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Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

cuimc.columbia.edu

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Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#61

Post by paulryanrogers »

bitL wrote: post #54
Syonyk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how history typically works. The group that destroys the place is not regarded as heroes, they're regarded as a warning of things to be avoided. If any of those things happen, there will be very strong taboos against anything that would begin to lead down the same roads again.

Memory of a civilization only lasts a few generations and at some point all lessons are forgotten. You can see it already wrt lessons from WW1 and WW2 in Europe.

Yet the mines and shells will remind generations to come. Just as the tree-free plains and deserts remind us of our ancestors efforts to exploit forests with little regard for sustainability.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#63

Post by ahaucnx »

I am working with a lot of organisations to increase awareness on air pollution -especially among students.

The images of the dark lymph nodes by age remind me of the shocking images of lungs of smokers printed -by law- on cigarette boxes in certain countries. What they do is to make the hidden danger of the small partciles visible.

I will use the images from this study in some of my presentations in future.

It seems that the lung tissues analyzed come from an organisation in New York. So most likely people living in this area. Comparing pollution data of New York City [1] which -globally seen has relatively good air quality- to a very polluted city like New Delhi [2] makes me wonder how much worse this health effect is actually for people living in higher polluted countries.

Increasing awareness on air pollution is one of the key reasons why we offer a popular open-source / open-hardware version of our professional air quality monitor so that people can easily build am affordable and accurate monitor [3] themselves. Similar to above images, it is another way to make the invisible particles in the air visible and helping quantifying the risks from fine particles in the air.

[1] https://aqicn.org/city/usa/newyork/ [2] https://aqicn.org/city/delhi/ [3] https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/kits/

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#64

Post by megablast »

newsclues wrote: post #41
ldh0011 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a tangentially related note, it confuses me why so many people seem to think that the only reason to do away with fossil fuels as much as possible is climate change. Millions die prematurely from air pollution every year. Even if climate change was fake we should still be trying to use cleaner energy.

As a bike riding hippie in the age of video meetings and streaming, explain to me why the world elite need to fly all over the world in private jets to discuss climate change? Can you tell me why my grocery store stopped giving out free plastic bags by charging for them, and now phasing them out for paper, but they still sell plastic garbage bags and I can't reuse the grocery store bag for my garbage bag now? Can you…

Bunker fuel is being phased out.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#65

Post by elmalto »

ripley12 wrote: post #55
VancouverMan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government-imposed greenbelts around some major Canadian cities have also backfired. The reduced supply of land drives up prices within the urban area surrounded by the greenbelt. This in turn just encourages more sprawl on the outer edges of the greenbelt, where land can be cheaper. Those living in these new developments often commute into the urban area for work or other reasons, and now have to drive much fart…

Ehh. The Agricultural Land Reserve really isn't the problem in Vancouver. Cities already have a ton of land where they can+should be allowing more housing but aren't (ex: the vast majority of residential land in Vancouver bans townhouses+apartments+condos). With the exception of maybe some parts of Richmond, I don't think there's much a case that the ALR is the problem here.

Agree. Just drive down main once and look at all the 2 story buildings… not even talking about the neighborhoods that are primarily detached. Vancouver is so expensive yet nobody is allowed to create denser housing. Nimbyism at its finest

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#66

Post by rayiner »

dagmx wrote: post #2

Anecdotally, moving from India to North America really helped my health. I know this study is about long term effects but I believe even short term , it’s quite noticeable. It’s why I find it perplexing why so many people in the US want to do away with EPA regulations. Not only was pollution rampant in many Americans lifetimes, it’s completely observable how bad pollution is elsewhere in the world for people.

> It’s why I find it perplexing why so many people in the US want to do away with EPA regulations

By and large, they don’t. Trump’s efforts, for example, were focused on repealing incremental efforts during the Obama administration that hadn’t been in effect for long, and risked disproportionate impact on coal, oil, cars, and farms.

Very few people think we should get rid of rules that require factories to use emissions control technology. But rules that shut down coal plants in favor of renewables implicates a different set of political concerns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_v._EPA

Likewise, virtually nobody wants to go back to the days of factories dumping untreated waste into waterways. But many farmers are upset when they suddenly need an EPA permit because the EPA declared some pond on their property a protected water body: https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/more-widespread-support-epa...

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#67

Post by rayiner »

jrussino wrote: post #18
ldh0011 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a tangentially related note, it confuses me why so many people seem to think that the only reason to do away with fossil fuels as much as possible is climate change. Millions die prematurely from air pollution every year. Even if climate change was fake we should still be trying to use cleaner energy.

"What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_an...

This assumes there is no cost to the change.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#68

Post by WalterBright »

anigbrowl wrote: post #59
WalterBright wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the government uses ban hammers instead of simply taxing the amount of pollution emitted.

And if they tax it, people will complain about cost-shifting, saying the consumer should pay, and accuse the taxes for driving inflation etc. I am in favor of making polluters account for negative externalities, it's been a long-theme of my comments here), but I've noticed that people are adept at inventing new bases of objection. Perhaps you could suggest a place where the pollution taxation approach has worked and…

Cost incentives work. It's why people buy cars that get more mpg. Why wouldn't they prefer to buy a car that engenders a lower pollution tax?

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#69

Post by comte7092 »

Syonyk wrote: post #44
borissk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

In other words, you've not talked to many (any?) Trump supporters, and are just speculating about what evilly evil things they might evilly support for their own evil ends. Or something of the sort. The conservative end of the spectrum is generally more concerned with things like "a stable power grid with enough power at all times " than carbon emissions, though I know quite a few pretty hard conservatives with solar…

The California grid issues were due to momentarily high demands on the grid, not an issue with creating capacity in general. The grid is not infinitely flexible.

Coal plants, mind you, aren’t a good solution to the issue of active spikes demand, they take significant time to ramp up and down and have minimum loads they have to put out, it’s prohibitively expensive to turn them of and on.

EVs can, and likely will play a key role in demand management, that’s a good thing.

Re: Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

#70

Post by refurb »

anigbrowl wrote: post #59
WalterBright wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the government uses ban hammers instead of simply taxing the amount of pollution emitted.

And if they tax it, people will complain about cost-shifting, saying the consumer should pay, and accuse the taxes for driving inflation etc. I am in favor of making polluters account for negative externalities, it's been a long-theme of my comments here), but I've noticed that people are adept at inventing new bases of objection. Perhaps you could suggest a place where the pollution taxation approach has worked and…

And if they tax it, people will complain about cost-shifting, saying the consumer should pay

The consumer should pay, because that will reduce demand.

It’s funny to see a government encourage a carbon tax to reduce fossil fuel use (high gas prices drive consumers to look for alternatives), then turn around this year and either cut gas tax or send out checks to consumers to offset higher gas prices.

Not sure any politician has the Will to follow through with it.

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