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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

#101

Post by Aachen »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #11
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.

>> While electric cars may help a bit, rubber from breaking and tyres is an issue In what way are they an issue? Tyre emissions are around 1/20th of the PM2.5 ejected from the exhaust and the airborne proportion is even smaller. Edit: "Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants" has a fairly non-commital "needs more study" finding but they did say "Non-exhaust particulate matter (PM) emissions, ie from brake…

That is super interesting, I had no idea. Never even heard the word combo "tyre emissions" before. Thanks for sharing!

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

#102

Post by IronRanger »

mads_ravn wrote: post #88
IronRanger wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden has had a lower per-capita COVID deathtoll than European states with heavy lockdowns. Lockdown South American nations have had about the same COVID toll as non-lockdown nations. Same when you look at individual US states. Doesn't seem to be much of a link between lockdowns and COVID - but a heavy link between lockdown and economic and social devastation. The virus will follow its own seasonal trends, impacted…

> Sweden has had a lower per-capita COVID deathtoll than European states with heavy lockdowns. But 5-12 times that of comparable neighboring countries like Norway, Finland and Denmark https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat... And by own admission the strategy failed https://www.thelocal.se/20201215/what-does-the-first-report-...

And Norway's Prime Minister says they acted too harshly: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/30/coronavirus-norw...

You can find news articles that spin anything positively or negatively.

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

#104

Post by brodouevencode »

kingsloi wrote: post #91

Shameless plug, I've been working on a community air quality monitor for my little community https://millerbeach.community I live a few miles from steel mills, oil refineries, who take advantage of Lake Michigan, constantly polluting both air and water, occasionally dumping/"releasing" more toxic chemicals than permitted and don't raise the alarm for a few days: https://www.in.gov/idem/cleanwater/2576.htm , killing t…

Where can we find the technical details of your monitor? Is there a GHE project or similar somewhere? The data from such a project will almost certainly be invaluable, and if it can be replicated elsewhere (hopefully cheaply) imagine the data that could be generated and used to stop bad actors.

My heart goes out to your daughter, you, and your family.

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

#106

Post by anarchop »

Diesel particulate pollution is the primary problem. London black cabs are diesel. There is a good case for banning diesel in metro and even suburban areas over time and requiring at least hybrid. Electric busses actually make more sense than cars due to the high regeneration of stopping.

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

#107

Post by nonbirithm »

leetcrew wrote: post #52
dimitrios1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

you (and the other commenters) are ignoring the time component, which is quite important here. when quarantine started, most people thought it would only be for a few weeks or a couple months at the most. obviously some people are resisting, but most are willing to make a short-term sacrifice to help slow the spread. telling people they need to permanently reduce their level of consumption to combat climate change is…

Maybe if instead of a pandemic a catastrophic climate event happened to occur in a sudden period of time, people might get the same impression that it's at most a thing that would last a few weeks or years because "there's no way this would happen to us now." But when more data comes in and it turns out the damage is permanent or long lasting, maybe those people forced to make changes won't end up going back to their original equilibrium. We could not in general forsee the sheer calamity the pandemic has caused in its short timeframe near the beginning. Large and drastic changes would probably have a greater effect on short-term memory than if we're essentially frogs in boiling water, even if the degree of environmental consequences ends up the same.

Because the changes the pandemic caused were drastic by its nature, so much behavior was regulated and put into law (large gatherings illegal, etc.) in such a short time. If it's inevitable that climate change will never occur drastically, how can those restrictions on growth and consumption not continually get pushed back because of lobbyists who see no short-term consequences?

Or given how humans can act, maybe they'd go back to their normal levels of consumption out of spite anyways. It's hard to tell.

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

#108

Post by gotostatement »

hyperdimension wrote: post #86
hombre_fatal wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution? The Covid frenzy reminds me something that happened in my friend's village. Four small apartment rooms burned down affecting four people. The village went into a frenzy of help and concern. They had multiple fundraisers to raise money for the affected. Local news would go to local businesses to film them putting together care packages.…

That is such a fantastic metaphor for our limited 'supply' of care/empathy. Sometimes it feels as though we have only so much for others' plights before we run out and only have enough to focus on our own. I'm not sure.

this is exactly why permanent, tax-funded, institutional safety nets are necessary. you can't rely on sporadic charity.

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

#109

Post by dfgdghdf »

olivermarks wrote: post #64

A child with serious asthma issues should not be living near a major traffic artery, this could have been a quickly remedied social situation. 'A 2018 report found unlawful levels of pollution, which were detected at a monitoring station one mile from Ella's home, contributed to her fatal asthma attack'. The girl lived '25 metres from the South circular' in Lewisham. Listing her death with claims 'air pollution' were…

Nonsense. If a residential area has illegal levels of toxic air pollution then the solution is to limit the amount of motor traffic allowed into that area. The government must provide alternative travel options (walking, cycling, electric buses, trains, etc).

We are not talking about a manufacturer hub here, but zones 2-3 of an deindustrialized city in one of the richest nations on Earth. How we can't find the means to solve this is beyond me.

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

#110

Post by kingsloi »

brodouevencode wrote: post #104
kingsloi wrote: post #91

Shameless plug, I've been working on a community air quality monitor for my little community https://millerbeach.community I live a few miles from steel mills, oil refineries, who take advantage of Lake Michigan, constantly polluting both air and water, occasionally dumping/"releasing" more toxic chemicals than permitted and don't raise the alarm for a few days: https://www.in.gov/idem/cleanwater/2576.htm , killing t…

Where can we find the technical details of your monitor? Is there a GHE project or similar somewhere? The data from such a project will almost certainly be invaluable, and if it can be replicated elsewhere (hopefully cheaply) imagine the data that could be generated and used to stop bad actors. My heart goes out to your daughter, you, and your family.

Hey, so the air quality sensor is a Purple Air PAII https://www2.purpleair.com, after you mount & register it, the sensor communicates to a 3rd party (wunderground I believe), processes it, and updates the map & API, which I consume. It only tracks particles in the air, and not gases. I've been trying to secure an air quality sensor that does PM2.5/PM10 + gases, but they're all very scientific, and come with a very high price tag.

The boat/ship tracking is provided by Fleet Mon, I host one of their AIS trackers. Air traffic is provided by Aviation Edge.

There are other monitors in the region, but not in my community: https://aqicn.org/city/usa/indiana/gary-iitri, but I have no information about them, their data, or anything. If it was open source, I probably would trust it more than I do now.

Thank you, I'm still coming to terms with it, but life goes on I guess, just gotta take the lows with the highs.

edit, just realised I never answered your question, the source code is on github: https://github.com/kingsloi/community-airmonitor

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