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Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution

theguardian.com

81–90 of 103 posts

Re: Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/business/145130/fine-part... That won't necessarily solve this problem. [edit] One more source. There are tons though. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/4a4dc6ca-en/index.html?i...

Exactly right, tire and brake dust are still awful with EVs, though contra the slight implication in the headline, it's no worse than the current situation with ICE vehicles. And the brake dust aspect may slightly reduce due to regenerative braking.

> And the brake dust aspect may slightly reduce due to regenerative braking.

This might be underselling it. I hardly use the brakes on our EV at all. In a journey yesterday of 180km, I only touched the brakes at the end, when pulling into a car park.

Re: Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Younger folks seem pretty excited to allow more biking and walking and rolling, though. The difference may not be age; it may be having kids and dealing with the practicalities of that.

The opposition is coming from people past child rearing years. Other parents like me are one of the strongest contingencies for getting rid of car-dependency. Cars are one of the greatest threats to kids in terms of death, disability, and maiming. And building cities around cars makes having kids a huge huge hassle, you have to drive them everywhere and they have zero autonomy. Cars and kids are an absolute terrible…

Hear hear - I want for my kids to be independent and for me to not be their damn taxi for 18 years. A car-dependent home is a prison for kids. If my 10 year old says "I want to go to the movies" I want to say "Awesome! Have fun! Who's going with you?" not "ugg I'm busy with work and can't drive you".

Re: Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They obviously are not and cruising through stop signs (and sometimes killing children!) is the norm. If EVs encourage this driving style that is another strong point in favor of "electric cars can't solve the problem of cars." You reap what you sow. A grid of 4-way stops where the traffic flow is not appropriate for them is a textbook perfect way to train drivers to habitually roll stop signs. I swear sometimes it…

I mean, the real issue is that American traffic engineering is usually loathe to put anything other than a 4-way stop. Americans do not properly yield at yield signs, roundabouts take too much room, and we haven’t figured out how to routinely build speed bumps or raised crosswalks for less than six figures. Also, it is a stretch to call some of that planning “learning” or “science.” As a general example, parking regu…

Roundabouts don’t have to take up more room than a stop-signed junction. We call them mini-roundabouts, and they’re often just painted on the ground and slightly raised so that you can still drive over them.

Re: Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but these are all less than 20%, a change which is likely indistinguishable for any sort of risk factors, and likely well within the measurement error for something difficult to measure like this. The true change we need to make is drastically reduce car use, to a tiny fraction of its current use. This is a hard social problem, however, particularly for the older generations who tend to wield power in most gove…

Interestingly the first article flagged ebikes as particularly problematic, which are a pretty common way to extend bike range. Although, they must surely be better than cars just due to mass. Anyway. Cautiously in agreement with you, but it depends a lot on where you live. Western Europe, at least at present, is blessed with a fairly mild climate. Less so than North America which seems to alternate between harsh win…

Looking at the OECD report (possibly the wrong one?) I couldn't find any mention of bicycles except as an alternative to cars to mitigate the problem... Given the faaaar lower mass even of heavy bicycles, I would want to see the actual evidence before worrying too much about the bike contribution to particulate pollution.

(rider mass / vehicle mass is a lovely shorthand for vehicle efficiency, as it says a lot about how much acceleration you're 'wasting' on the vehicle. Braking, of course, produces a negative acceleration, so lower mass ratio ~> better efficiency. Aim for a ratio of https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/4a4dc6ca-en/1/3/2/index....

Re: Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep; we live where we do to maximise cycling. Here are the problems with that as a general rule: - it's desirable, so property prices in places that enable this are higher, if there is even a location that could fulfill this - expensive bikes aren't affordable by most people who also need a car - there's a large window where kids are too big for a cargo bike, and still too young to go off freely

I don't view any of these as a problem in the least. And sorry if it comes across as as a strong critique, I don't mean any of it personally, but have heard people say these same things but never from people that actually bicycle with their family. We do all sorts of things that increase property value, why is it suddenly only a problem when bikes are involved? And the problem is only because we do a little amount of…

Okay. It appears that you haven't read what I wrote. I'll try just one more time:

> And sorry if it comes across as as a strong critique, I don't mean any of it personally, but have heard people say these same things but never from people that actually bicycle with their family.

As I already said, we have built cycling into our lives. Our kids (4 and 6) cycle to school with one of us. I cycle to work. And I am saying this.

> We do all sorts of things that increase property value, why is it suddenly only a problem when bikes are involved?

That is nothing to do with what I was saying. Property is finite; schools, clubs, and employers are too. A car is one of the few levellers that allows people to live somewhere cheaper and access places they need to get to. Places that are close enough to schools to cycle them to school and then cycle to work are expensive.

> Similarly, the concern about the cost of bikes is completely invalid, as bikes are always cheaper than a car,

That only works if you don't need a car. If you need both, which, see previous point, is extremely likely, then it's an extra expense, not an alternative one.

> even brand new cargo e-bikes are only a few months of car expenses at most.

An admittedly quick Google and I'm not seeing any for less than £2.5k. That's years' worth of car services, tax and MOT. On top of the cost of the car they almost certainly need.

> And I haven't seen that window where kids can't bike on their own or ride with another parent, and I know families that bike with kids of all sizes and ages.

Here's an example of what I mean: nursery is in one direction; school is another. How do we get our 4 year old to nursery and 8 year old to school? Should the 8 year old cycle on his own? Or is he in the window where he can't cycle far enough by himself, but too heavy to be safely steered on a cargo bike?

Broadly: if Facebook's taught us anything, it's the power of being in a social circle and thinking that must generalise to everyone, or even most people. Having a job where we can work from home, or rock up 20 minutes late, where we can afford to live in a nice location that has good access, and where we can afford expensive secondary transport, is all great. Wonderful, even. But having grown up in a reasonably deprived area, I believe that's not most people's experience.

Re: Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brakes aren't necessary to stop an EV nor to hold a car at a stop on an incline. The only time a Tesla needs to use brake pads are for emergency stops and for the parking brake.

That may be the case for a Tesla (never driven one) but the ride-share Smart EVs we have around Paris absolutely need brakes to come to a stand-still. They will decelerate fairly quickly to 20-25 kmph, but after that, the deceleration rate slows down, and it actually will never stop by itself. For some reason I can't understand, they tried to imitate ICE automatics that don't stand still if you don't have your foot o…

For some reason I can't understand, they tried to imitate ICE automatics that don't stand still if you don't have your foot on the brake pedal.

Even more annoying, as an owner of a Nissan Leaf that does this, is that the behavior is what I consider to be a bug in automatic transmissions. Manual transmissions don't do that, and there's no good reason for automatics to do that (and a hundred really good reasons for them not to). It's an artifact of the viscosity of the fluid it turns in, and it annoys me that my EV is bug-for-bug compatible with a device the car doesn't even have (a transmission).

Re: Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution

#87

> “The risk of lung cancer from air pollution is lower than from smoking, but we have no control over what we all breathe,” We do, to a degree. If you have air purifiers at home that does help. I can’t recommend them enough.

> If you have air purifiers at home that does help. Does it? Or does merely having them make you feel more comfortable. Anyway it also means that I would have to live in a tightly sealed building, but I rather like having the window open.

They do clean harmful particles from the air, thus providing benefit. Just turn it on after you closed the window.

Re: Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, "PM10 for non-exhaust sources per km" and then the following line has more info about about pm2.5. Please just go read the thing it's not our duty to quote it at you piece by piece to disprove your assumptions about how good EVs are especially when the article is right there and not even long or very technical. If you have trouble reading or understanding english then I apologize and of course please continue to…

Go back and actually read your parent comment and then tell us who (still) really has the reading comprehension problem…

Well I have autism and brain damage what's their excuse?

Re: Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution

#89

Before getting too excited about the experimental prevention they used, IL-1B blockade, let me say that blocking the innate immune system to prevent cancer seems ill-advised. The innate immune system is with us for very good reasons. This would be roughly equivalent to preventing table saw accidents by prophylactically removing all fingers. Yes, table saw accidents are terrible, but there is a straightforward electro…

Yeah, it feels like society loves coming up with ways to “handle” problems but never actual solve them.

The future will likely be upper middle class folks walking around in habitat bubbles with VR suits across a toxic desert of miasma.

Re: Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution

#90
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the real issue is that American traffic engineering is usually loathe to put anything other than a 4-way stop. Americans do not properly yield at yield signs, roundabouts take too much room, and we haven’t figured out how to routinely build speed bumps or raised crosswalks for less than six figures. Also, it is a stretch to call some of that planning “learning” or “science.” As a general example, parking regu…

Roundabouts don’t have to take up more room than a stop-signed junction. We call them mini-roundabouts, and they’re often just painted on the ground and slightly raised so that you can still drive over them.

Unfortunately, US civil engineering is very dogmatic, so if it isn’t approved by AASHTO it won’t be done.

The civil engineers also like absurdly wide turn radii to accommodate 53 feet trailers and large fire trucks even in residential streets, so you end up with comically wide roads even for dead end suburban streets. https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/suburban-street-2779407.jpg

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