Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

vancouversun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 115 posts

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#61

Post by johnwalkr »

derefr wrote: post #37
sandworm101 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what many overlook is many of these particles have nothing to do with emissions. Brake pads and tires turn to dust. So too bits of the road surface are slowly converted to fine particulates. Converting everyone to autodrive teslas powered by fusion reactors wont stop rubber from meeting asphalt. (Switching to manual transmissions would probably reduce the brake dust. Id like to see if european roads suffer as muc…

Tangential question: do trains produce fine particulates where their wheels meet the rail? I.e. is it bad to live near a train (or subway!) line?

Trains do use brake shoes on the wheels, and in some cases disc brakes. All trains have mechanical braking capability, as far as I know. Many also have electric braking, especially passenger trains with frequent stops, which is either regenerative or dissipated as heat via resistors. Freight trains tend to use mechanical breaking, but have infrequent stops and can plan a long slow-down. In any case, the braking force has to be transmitted somehow to the wheels before it is transmitted to the rails. There is only rarely wheel on rail sliding outside of emergency situations. But, particulates of steel on steel sliding should be relatively benign. A good train system is better utilized compared to cars as well.

All this is to say that yes, there are fine particulates from trains, but it should normally be much less than from living near a highway.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#62

Post by iguy »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #54
samatman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First paragraph is perfectly reasonable. Second paragraph, though: I've never been around a brake pad fire, but I'd rather breathe vulcanized rubber than "metal shavings of copper, steel, graphite, and brass bonded with resin": https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/what-are-brake-pads-mad...

In my non-chemist, non-doctor opinion the circumstantial evidence points to brake dust being way less bad than tire dust. Being inert in the presence of most common substances tends to correlate well with low toxicity. It's the stuff that chemically reacts to all sorts of things that tends to be the most poisonous. Tires break down over time under "normal earthly conditions" which includes a lot of the same temperatu…

Would have guessed the opposite, FWIW, on the grounds that the bad stuff is hard materials (like mine dust). But if anyone actually knows that would be interesting. How good a measure is total PM2.5 or whatever, without asking about what it's made of?

That said, as was pointed out below, changing the car's design to vacuum up brake dust would be much easier than getting away from rubber.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#64

Post by dghughes »

I live near a four lane road which is quite busy. I'm only about 50m away but there are two blocks of houses between me and lots of trees. The road speed is 60km/h but most vehicles travel 80km/h. I wonder if speed has some effect of whipping up the pollutants more?

The road is near the main hospital. My town is not a very big maybe 70,000 total spread out over a large area. But ambulances go by once or twice per hour more frequently in the summer. The noise from them bother me more than fumes although I can't smell fumes or see nano-scale sized particulates.

So if I start to act crazy...well, crazier, here in the comments you'll all know why. And before I do.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#65

Post by jungletime »

With the way the Corona Virus is spreading we might all be wearing Face masks pretty soon.

This may seem like common sense after Flint, but at this point I think a home water filter is needed for most parts of the country. Can't blindly trust the municipalities.

A Home Air filter is probably needed too.

Here's a growing list of things Youtube told me things one should invest:

1. Home Water Purifier

2. Air Filter

3. Good Mattress / Pillow

4. Blackout Blinds for Windows (sleep)

5. Gym Membership

6. Standing Desk

7. Travel

8. Vegan/Plant Based Diet

Oh and Washing Hands regularly.

Yeah its a growing list, and getting kind of expensive. I'm surprised how much it starts resembling living in a 4 star hotel.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#66

Post by victor9000 »

jungletime wrote: post #65

With the way the Corona Virus is spreading we might all be wearing Face masks pretty soon. This may seem like common sense after Flint, but at this point I think a home water filter is needed for most parts of the country. Can't blindly trust the municipalities. A Home Air filter is probably needed too. Here's a growing list of things Youtube told me things one should invest: 1. Home Water Purifier 2. Air Filter 3. G…

I would incorporate a cashier's standing mat to your standing desk setup to avoid the health hazards associated with standing for too long.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#67

Post by dehrmann »

derefr wrote: post #41

I wonder if they controlled for... why people choose to live where they live. I.e., this wasn’t an RCT; they could just assign people to live near highways or not. So the people who are living near highways are there for a reason. Are residences near highways, perhaps farther from certain other things, like city centres? Such that a certain type of person (people with pre-existing [perhaps subclinical] mental issues…

> To me, “living near a highway” sounds a lot like a euphemism for “living in the middle of nowhere”

In more (sub)urban settings, I read it as "poor." But either way, it does seem hard to properly control for, and my gut tells me socioeconomic factors drive this more than pollution.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#68

Post by dsfyu404ed »

iguy wrote: post #62
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my non-chemist, non-doctor opinion the circumstantial evidence points to brake dust being way less bad than tire dust. Being inert in the presence of most common substances tends to correlate well with low toxicity. It's the stuff that chemically reacts to all sorts of things that tends to be the most poisonous. Tires break down over time under "normal earthly conditions" which includes a lot of the same temperatu…

Would have guessed the opposite, FWIW, on the grounds that the bad stuff is hard materials (like mine dust). But if anyone actually knows that would be interesting. How good a measure is total PM2.5 or whatever, without asking about what it's made of? That said, as was pointed out below, changing the car's design to vacuum up brake dust would be much easier than getting away from rubber.

Yeah, you generally shouldn't be inhaling dust but inert dust (silica -> silicosis) is better than reactive dust (asbestos -> cancer).

I'm not well versed enough on the specifics to tell you whether or not PM2.5 is a good measure of pollution. The experts in the subject of air pollution routinely use it so it can't be thaaaat bad.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#69

Post by hhsuey »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #60
cs702 wrote: post #14

Direct link to study: https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-... The researchers found the link between living near highways and future neurological disorders to be independent of income, education, ethnicity, comorbidity, and coexisting medical conditions associated with future neurological disorders (traumatic brain injury, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, coronary heart disease, congestive hear…

Re: Independent of income Living near a noisy highway is rarely prime real estate. How do we account forincome when there are so few in that subset? I also wouldn't discount the effect of endless stress. That is, the drone of noise. I recently moved from to a street that's fairly busy. Only in the middle of the night is it quite. I don't like it.

Also, the neighborhoods tend to be safer and more inviting than those right next to the major freeways.

I was originally thinking air quality is the major reason, but Vancouver has really good air quality overall compared to where I live in Los Angeles. I would be interested in seeing this type of study be done across cities with different air quality.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#70

Post by Woberto »

jungletime wrote: post #65

With the way the Corona Virus is spreading we might all be wearing Face masks pretty soon. This may seem like common sense after Flint, but at this point I think a home water filter is needed for most parts of the country. Can't blindly trust the municipalities. A Home Air filter is probably needed too. Here's a growing list of things Youtube told me things one should invest: 1. Home Water Purifier 2. Air Filter 3. G…

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, I would agree that most of these make a lot of sense if you can afford them. I wonder what the order of importance is - I had a doctor tell me it was sleep > diet > exercise, but where do e.g. air and water quality fit in?

I would modify vegan/plant based diet slightly - either add supplements for B12, or eat eggs. Also, I hadn't considered travel to be as important as the rest of the items. Do you know what need this fulfills?

Post reply on HN