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The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

bbc.com

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Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#31

Post by jl6 »

pietrovismara wrote: post #25

This pandemic gave me so much to think about air pollution. It puzzles me how we can have, just in Europe, around 800k yearly premature deaths caused by pollution[0] and still not care at all. On the other hand, covid-19 hasn't caused yet as many deaths but we quickly intervened, as it should be. Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution? - [0]: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/…

The decision-making class can avoid the worst impacts of air pollution, such as by living in nice low density areas, but they can’t buy their way out of danger of Covid infection, so it’s a lot more scary.

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#32

Post by pmiller2 »

pietrovismara wrote: post #25

This pandemic gave me so much to think about air pollution. It puzzles me how we can have, just in Europe, around 800k yearly premature deaths caused by pollution[0] and still not care at all. On the other hand, covid-19 hasn't caused yet as many deaths but we quickly intervened, as it should be. Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution? - [0]: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/…

You want the real reason? Fixing air pollution quickly would disrupt the global economy on a long term scale. Capitalism doesn't like that.

Edit: Y'all so predictable.

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#33

Post by VBprogrammer »

goodpoint wrote: post #22
stuaxo wrote: post #6

I hope this will lead to changes in roads in London and other places. The closest school to me in London is next to a busy road with twice the legal level of no2, you can see all the buildings along that road are noticeably blacker from exhaust smoke. While electric cars may help a bit, rubber from breaking and tyres is an issue, and cares have been getting much bigger over the last 5 years.

Electric cars still have a significant environmental impact due to the space they take in a city, the production and recycling of the cars, and road maintenance. The efficiency of combined use of trains, electric buses and bicycles dwarfs electric cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport

I don't know about anyone else, I'm pretty far from being a germaphobe in everyday life, but the idea of returning to packed trains and busses turns my stomach.

I'm sure this will pass in a surprisingly short amount of time but for the moment I'm glad that I can work from home and doing so has the lowest environmental impact I can muster.

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#34

Post by xiphias2 »

GordonS wrote: post #30
xiphias2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also PM2.5 is easy to filter out. Any cheap device can filter it out quite efficiently. For NO2 I tried all the most expensive devices, and none of them worked :(

This might be a silly question, but how would you filter stuff "emitted" by tyres?

I'm not a scientist, just an asthmatic person. All I can tell you is that I am so far not sensitive to electric cars at all.

Regarding PM2 and NO2, I bought decices to measure them, that's why I have these results.

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#35

Post by pmiller2 »

qlm wrote: post #17
duckfang wrote: post #9

It is indeed sad that a 9 year old died from purely preventable air pollution. However, through her death and the resulting judgement, we (royal) can start holding polluters and companies liable. And through that, we can start to effect strong climate based change, through a series of steep punishments of wrongful death and the like. I sincerely hope her death is not in vain, but as a loud bell to start a wave of cha…

Sorry for nitpicking on a serious comment, but wouldn't using the royal we here mean that you personally are going to hold polluters and companies liable?

That would imply they had actual power to do so. One average individual isn't going to be able to do anything to those who are polluting our air. Case in point: the US government is one of the top 10 greenhouse gas polluters in the world. You really think one individual without billions of dollars backing them can do anything against the US government?

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#36

Post by dimitrios1 »

pmiller2 wrote: post #32
pietrovismara wrote: post #25

This pandemic gave me so much to think about air pollution. It puzzles me how we can have, just in Europe, around 800k yearly premature deaths caused by pollution[0] and still not care at all. On the other hand, covid-19 hasn't caused yet as many deaths but we quickly intervened, as it should be. Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution? - [0]: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/…

You want the real reason? Fixing air pollution quickly would disrupt the global economy on a long term scale. Capitalism doesn't like that. Edit: Y'all so predictable.

The pandemic proved that disrupting the global economy to save lives wasn't an issue at all.

The issue is the right people feeling threatened for their lives. As soon as you can convince rich people that their survival is at risk, and they can't just fly off to another planet or live in their own biosphere somewhere in the Alps, something will be done.

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#37

Post by amingilani »

> Delivering a narrative verdict, Mr Barlow said levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) near Ella's home exceeded World Health Organization and European Union guidelines.

There are WHO and EU guidelines? I had no idea.

Most my life, I've lived in a city where the AQI is usually >250 during the day, and it's been in IQAir's top polluted cities[0] for the past 2 years.

[0]: https://www.iqair.com/ca/world-most-polluted-cities

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#38

Post by xiphias2 »

GordonS wrote: post #28
xiphias2 wrote: post #13

Asthma from air pollution completely destroyed my life, that's all my life is about at this point. The first signs are that it's harder to sleep at night, because the mucus goes into your airways. If you feel that, move away far from any street with many cars while you can.

I suffered from asthma as a kid, bad enough to put me in hospital. As I got older, it just kind of disappeared - by the time I was 15 or so, I was only very rarely using inhalers. As an adult, I've travelled a lot to India for work, always staying in big cities, which are filled with 2-stroke rickshaws and are always heavily polluted (e.g. Mumbai, Pune, Delhi). Often a kind of horrible, acrid, thick smog descends aft…

Just don't travel there. It's not worth it. Talk to your boss about your asthma, and work harder remotely if you need to. I was more lucky with investments so that I can now pay to live in places with clean air, but I don't have social life anymore, as clean places are usually the less fun places.

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#39

Post by CydeWeys »

satysin wrote: post #26
pietrovismara wrote: post #25

This pandemic gave me so much to think about air pollution. It puzzles me how we can have, just in Europe, around 800k yearly premature deaths caused by pollution[0] and still not care at all. On the other hand, covid-19 hasn't caused yet as many deaths but we quickly intervened, as it should be. Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution? - [0]: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/…

I live in [redacted], [redacted] and we often have high air pollution warnings and you really can feel it in the air. During lockdown, back in April and May, there was a noticeable difference in the air quality. It felt different. When we went out for a walk you could also tell the difference in noise pollution from there being so few cars on the roads. It was lovely. There is a church nearby that we can sometimes he…

Paris, at least, is doing an amazing job of replacing motor vehicles on the streets with friendlier alternatives, with great results in terms of reduced air and noise pollution. Try to elect a mayor of Lyons who's like Annie Hidalgo?

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#40

Post by jariel »

Air quality in London for example (similar for other UK urban areas) is better now than in hundreds of years. [1]

Even the Thames is much cleaner than it has been in generations.

It should be 'drinkable' but it's not as bad as used to be.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/london-air-pollution

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