If you're curious about your own exposure to air pollutants, I'd recommend Plume Labs. They also have a handheld device that I preordered and hope to take around my town to see where the hotspots are. https://air.plumelabs.com/en/
Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence
101–110 of 188 posts
Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
China is putting ~10k electric buses a month on the road: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/china-is-adding-a-lon...
And they are still using coal to produce electricity.
From a pollution perspective, is it better to have 1 coal plant generating electricity for an electric bus fleet, or to have a fleet of buses that run on hybrid-electric diesel or CNG?
Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence
#103Electrification of surface transport is the most obvious way to improve air quality in dense cities. This needs to be a priority.
Using alcohole fuel would have been a very reasonable solution, specially if you care about air quality amd not carbon. China is using 100% methanol and other lesser methanol fuel that are produced from coal. But in other places you could use gas. This would also be faster then full electrification. The US missed out massivly. The gas boom could have lead to very cheap and relativly clean fuel. It would also be great…
Source for this? My understanding is that there is solid full-life-cycle analysis showing CO2 reduction from ethanol (35% lower on average), but a total mixed bag when it comes to hydrocarbons and various other air pollutants - some better, some worse: https://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/flexible_fuel_emissions...
Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the new power is generated in coal plants that might actually be a net minus, at least in particulates and SO2 terms. EDIT: I'm referencing this: A series of studies by Tsinghua University, whose alumni includes the incumbent president, showed electric vehicles charged in China produce two to five times as much particulate matter and chemicals that contribute to smog versus gas-engine cars. Hybrid vehicles fare li…
How so? A car's ICE is much less efficient than a power plant.
In terms of energy in to energy out it is a lot more efficient. But the amount of particulate matter created by burning a kilojoule of coal is much, much higher than the amount created by burning a kilojoule of gasoline.
Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence
#105In case anyone else wanted to quantify "huge": > “Polluted air can cause everyone to reduce their level of education by one year, which is huge,” Yale School of Public Health's Professor Xi Chen, one of the report's authors, said in an interview published in The Guardian.[0] [0] https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/air-pol...
I'm glad Chen attempted to give an intelligible quantity, but I'm not really sure what to make of the metric. "Years of education" don't seem like an intuitive metric for cognitive impairment. Checking the abstract gets us:
> Cutting annual mean concentration of particulate matter smaller than 10 μm (PM10) in China to the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard (50 μg/m3) would move people from the median to the 63rd percentile (verbal test scores) and the 58th percentile (math test scores), respectively.
For reference, another study in China found that top-decile levels of lead poisoning (>10 micrograms per deciliter) cost children about two points of IQ on both math and verbal scales. That's not trivially convertible to percentile performance, and I don't know whether air pollution has long-tail effects anything like the horrible long-tail on lead poisoning.
But it does suggest that particulate pollution has effects on the same general scale as childhood lead poisoning, which is pretty striking.
Underlying study is here: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/08/21/1809474115
Lead study is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667072/
Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence
#106china number 1
Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence
#107Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plus it provides health benefits! Its not for everyone in every big city but certainly the Dutch model of transitioning cities from cars to transit and pedestrian/cycle focus is probably the clearest model for sustainable and healthy tansport out there.
I live in the Netherlands and I can confirm that. In just a couple of decades they transformed all their car friendly cities and made cars second rate citizens Cycling infrastructure is amazing. It is almost always faster to travel by bike than by car. They did it so long ago and the world still hasn’t caught up. I’m very sad about that. Also somehow the amount of cars per capita is still very high in NL.
> Also somehow the amount of cars per capita is still very high in NL.
That's OK. We can keep up the consumerist "Everybody needs a car" mentality as long as the amount of driving per capita stays low.
Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
China is putting ~10k electric buses a month on the road: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/china-is-adding-a-lon...
And they are still using coal to produce electricity.
This is probably still a positive change on several levels. Plants can be remediated better than vehicles, electrification delinks generation from use to ease later greening, and for particulate pollution (unlike CO2) moving emissions away from population centers is meaningful.
That said... yes. Electrification is a massive improvement in the US, Canada, and Western Europe, but much less useful in Russia, China, and much of SE Asia. Adding to that, pushing pollution sources away from cities reinforces the demographic crisis China has had brewing for a long time, with everything from lead to lack of iodine creating serious permanent health issues in rural regions.
Re: Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in the Netherlands and I can confirm that. In just a couple of decades they transformed all their car friendly cities and made cars second rate citizens Cycling infrastructure is amazing. It is almost always faster to travel by bike than by car. They did it so long ago and the world still hasn’t caught up. I’m very sad about that. Also somehow the amount of cars per capita is still very high in NL.
How big of a problem is bike theft in the Netherlands? I live in the UK and I probably wouldn't consider getting a bike again, simply because I know it would be nicked within a month.
Not so bigi would say. Lived ~3 years in Amsterdam with an average bike always loosely locked in the street and it has never been stolen.
But to be honest, poverty in NL is also a problem that's been managed quite well ; which does not mean there is no crime (I've had 3 burglary attempts) but maybe crimes that paya bit more than stealing average bikes in the street.