g 3 hours ago [-]
It's a pretty common method in industry (a wet scrubber) but I don't know of any indoor-scale, self-contained units - it sounds like a recipe for mould because a misting one would basically be a humidifier too, and they are hard to maintain because bacteria like legionella can grow in the water and then you're dispersing it inside your house!
sebastiennight 23 hours ago [-]
Interesting article. I always assumed that a large part of the "soot" air pollution in cities came from car tyres as well, since their compounds are one of the main sources for the dust that deposits in apartments.
kmoser 22 hours ago [-]
Particles from tires and brakes account for a significant chunk of pollution. I'm in the middle of reading Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles which goes into those details.
Cars become worse the more you approach colder climates. Every fall and spring there are multiple weeks during which asphalt roads are dry from sunlight and warmth, which leads to studded tyres chewing through asphalt. Not only that, the sand we spread on roads to help people stay on their feet also helps in creating massive amounts of dust. It's so difficult to time the change from summer tyres to winter tyres.
It's quite possible to survive with friction tyres with the help of good traction control (especially from an EV) but there are vast areas of the country that do not get roads plowed in a timely manner, so it's "safer" to go with studs.
Maxion 21 hours ago [-]
> It's quite possible to survive with friction tyres with the help of good traction control (especially from an EV) but there are vast areas of the country that do not get roads plowed in a timely manner, so it's "safer" to go with studs.
It's not really about roads not being plowed timely. More often than in the cities, country side roads are plowed faster and more often. This is simply because the road density is less.
In Finland, for example, there are a lot of dirt roads. These cannot be plowed bare in the winter as that would destroy the road surface, you want to build up a level of snow/ice on top of the road that you then maintain over the winter. If you drive on these types of roads daily you will need studded tyres, or you'll end up stuck at home ever year for multiple days when the weather goes above freezing and during kelirikko.
bjoli 21 hours ago [-]
(in Sweden) I would say that 90% of people driving off the road where my parents live (based on people I have talked to or helped) have friction tyres. I tell people "if you ever plan to leave the city, get studs".
Even in towns, there will be conditions where friction tyres are completely useless. Heck, sometimes you should probably not drive at all. About once a year the sides of the main road near my house are sprinkled with cars, despite most people driving 30km/h or less (on a 50 road). On a very slippery march morning last year I counted 15 cars on an 800m stretch.
TimByte 22 hours ago [-]
It's wild how many pollutants trace back to the same root cause: burning stuff. Fossil fuels, biomass, agriculture byproducts - it’s all combustion and decomposition in different forms.
carlosjobim 16 hours ago [-]
I would say it's completely expected that air pollutants come from smoke.
pjsousa79 19 hours ago [-]
In 2019, ambient air pollution claimed the lives of young children at alarming rates in several countries. Here's the top 10 list of countries with the highest number of deaths per 100,000 children under 5 due to ambient air pollution:
Nigeria – 18.95
Chad – 18.10
Sierra Leone – 12.02
Mali – 10.56
Guinea – 9.90
Niger – 9.64
Cote d'Ivoire - 9.04
Central African Republic - 8.79
Cameroon - 8.69
Burkina Faso - 8.68
These numbers highlight how air pollution isn't just an urban problem — it's a public health crisis in low-income countries where children are the most vulnerable.
Not that this isn’t terrible, but those numbers look really low. Surely malnutrition and violence must be a hundred times more likely to kill them?
Not trying to say we shouldn’t consider this, but it seems like there’s bigger fish to fry first (assuming we can’t fry them all at the same time).
whyoh 18 hours ago [-]
>Not that this isn’t terrible, but those numbers look really low. Surely malnutrition and violence must be a hundred times more likely to kill them?
They don't seem low at all to me. And a quick search suggests that malnutrition probably causes fewer deaths [1] (note that it's counted for all people here, not just under 5).
And in places like India and SEA, where malnutrition and violence are less of a problem, air pollution stands out even more.
Take Nigeria - capital is cca 6 million. That means, that every year around 1150 children die from just air pollution alone, every year.
That is properly fucked up for children under 5. They start with absolutely clean lungs and the damage compounds so much they die from it. Think about all the other age groups that have some other horrific numbers.
Aeolun 3 hours ago [-]
In 2022, the all-cause mortality under-5 was 117 per 1000 in Nigeria.
Not per 100k, per 1000.
That means that for every child that dies from air pollution, ~600 more die from some other cause.
To be fair, most causes seem related to terrible living conditions, so everything probably improves or degrades together.
phtrivier 22 hours ago [-]
What still baffles me is the reduction in SO2 emissions due to regulations on shipping fuel.
How did the shipping industry accept / manage / afford to switch fuels (presumably, to more expensive ones) in order to follow the regulation ; as opposed to delay / deny / deflect, or plain old lobbying the hell against the changes ?
Are we in a "Montreal protocol" situation, where the alternative was existing and acceptable and in the same price range ?
Or did one actor implement coercion differently ? Was a standard change made, that enabled drop-in replacement ?
(If we were living under Discworld-like physics where narrativium existed, I would understand _why_ the change happened : it's making climate change worst, so of course there is all the power of narrative irony.
Are we in a world governed by narrative irony ? That would explain so many things...)
weinzierl 19 hours ago [-]
SO2 was the main driver behind the forest dieback. I'd estimate that the global investments in forrest property (mostly by old money) dwarfs the total cost for the switch to sulfur free fuel.
It is remarkable how fast the wheels of progress turn when old money faces the prospect of their assets being washed away.
pjc50 18 hours ago [-]
Different people, though.
19 hours ago [-]
dyauspitr 22 hours ago [-]
Are we at the point where corporate adherence to laws is considered shocking?
phtrivier 22 hours ago [-]
To be honest: yes, at this point, and with an industry of this scale, it's a bit shocking to me.
I don't know the main actors here, but I imagine the leverage of shipping companies on western countries is incredible ? ("oh, you think our boats are too polluting ? sure, let's see how you bring "about everything that's sold in about all your shops but that is manufactured half a world away" without our boats.")
Tade0 21 hours ago [-]
I speculate that it's the ports which make the rules and they're not bothered by having to charge more for fuel, as ships are wholly dependent on that. Meanwhile local authorities can put pressure on ports to not provide certain types of fuel.
When maritime shipping quintupled in price during the pandemic it wasn't because ship operators suddenly figured they could fleece people like that - it was the ports' logistics which were all out of whack.
hnaccount_rng 21 hours ago [-]
I would bet the main forcing being insurance companies. There are only a handful of those and while they are powerful, they are also subject to (western) courts. And if (essentially) the US says: If you insure a ship using the wrong fuel you will cease existing, those ships won't be insured. And ships are too expensive to run without insurance (at least most of them). But.. pure speculation
Ports could be the other player, but how would you coordinate the ~all ports?
cycomanic 21 hours ago [-]
Yes, e.g. compare that to agriculture where emissions are still increasing exponentially. The political power the farmers have is amazing, apart from the fact that they managed to get exempt from emissions penalties in many countries, they also continue to be able to push increased meat and dairy consumption which does not only increase pollution but has many other serious environmental and health impacts.
jajko 22 hours ago [-]
Yes
21 hours ago [-]
TimByte 22 hours ago [-]
And especially considering its usual resistance to change
OsrsNeedsf2P 22 hours ago [-]
Really wish they showed deaths per capita instead of raw deaths for all their data sources. It would be better for doing country by country comparisons
elric 14 hours ago [-]
Tangentially: Belgium's interregional environment agency (irceline) publishes very detailed information on our (awful) air quality: https://irceline.be/en
nomilk 21 hours ago [-]
Something I haven't quite figured out is why my perceptions of cities' air pollution differ dramatically from their readings as reported by air quality sites.
I suspect readings are quite dependent on the specific location of the reading device. E.g. if the air quality monitor is located in a claustrophobic city street with lots of motorcycle traffic (e.g. Nha Trang), air pollution might be through the roof, but 100m away on the beach it might be clean(ish) air. Similar for 'leafy' cities (e.g. Singapore), where 100m can make a huge difference in air quality e.g. near a park vs beside a busy road.
Curious to know if the science backs up my suspicion that ostensibly 'polluted' cities sometimes have unpolluted alcoves (and 'clean' cities have spaces with bad air), so your micro environment really matters (more than the 'average' reading for that city, anyway).
Calwestjobs 19 hours ago [-]
Percentage wise absolutely, said beach can have 99% less pollution.
but in absolute terms, pollution is so high in that street that even 1% of said beach pollution (which is already 1% of street) is already out of bounds of limits considered safe. Blue "haze" is pollution, not fog (water vapor).
Look, people do not understand scale, one motorcycle/lawnmower can have emissions of 300 cars equipped with catalytic converter. So in your street, there is 100 motorcycles which produce as much pollution as 30 000 cars in new york. this is not hyperbole to make a point. These ratios are physical reality.
electric cars have no emissions (except dust from tires which is same as fossil car). so why even use fossil transport is beyond me. also you can charge motorcycle from solar panel on your roof.
buses, vans, boats can have solar panels on their own roof to expand range of said vehicle. in malay or indonesia there is sun shining almost same throughout year. in europe /usa we have huge difference between summer and winter insolation and sun angle.
NoahKAndrews 17 hours ago [-]
The faster acceleration and tendency to be heavier do usually make EVs worse for tire pollution, which if nothing else is a really good reason not to pinch the accelerator if you own one.
Calwestjobs 14 hours ago [-]
i loathe tire wear argument. i had to put it there. because it is local emission. just in one day you burn more kilograms of fuel then kilograms you remove from your tire for whole year. it is orders of magnitude away from being even relevant, but always someone points that out as a con, so i "proactively" put it there XD
xethos 16 hours ago [-]
And intuitively, they're likely better for brake dust pollution. Many will only have to actuate the physical brakes once per trip (to prevent calipers from seizing over time), and can use regen for the rest.
fads_go 17 hours ago [-]
electric cars do not have emissions, true, but generating the electricity to power them does generate emmissions.
Also, electric cars are heavier. This means not only higher tire pollution, but also they are inherently less fuel efficient.
electric bikes, on the other hand,
malfist 15 hours ago [-]
EVs are not less efficient. When you burn gasoline you're only capturing 15-30% of it's stored chemical energy. An EV will convent 90% or more of it's energy into motion.
Calwestjobs 14 hours ago [-]
can you generate electricity without emissions, YES.
can you burn anything in air without emissions, NO.
for me it is easy logic.
fossil cars are literally literally killing people. and live people is what capitalist needs to buy his products. so fossil cars are anti capitalistic.
djrj477dhsnv 19 hours ago [-]
I'd guess that a big factor is differences in the type and particle size of the pollutant.
Large particles are probably a lot more localized, but pm2.5 are going to diffuse fairly evenly over a large area.
I'd guess larger particles and certain chemicals are more odoriferous as well.
PeterStuer 20 hours ago [-]
It is easy to be 'green' and 'net-zero' when all you do is exporting your polluting production elsewhere and importing the goods while leaving the dirt on the manufacturer's books, and trade away your own pollution with nifty 'carbon credit' scams.
Top marks for never curbing your consumption while claiming the superior virtue position.
Extra credits for wagging a damning finger at those 'polluters' that actually make and ship your stuff.
throw_pm23 19 hours ago [-]
The top ten countries by air pollution listed in another comment hardly produce anything the developed world uses, they mostly export natural resources.
PeterStuer 18 hours ago [-]
That top 10 was for childhood deaths from air pollution per capita and included mostly poor nations with less healthcare.
When you look at consumption based accounting for e.g. CO2, the list is very different, namely for 2022:
!. Singapore
2. United Arab Emirates
3. Qatar
4. Saudi Arabia
5. Kuwait
6. Brunei
7. Malta
8. Belgium
9. United States
10. Oman
Very surprised to see Belgium in that list. What gives? Our electricity mix isn't too bad. We don't have much heavy industry. We're not heavy A/C users. Is it our meat consumption?
PeterStuer 12 hours ago [-]
What is worse, our real consumption based per capita emission is still rising (+8%)! We love importing stuff that polluted elsewhere.
Local reasons:
Belgium has a highly industrialized economy, with significant sectors like chemicals, steel, cement, and refining which are energy-intensive and heavily reliant on fossil fuels. Antwerp’s port, with very high and very dirty maritime transport, hosts Europe’s largest petrochemical cluster.
Belgium's car culture, company cars as a tax benefit, and a well-developed fossil-fueled freight transport sector. One of the most dense road networks in the world leading to heavy road traffic and congestion.
Belgium also hosts the capital of Europe. The diplomat and CxO consultant class flies in and out of Zaventem almost daily.
know-how 17 hours ago [-]
[dead]
h1fra 21 hours ago [-]
What's scary is that all significant sources of pollution are going down, except the ones related to agriculture (ammonia and methane) which are showing no signs of slowing down.
I feel like you can bend the heavy industry because it's just "a few" people to convince, but you can't change 7B people's eating habits :/
worldsayshi 20 hours ago [-]
Curated meat might eventually make a dent. Hopefully.
oblio 19 hours ago [-]
Lab grown meat seems to be comparable to classic meat in terms of environmental impact so at the moment it seems to be better purely in moral terms.
I wish we'd bite the bullet and go all in on vegetarian and vegan foods but we need to invest a ton in them to make them more palatable and easily accessible, including to poor people.
jajko 17 hours ago [-]
I don't think vegetarian is enough, since it often means diary, which goes back to cows as one of highest polluters.
Could be that one needs way fewer cows to produce diary equivalent to beef, that would invalidate above sentence. Anybody knows this?
I've lived for maybe 6 months in cca vegan diet when backpacking in India and Nepal (apart from infrequent paneer cheese, their meat in cheap dhabas was not great to be polite - either chicken bits chock full of bones or very chewy mutton), but I wouldn't consider it the best idea for everybody alive. Also those indian spices helped mentally to feel like eating great, but I know very few (specifically) men in Europe who would find it acceptable replacement (women seems more reasonable in this).
oblio 8 hours ago [-]
> but I know very few (specifically) men in Europe who would find it acceptable replacement (women seems more reasonable in this)
I can't speak for everyone, but there could also be plain old biological reasons for why spicy food isn't for everyone.
Just to give an example, spicy food is spicy throughout the entire digestive tract. It's much easier to control your reaction to spiciness at some points in your digestive tract than at others...
csomar 20 hours ago [-]
There is also no alternative for the 8B people out there.
johnthesecure 22 hours ago [-]
It's interesting to see the number of deaths caused by pollution. But everyone will die of something. Could it be that many of those people whose death was caused by pollution may have been frail and close to death anyway? I wonder if it would be more useful to talk about quality-life-years (QUALYs) lost as a result of pollution. Probably much harder to get that data though.
I, along with other asthmatics, did notice a marked improvement in symptoms during the Covid 19 lockdowns as there was less traffic on the roads - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8011425/
This is the problem with "Well, these people are frail, and you have to die of something" assertions. See also, Covid 19 and "most people who died weren't healthy, they had other conditions!".
vladvasiliu 21 hours ago [-]
There's something to be said about quality of life, too. Just because something doesn't outright kill you (sooner) doesn't mean it's fine to live with it.
I'm not asthmatic, but last summer I had an eye-opening moment about pollution. I live in a very dense city, and I regularly go for short runs in a local park. Last summer I spent a few weeks at my parents' house, who live in the suburbs of the same city, only farther away, in a small town surrounded by fields and forests.
When I went running in the forest, I couldn't believe how easier it felt to breathe and how all-round easier my session felt, event though I ran faster and longer. I don't usually run so fast that I'm out of breath, but that particular time I felt a marked difference in how easy breathing felt. It was as if I needed to breathe in "less air" to get the oxygen I needed.
I had already felt a similar thing after the first covid lockdowns coming back to the city. I had sensation of something "rough" in my throat and had short bouts of coughing. This was a few days after the lockdowns lifted, and people were still weary of public transit so everyone on their dog were sitting in gridlocked cars on the roads.
I think it's the same thing with ambient noise. After some point, we just don't notice it any longer, but it does take its toll in stress and all-round irritability.
But from my understanding most deaths attributed to pollution, specially indoors, relate to fireplaces, cooking, oil lighting or other "I'm making smoke indoors" activities which will cause lung issues later on. Even having candles on all the time isn't good for you.
The rest as far as I understand is all estimated by putting a finger in the air and subdividing lung cancer deaths into what they feel like the causes were.
julianeon 22 hours ago [-]
Pollutions impacts people across all age groups, including children and otherwise healthy adults. Many pollution deaths aren't inevitable near-term deaths.
Health effects include:
- Respiratory diseases developing in otherwise healthy people
- Cardiovascular damage at an early age affecting long-term health
- Developmental impacts on children with lifelong consequences
- Cancer and other conditions with substantial life-shortening effects
hmottestad 22 hours ago [-]
Found this in an article linked to by this one:
Exposure to air pollutants increases our risk of developing a range of diseases. These diseases fall into three major categories: cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, and cancers.
It makes sense to think of these estimates as ‘avoidable deaths’ – they are the number of deaths that would be avoided if air pollution was reduced to levels that would not increase the risk of developing these lethal diseases.
motorest 22 hours ago [-]
> Could it be that many of those people whose death was caused by pollution may have been frail and close to death anyway?
What point are you trying to make? I mean, you don't seem to dispute that pollution can and does kill people.
concordDance 21 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but there's a big difference between dying a few months earlier when you'd already be bedridden with your mind mostly gone and dying 50 years early.
Which is why QALYs are such a good metric.
motorest 18 hours ago [-]
> Yeah, but there's a big difference between dying a few months earlier (...)
What leads you to believe that's the case? And again what's the point of ignoring health risks because some victims might possibly have lower life expectancies?
zemvpferreira 19 hours ago [-]
You make a good point but I think adding QALYs to this discussion is unnecessary complication, for one reason: like most public health menaces, pollution will impact lifespan and healthspan proportionatly, ie you’ll die sooner and also live worse years if you’re exposed. There is a proportionately better chance of ageing well and dieing later if you avoid it.
QALYs really shine when measuring a one-off risk, such as an operation or cancer treatment that might add lifespan but decrease healthspan. If QALY data exists for pollution that’s great, but I think we can easily extrapolate the impact in healthspan from the toll in lifespan.
TimByte 22 hours ago [-]
You're right, "everyone dies of something" is technically true, but the key issue with pollution isn’t just that it shortens life, it's how it does it. Chronic exposure doesn’t just tip over the already frail, it increases the burden of disease across the board
Try going to a heavy polluted city, something like Delhi in the Winter.
You would honestly have no doubt about how bad it is for you health. Because you will feel it within the first 24 hours.
fedeb95 19 hours ago [-]
everyone will die of something, reduce risks and everyone will die after more time, or better.
thaumasiotes 22 hours ago [-]
I think pollution is better thought of like starvation, as something that makes you frailer so that you end up dying over something that a healthier person would have survived. Pretty much the opposite of the perspective you take.
You don't see a lot of people arguing that starvation doesn't mean much because the deaths of starving people are more directly caused by disease or injury.
imtringued 19 hours ago [-]
As you said, everyone will die of something and those who die are close to death. Therefore you can now justify abandoning any treatment that increases lifespans. The new baseline lifespan is shorter, therefore everyone is closer to death, let's abandon the next treatment.
DeathArrow 22 hours ago [-]
>It's interesting to see the number of deaths caused by pollution. But everyone will die of something.
People can die because they don't have access to energy or agricultural products.
I wonder what would be the word population now had we not used fire, coal oil, haf we not grew rice and cereals, had we not raised cows and sheep.
Teever 22 hours ago [-]
A more important question is what would the world look like if we didn't waste resources[0].
Some would consider raising cows and sheep to be bad idea too, given how inefficient it is in terms of input resources for output calories -- not to mention it has very detrimental effects on ecosystems.
The charts for black carbon seem to have the labels for "Buildings" and "Energy" switched.
spwa4 20 hours ago [-]
I wish articles like this would give some attention to how much we've already improved. We used to drive leaded gasoline, for example. The amount of damage that caused puts NOx to shame.
acdha 16 hours ago [-]
It’s true that we’ve stopped some especially bad things - the anti-CFC campaign should get more attention – but part of the problem is that we haven’t improved in aggregate. If Californians drive cars which get 50+ mpg with low emissions, but a hundred million people in India start driving new cars with less strict emissions controls, the planet is in aggregate worse off. Something over half of the CO2 in the atmosphere was emitted after 1990, which is a general proxy for the rest of the world industrializing.
criddell 15 hours ago [-]
Isn't that what the bottom set of graphs show?
pjc50 18 hours ago [-]
And smoking! And, further back, banning of coal burning in cities, which led to lethal fogs in 1950s London.
jajko 16 hours ago [-]
As mankind? Think how many cars were there in South America, Africa or Asia 50-70 years ago. Its what now, 100x more?
Even in Europe its at least 10x but probably more compared to my childhood where I lived (east & west). My parents used to play as kids on the roads next to their places, those few cars per hour were slow and easy to spot and hear. Now its a car every few seconds at least.
We also found plenty more way to pollute and more types of materials to burn. Also all is now permeated with micro and nano plastics.
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dynm 16 hours ago [-]
Perhaps the most surprising sources of particular matter is... sea spray. As water crashes around, stuff in the water (e.g. salt) often ends up suspended in the air. This apparently contributes a non-negligible percentage of PM2.5 matter in coastal areas, though exact percentages are hard to come by.
stephen_g 15 hours ago [-]
While I’m quite concerned about particulates generally (I use a few HEPA air purifiers around the house etc.), with this kind of thing it does feel like that kind of matter can’t be as bad for you as other types of PM2.5. I haven’t yet seen any research quantifying it (most studies just look at all PM2.5 as a single category) but surely there must be a difference about how bad different types of particulates are depending on what they’re made of - like those from combustion, tyre wear etc. it would seem are very obviously going to be toxic, but I also measure raised PM2.5 from cooking with my electric oven or induction stove (but not burning the food), surely that can’t be quite as bad? And sea spray you would think would be even less harmful…
dynm 14 hours ago [-]
Most definitely different types of particles cause different levels of harm. (Extreme example: asbestos.) However, we don't really have good data to quantify this. It intuitive from evolutionary perspective that "natural" sources would be less harmful since we've been breathing sea spray and dust for millions of years. Yet, smoke from wood fires is clearly still extremely harmful. So... my instinct is that the harm is probably less, but I find it very hard to be confident that any particular source is totally safe.
fvrghl 15 hours ago [-]
Does anyone have advice for how to balance air purification with CO2 levels? My apartment will sit at around 1200 PPM if the windows are closed, but if they are open I would think running a purifier does nothing.
triknomeister 20 hours ago [-]
Looking at how much pollution is from energy, solar does seem to be the best thing that can happen in current timeline to humanity. Global warming AND pollution gone in a single stroke.
aucisson_masque 20 hours ago [-]
Solar panel price have never been so low. It's only a matter of time before 'the invisible hand of economy' makes people buying them en masse.
oblio 19 hours ago [-]
It's already doing that but progress is hindered by installers that overcharge due to high demand and due to utility companies trying to cushion their blow of upgrading their infrastructure and doing all sorts of shenanigans.
jlnthws 16 hours ago [-]
So is domestic aviation negligible in every way? Is non-domestic aviation part of the transport category? Not clear to me.
malfist 15 hours ago [-]
Those get lumped under transportation, which is non negligible. It's not broken down any further
kpmcc 17 hours ago [-]
Does anyone recognize the plotting library they're using? Those interactive charts are really nice.
k__ 20 hours ago [-]
I fondly remember the police driving through my small town, telling everyone to stay at home because the tire yard is burning again.
Jiahang 22 hours ago [-]
After experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, I have developed the habit of wearing a mask.
rudolftheone 19 hours ago [-]
Yeah... The thing is surgical or cloth masks don’t do much against PM2.5. For actual pollution, you’d need a well-fitted N95 — anything less is mostly placebo with ear loops.
rdtsc 22 hours ago [-]
The deaths breakdown by region is interesting:
Africa: 1.8M
South America: 149k
North America: 179k
Australia: 4k
Europe: 434k
Asia: 6.3M
I guess to keep it positive, I'd say "Great job, Australia"!
NhanH 22 hours ago [-]
Asia has about 4.8B population, Australia has 26M. On a per capita basis Australia has about 1x% more deaths
rdtsc 21 hours ago [-]
> Asia has about 4.8B population, Australia has 26M. On a per capita basis Australia has about 1x% more deaths
6.3e6/4.8e9 = 0.00131
4e3/26e6 = 0.00015
About 9x as bad?
Not sure about 1x%, was that 1% worse? I am sorry I might have misunderstood that.
NhanH 15 hours ago [-]
I meant 11-19%, did mental maths so I did not want to specify exact value.
Though my maths seems to be wrong as well!
timbit42 14 hours ago [-]
1x% to me would mean between 10% and 19% inclusive.
brokegrammer 22 hours ago [-]
My thoughts exactly. Africa and Asia see the highest numbers but this is proportional to the population count. Plus, countries in these regions have less advanced healthcare than in countries like Australia, but the latter still has a higher death rate. Quite mysterious.
defrost 22 hours ago [-]
On a per capita basis, Australia has world class epidemiology, medical record keeping, and "no sparrow falls" cause of death certification . . .
This might be a case of a shortfall in record keeping and open reporting.
TimByte 22 hours ago [-]
> I guess to keep it positive, I'd say "Great job, Australia"!
Would be interesting to see how much of that is due to proactive regulation
rdtsc 21 hours ago [-]
I would guess better regulation, better medicine, less reliance of burning coal
more-nitor 22 hours ago [-]
hmmm not accounting for population size differences?
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banqjls 22 hours ago [-]
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stefantalpalaru 17 hours ago [-]
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DeathArrow 22 hours ago [-]
And all these claims are backed up by some hard scientific proofs?
OsrsNeedsf2P 22 hours ago [-]
Other than the links after each claim and the 12 additional sources at the bottom of the article?
DeathArrow 21 hours ago [-]
Yes, each link just uncover some more claims. No hard scientific proofs.
Supermancho 22 hours ago [-]
The citations are included. You'll have to be more specific about your goalpost.
Rendered at 04:22:25 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Regarding the reduction in SO₂ emissions from shipping fuel, I’d love to see more discussion on how international regulatory pressure (e.g., IMO 2020) managed to enforce compliance in an industry notorious for cost-cutting. Was it simply a case of the alternatives being feasible enough, or did global coordination and monitoring play a stronger role than usual?
Levels of asthma in London are highest among kids in the vacinity of the docks where cruise and container ships and moor. They sit there running their engines for power, churning out SO2 and other pollutants. These areas are some of the poorest in London.
The same was the case in industrial cities during the industrial revolution. The poor factory workers lived close to the factories, and their kids grew up breathing the smoke. The wealthy owners moved to the outer suburbs (often upwind) where the air was clear.
There was a bit of an uproar a few years back about how many premiership football players were using asthma medication, a higher rate than the general population. The implication being that they were using them as performance enhacning drugs. But if you take into account that they disproportionately come from poor inner-city areas (not all, but many more), the proportion with asthma looks much more in line with the background rate.
Urban air pollution is insidious. Unlike the dreadful smogs of previous generations that lead to things like the Clean Air Act and the banning of open fires in urban areas, today's is invisible, and so doesn't create the same political problems. In fact if you try to do anything about inner city pollution you can pretty much guarentee an angry pushback.
Someone else pointed out that there's very little shipping in central London now. It's all cars and buses causing this pollution.
> In fact if you try to do anything about inner city pollution you can pretty much guarantee an angry pushback.
See how bonkers people got over the ULEZ: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66268073
There is a dock in the Greenwich area, and another one further down the Thames estuary.
Or gas boilers, in the case of NOx pollution:
> Gas boilers now produce ~72% of NOx emissions in central London.
https://bsky.app/profile/janrosenow.bsky.social/post/3lltacf...
That part can also be explained because asthma drug is used as masking agent when taking steroids and other PEDS, which is quite common at this level.
No asthma medications whatsoever have utility as a chemical masking agent, nor are there any plausible mechanisms for that to happen.
Beta agonists (mostly clenbuterol) have been abused independently in the past as a way to cut weight in weightlifting/cycling/etc., since they theoretically provide a marginal boost to overall metabolism - but the effects are marginal. They're de facto useless as a general PED.
Widespread doping in high-level sports is absolutely commonplace, and it's very easy to not get caught - but asthma medications have absolutely nothing to do with that.
See WADA masking agent list here: https://www.wada-ama.org/en/prohibited-list
Well-informed paper about real evasion strategies available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03037...
Check that out :
https://inrng.com/2017/12/chris-froomes-salbutamol-case/
https://sportsscientists.com/2017/12/brief-thoughts-froomes-...
The article you gave, they only state the principle of PEDS evasion tactics, some used a fake dick when it's time to urinate, some used compound modified, but it can't possibly tell every single way that scientists found to avoid detection.
Froom is an actual athlete that got caught, that speak louder.
Beside i heard it too in completely unrelated sport circle, running (sprint) and boxing from athlètes competing.
You can get asthma just from breathing really hard too much. Especially in cold climate. Due to this it is really common with endurance athletes.
For example https://barcainnovationhub.fcbarcelona.com/blog/asthma-in-el...
Wait, what? There are no container docks in London. The nearest container port serving London is Tilbury, near the coast. Occasionally a single cruise ship moors in the Pool of London against the HMS Belfast, but that's happening only one this month, for 12 hours on April 7, according to the Tower Bridge lift schedule: https://www.towerbridge.org.uk/lift-times
If there are a lot less docking then that's great, but there do still seem to be a number that dock there https://blackheathandbeyond.wordpress.com/2024/03/27/fairly-...
I know there was a push to develop a big new cruise port in the Greenwich stretch which was strongly opposed by locals for that reason.
Still it's 3 to 4 cruise ships a month according to that article and, while probably hugely dirty, I would be surprised if the asthma rates of kids in affluent Greenwich and Blackheath are among "the highest in London" because of this.
Hopefully with all the work on both improving the fuel used, and providing grid hookups so they can turn their engines off, that will have made a big difference. Hopefully the effects of the congestion charges have made a big difference too. A lot of the kids featured in the documentary had a really crap life because of it all.
Please pardon my pedantry but this is by definition what poor is : having less means to escape material woes. Rich people are the ones that can elect to live in healthy areas.
The rich don't need to understand that roads or ships generate deadly air pollution. They don't like living next to a highway or a container terminal, full stop. They do however love living next to a park or a lake.
In fact, so do poor people. But they can't afford it.
A very significant and underestimated source of pollution is burning of wood. BBQ, fireplaces and stove, even expensive modern 'ecodesign' heating solutions that burn wood: these all cause massive and dangerous air pollution. And it is often, in my country at least, somewhat of a luxury thing. As soon as you get out of the poorest of area's, you smell the burning of wood which can cause more than 50 percent of total pollution locally, even rivaling the effects of smoking.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/15/wood-bur...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/26/cruise-ship-ca...
It turns out that the previous 2015 regulations around the USA and Canada were also largely followed, even offshore - this is despite there being little monitoring capability away from ports (I worked on this study).
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...
I am not an economist, but I suspect part of the compliance is a case of 'as long as everyone is forced to do it', we are okay with it as everyone can/has to raise prices.
My problem with pollution is that… you need to measure it, and those who pollute don’t do it consciously. Anecdotally I often drive through a small town. You can smell pollution, a plastic smell. In winter you can see column of smoke coming out of chimney. Sometimes it’s milky white, sometimes it thick black. There are many like that. I asked shop keeper is it happening often, she confirmed and said that no one is interested in doing otherwise, installing sensors was directly opposed by town council.
The town is not on a pollution map. Nearby cities are with medium-high pollution but that particular region is supposedly clean as reported by a single sensor positioned somewhere on a hill.
It’s not like there is one town like that in the world. There are nations that pollute heavily and don’t care and don’t meter the impact. I would be curious if all the effort, regulations etc. are worth it when applied to average Joe versus huge polluters.
One way to address this sort of localism (where there's a significant risk that the owners of the factory are slipping the town councillors the odd brown envelope) is a national regulator. The Irish EPA, which was created to take this sort of thing out of the hands of the local authorities, has been very effective in reducing nuisance pollution; the local authorities used to be mostly pretty useless. Any industrial facility of this sort would be required to self-monitor, and would be subject to inspection; it would have to respond to any complaints, and if the regulator wasn't satisfied it could demand improvements, on pain of withdrawing its operating license.
This is in no way necessary, and is almost never what's going on. All that is needed is the factory owner quietly telling the town councillors that if they are forced to clean up their emissions, they will not be able to compete with foreign competitors who don't have to do the same, and will be forced to close. Then the town council takes a quick look at just how much of the wages and tax revenues of the town come, directly or indirectly, from the factory, and make sure nothing threatens it.
Now that tariffs are the issue du jour, I'd like to propose that any environmental regulations or labor laws should always be combined with an automatic tariff on any competing products produced in countries that do no have such laws. To not have that means that you are not removing the problem, you are just moving it to somewhere without such laws.
Thing is, they're usually _lying_ when they say that. A while back I was looking at buying a house that was near a local authority recycling centre, so went on the EPA's website to see if there were any complaints about it, and went down a rabbit hole of reading regulatory action documentation (everybody needs a hobby). A very common pattern was, basically, company says "if we fix this, we'll have to close", regulator says "don't care, it's the law, fix it", company fixes it, and unaccountably fails to close like they promised, life goes on.
There are exceptions, of course, but a lot of "following the rules will make us unviable, so let us ignore the rules pls" rhetoric from companies is just rhetoric intended to marginally reduce costs. See RoHS; manufacturers acted like it would cause the collapse of modern civilisation, EU pressed ahead anyway, and 20 years later somehow modern civilisation is still there, albeit with somewhat less lead and mercury.
The cars are basically some combination of the NTA's and the local authorities' fault; a massive expansion of Dublin's bus and commuter rail capacity, and a new metro system, are all years behind schedule, largely due to planning permission nonsense (though also due to disastrously incorrect government planning about 15 years ago, which assumed that Ireland would go back to its traditional perma-recession after the financial crisis, with the result that starting these expansions was delayed by about a decade).
https://cleanaircrew.org/box-fan-filters/
[1] https://lasko.com/products/lasko-air-flex-2-in-1-20-inch-box...
[2] https://youtu.be/daayXtlpg_o
https://www.amazon.com/Dust-Story-Modern-Trillion-Particles/...
It's quite possible to survive with friction tyres with the help of good traction control (especially from an EV) but there are vast areas of the country that do not get roads plowed in a timely manner, so it's "safer" to go with studs.
It's not really about roads not being plowed timely. More often than in the cities, country side roads are plowed faster and more often. This is simply because the road density is less.
In Finland, for example, there are a lot of dirt roads. These cannot be plowed bare in the winter as that would destroy the road surface, you want to build up a level of snow/ice on top of the road that you then maintain over the winter. If you drive on these types of roads daily you will need studded tyres, or you'll end up stuck at home ever year for multiple days when the weather goes above freezing and during kelirikko.
Even in towns, there will be conditions where friction tyres are completely useless. Heck, sometimes you should probably not drive at all. About once a year the sides of the main road near my house are sprinkled with cars, despite most people driving 30km/h or less (on a 50 road). On a very slippery march morning last year I counted 15 cars on an 800m stretch.
These numbers highlight how air pollution isn't just an urban problem — it's a public health crisis in low-income countries where children are the most vulnerable.
Source: Baselight analysis using data from Our World in Data, originally supplied by the World Health Organization (WHO). https://baselight.app/u/pjsousa/query/top-10-countries-with-...
Not trying to say we shouldn’t consider this, but it seems like there’s bigger fish to fry first (assuming we can’t fry them all at the same time).
They don't seem low at all to me. And a quick search suggests that malnutrition probably causes fewer deaths [1] (note that it's counted for all people here, not just under 5).
And in places like India and SEA, where malnutrition and violence are less of a problem, air pollution stands out even more.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/malnutrition-death-rates
That is properly fucked up for children under 5. They start with absolutely clean lungs and the damage compounds so much they die from it. Think about all the other age groups that have some other horrific numbers.
Not per 100k, per 1000.
That means that for every child that dies from air pollution, ~600 more die from some other cause.
To be fair, most causes seem related to terrible living conditions, so everything probably improves or degrades together.
How did the shipping industry accept / manage / afford to switch fuels (presumably, to more expensive ones) in order to follow the regulation ; as opposed to delay / deny / deflect, or plain old lobbying the hell against the changes ?
Are we in a "Montreal protocol" situation, where the alternative was existing and acceptable and in the same price range ?
Or did one actor implement coercion differently ? Was a standard change made, that enabled drop-in replacement ?
(If we were living under Discworld-like physics where narrativium existed, I would understand _why_ the change happened : it's making climate change worst, so of course there is all the power of narrative irony.
Are we in a world governed by narrative irony ? That would explain so many things...)
It is remarkable how fast the wheels of progress turn when old money faces the prospect of their assets being washed away.
I don't know the main actors here, but I imagine the leverage of shipping companies on western countries is incredible ? ("oh, you think our boats are too polluting ? sure, let's see how you bring "about everything that's sold in about all your shops but that is manufactured half a world away" without our boats.")
When maritime shipping quintupled in price during the pandemic it wasn't because ship operators suddenly figured they could fleece people like that - it was the ports' logistics which were all out of whack.
Ports could be the other player, but how would you coordinate the ~all ports?
I suspect readings are quite dependent on the specific location of the reading device. E.g. if the air quality monitor is located in a claustrophobic city street with lots of motorcycle traffic (e.g. Nha Trang), air pollution might be through the roof, but 100m away on the beach it might be clean(ish) air. Similar for 'leafy' cities (e.g. Singapore), where 100m can make a huge difference in air quality e.g. near a park vs beside a busy road.
Curious to know if the science backs up my suspicion that ostensibly 'polluted' cities sometimes have unpolluted alcoves (and 'clean' cities have spaces with bad air), so your micro environment really matters (more than the 'average' reading for that city, anyway).
but in absolute terms, pollution is so high in that street that even 1% of said beach pollution (which is already 1% of street) is already out of bounds of limits considered safe. Blue "haze" is pollution, not fog (water vapor).
Look, people do not understand scale, one motorcycle/lawnmower can have emissions of 300 cars equipped with catalytic converter. So in your street, there is 100 motorcycles which produce as much pollution as 30 000 cars in new york. this is not hyperbole to make a point. These ratios are physical reality.
electric cars have no emissions (except dust from tires which is same as fossil car). so why even use fossil transport is beyond me. also you can charge motorcycle from solar panel on your roof.
buses, vans, boats can have solar panels on their own roof to expand range of said vehicle. in malay or indonesia there is sun shining almost same throughout year. in europe /usa we have huge difference between summer and winter insolation and sun angle.
Also, electric cars are heavier. This means not only higher tire pollution, but also they are inherently less fuel efficient.
electric bikes, on the other hand,
can you burn anything in air without emissions, NO.
for me it is easy logic.
fossil cars are literally literally killing people. and live people is what capitalist needs to buy his products. so fossil cars are anti capitalistic.
Large particles are probably a lot more localized, but pm2.5 are going to diffuse fairly evenly over a large area.
I'd guess larger particles and certain chemicals are more odoriferous as well.
Top marks for never curbing your consumption while claiming the superior virtue position.
Extra credits for wagging a damning finger at those 'polluters' that actually make and ship your stuff.
When you look at consumption based accounting for e.g. CO2, the list is very different, namely for 2022:
!. Singapore 2. United Arab Emirates 3. Qatar 4. Saudi Arabia 5. Kuwait 6. Brunei 7. Malta 8. Belgium 9. United States 10. Oman
source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...
Local reasons:
Belgium has a highly industrialized economy, with significant sectors like chemicals, steel, cement, and refining which are energy-intensive and heavily reliant on fossil fuels. Antwerp’s port, with very high and very dirty maritime transport, hosts Europe’s largest petrochemical cluster.
Belgium's car culture, company cars as a tax benefit, and a well-developed fossil-fueled freight transport sector. One of the most dense road networks in the world leading to heavy road traffic and congestion.
Belgium also hosts the capital of Europe. The diplomat and CxO consultant class flies in and out of Zaventem almost daily.
I wish we'd bite the bullet and go all in on vegetarian and vegan foods but we need to invest a ton in them to make them more palatable and easily accessible, including to poor people.
Could be that one needs way fewer cows to produce diary equivalent to beef, that would invalidate above sentence. Anybody knows this?
I've lived for maybe 6 months in cca vegan diet when backpacking in India and Nepal (apart from infrequent paneer cheese, their meat in cheap dhabas was not great to be polite - either chicken bits chock full of bones or very chewy mutton), but I wouldn't consider it the best idea for everybody alive. Also those indian spices helped mentally to feel like eating great, but I know very few (specifically) men in Europe who would find it acceptable replacement (women seems more reasonable in this).
I can't speak for everyone, but there could also be plain old biological reasons for why spicy food isn't for everyone.
Just to give an example, spicy food is spicy throughout the entire digestive tract. It's much easier to control your reaction to spiciness at some points in your digestive tract than at others...
Most asthmatics can live a long, healthy life - certainly not die at the age of 9 https://apnews.com/article/asthma-europe-london-air-pollutio...
I, along with other asthmatics, did notice a marked improvement in symptoms during the Covid 19 lockdowns as there was less traffic on the roads - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8011425/
This is the problem with "Well, these people are frail, and you have to die of something" assertions. See also, Covid 19 and "most people who died weren't healthy, they had other conditions!".
I'm not asthmatic, but last summer I had an eye-opening moment about pollution. I live in a very dense city, and I regularly go for short runs in a local park. Last summer I spent a few weeks at my parents' house, who live in the suburbs of the same city, only farther away, in a small town surrounded by fields and forests.
When I went running in the forest, I couldn't believe how easier it felt to breathe and how all-round easier my session felt, event though I ran faster and longer. I don't usually run so fast that I'm out of breath, but that particular time I felt a marked difference in how easy breathing felt. It was as if I needed to breathe in "less air" to get the oxygen I needed.
I had already felt a similar thing after the first covid lockdowns coming back to the city. I had sensation of something "rough" in my throat and had short bouts of coughing. This was a few days after the lockdowns lifted, and people were still weary of public transit so everyone on their dog were sitting in gridlocked cars on the roads.
I think it's the same thing with ambient noise. After some point, we just don't notice it any longer, but it does take its toll in stress and all-round irritability.
But from my understanding most deaths attributed to pollution, specially indoors, relate to fireplaces, cooking, oil lighting or other "I'm making smoke indoors" activities which will cause lung issues later on. Even having candles on all the time isn't good for you.
The rest as far as I understand is all estimated by putting a finger in the air and subdividing lung cancer deaths into what they feel like the causes were.
Health effects include:
- Respiratory diseases developing in otherwise healthy people
- Cardiovascular damage at an early age affecting long-term health
- Developmental impacts on children with lifelong consequences
- Cancer and other conditions with substantial life-shortening effects
What point are you trying to make? I mean, you don't seem to dispute that pollution can and does kill people.
Which is why QALYs are such a good metric.
What leads you to believe that's the case? And again what's the point of ignoring health risks because some victims might possibly have lower life expectancies?
QALYs really shine when measuring a one-off risk, such as an operation or cancer treatment that might add lifespan but decrease healthspan. If QALY data exists for pollution that’s great, but I think we can easily extrapolate the impact in healthspan from the toll in lifespan.
You don't see a lot of people arguing that starvation doesn't mean much because the deaths of starving people are more directly caused by disease or injury.
People can die because they don't have access to energy or agricultural products.
I wonder what would be the word population now had we not used fire, coal oil, haf we not grew rice and cereals, had we not raised cows and sheep.
Some would consider raising cows and sheep to be bad idea too, given how inefficient it is in terms of input resources for output calories -- not to mention it has very detrimental effects on ecosystems.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/27/climate/un-food-waste-one-bil...
Even in Europe its at least 10x but probably more compared to my childhood where I lived (east & west). My parents used to play as kids on the roads next to their places, those few cars per hour were slow and easy to spot and hear. Now its a car every few seconds at least.
We also found plenty more way to pollute and more types of materials to burn. Also all is now permeated with micro and nano plastics.
Africa: 1.8M
South America: 149k
North America: 179k
Australia: 4k
Europe: 434k
Asia: 6.3M
I guess to keep it positive, I'd say "Great job, Australia"!
6.3e6/4.8e9 = 0.00131
4e3/26e6 = 0.00015
About 9x as bad?
Not sure about 1x%, was that 1% worse? I am sorry I might have misunderstood that.
Though my maths seems to be wrong as well!
This might be a case of a shortfall in record keeping and open reporting.
Would be interesting to see how much of that is due to proactive regulation