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Where does air pollution come from?

ourworldindata.org

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Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#91

Post by whyoh »

Aeolun wrote: post #84
pjsousa79 wrote: post #65

In 2019, ambient air pollution claimed the lives of young children at alarming rates in several countries. Here's the top 10 list of countries with the highest number of deaths per 100,000 children under 5 due to ambient air pollution: Nigeria – 18.95 Chad – 18.10 Sierra Leone – 12.02 Mali – 10.56 Guinea – 9.90 Niger – 9.64 Cote d'Ivoire - 9.04 Central African Republic - 8.79 Cameroon - 8.69 Burkina Faso - 8.68 These…

Not that this isn’t terrible, but those numbers look really low. Surely malnutrition and violence must be a hundred times more likely to kill them? Not trying to say we shouldn’t consider this, but it seems like there’s bigger fish to fry first (assuming we can’t fry them all at the same time).

>Not that this isn’t terrible, but those numbers look really low. Surely malnutrition and violence must be a hundred times more likely to kill them?

They don't seem low at all to me. And a quick search suggests that malnutrition probably causes fewer deaths [1] (note that it's counted for all people here, not just under 5).

And in places like India and SEA, where malnutrition and violence are less of a problem, air pollution stands out even more.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/malnutrition-death-rates

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#92

Post by noneeeed »

nohuck13 wrote: post #58
noneeeed wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other striking aspect for me is how, as has often been the case, those most affected are the poorest. Levels of asthma in London are highest among kids in the vacinity of the docks where cruise and container ships and moor. They sit there running their engines for power, churning out SO2 and other pollutants. These areas are some of the poorest in London. The same was the case in industrial cities during the indu…

> Levels of asthma in London are highest among kids in the vacinity of the docks where cruise and container ships and moor. Wait, what? There are no container docks in London. The nearest container port serving London is Tilbury, near the coast. Occasionally a single cruise ship moors in the Pool of London against the HMS Belfast, but that's happening only one this month, for 12 hours on April 7, according to the Tow…

Cruise ships certainly used to moore up in the Greenwich stretch of the river at the and a few years ago there was quite a lot of coverage of the issue around it. Cruise ships require a lot of power while docked, and unless they connect to the grid they used to create a lot of air quality issues.

If there are a lot less docking then that's great, but there do still seem to be a number that dock there https://blackheathandbeyond.wordpress.com/2024/03/27/fairly-...

I know there was a push to develop a big new cruise port in the Greenwich stretch which was strongly opposed by locals for that reason.

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#93

Post by motorest »

concordDance wrote: post #46
motorest wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could it be that many of those people whose death was caused by pollution may have been frail and close to death anyway? What point are you trying to make? I mean, you don't seem to dispute that pollution can and does kill people.

Yeah, but there's a big difference between dying a few months earlier when you'd already be bedridden with your mind mostly gone and dying 50 years early. Which is why QALYs are such a good metric.

> Yeah, but there's a big difference between dying a few months earlier (...)

What leads you to believe that's the case? And again what's the point of ignoring health risks because some victims might possibly have lower life expectancies?

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#94

Post by Tuna-Fish »

rsynnott wrote: post #82
xlii wrote: post #47

I thought that this article will address an elephant in the room but either it missed it or I missed it. My problem with pollution is that… you need to measure it, and those who pollute don’t do it consciously. Anecdotally I often drive through a small town. You can smell pollution, a plastic smell. In winter you can see column of smoke coming out of chimney. Sometimes it’s milky white, sometimes it thick black. Ther…

> I asked shop keeper is it happening often, she confirmed and said that no one is interested in doing otherwise, installing sensors was directly opposed by town council. One way to address this sort of localism (where there's a significant risk that the owners of the factory are slipping the town councillors the odd brown envelope) is a national regulator. The Irish EPA, which was created to take this sort of thing…

> (where there's a significant risk that the owners of the factory are slipping the town councillors the odd brown envelope)

This is in no way necessary, and is almost never what's going on. All that is needed is the factory owner quietly telling the town councillors that if they are forced to clean up their emissions, they will not be able to compete with foreign competitors who don't have to do the same, and will be forced to close. Then the town council takes a quick look at just how much of the wages and tax revenues of the town come, directly or indirectly, from the factory, and make sure nothing threatens it.

Now that tariffs are the issue du jour, I'd like to propose that any environmental regulations or labor laws should always be combined with an automatic tariff on any competing products produced in countries that do no have such laws. To not have that means that you are not removing the problem, you are just moving it to somewhere without such laws.

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#96

Post by doikor »

noneeeed wrote: post #42
alexmccain6 wrote: post #16

One of the most striking aspects of air pollution is how invisible yet pervasive its effects are. Unlike more immediate environmental disasters, air pollution slowly chips away at public health, reducing life expectancy and quality of life, often without dramatic headlines. The comparison to starvation as a "frailty multiplier" is an interesting one; pollution doesn’t always kill directly but makes people more suscep…

The other striking aspect for me is how, as has often been the case, those most affected are the poorest. Levels of asthma in London are highest among kids in the vacinity of the docks where cruise and container ships and moor. They sit there running their engines for power, churning out SO2 and other pollutants. These areas are some of the poorest in London. The same was the case in industrial cities during the indu…

> There was a bit of an uproar a few years back about how many premiership football players were using asthma medication, a higher rate than the general population. The implication being that they were using them as performance enhacning drugs. But if you take into account that they disproportionately come from poor inner-city areas (not all, but many more), the proportion with asthma looks much more in line with the background rate.

You can get asthma just from breathing really hard too much. Especially in cold climate. Due to this it is really common with endurance athletes.

For example https://barcainnovationhub.fcbarcelona.com/blog/asthma-in-el...

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#97

Post by jajko »

Aeolun wrote: post #84
pjsousa79 wrote: post #65

In 2019, ambient air pollution claimed the lives of young children at alarming rates in several countries. Here's the top 10 list of countries with the highest number of deaths per 100,000 children under 5 due to ambient air pollution: Nigeria – 18.95 Chad – 18.10 Sierra Leone – 12.02 Mali – 10.56 Guinea – 9.90 Niger – 9.64 Cote d'Ivoire - 9.04 Central African Republic - 8.79 Cameroon - 8.69 Burkina Faso - 8.68 These…

Not that this isn’t terrible, but those numbers look really low. Surely malnutrition and violence must be a hundred times more likely to kill them? Not trying to say we shouldn’t consider this, but it seems like there’s bigger fish to fry first (assuming we can’t fry them all at the same time).

Take Nigeria - capital is cca 6 million. That means, that every year around 1150 children die from just air pollution alone, every year.

That is properly fucked up for children under 5. They start with absolutely clean lungs and the damage compounds so much they die from it. Think about all the other age groups that have some other horrific numbers.

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#98

Post by know-how »

PeterStuer wrote: post #85
throw_pm23 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top ten countries by air pollution listed in another comment hardly produce anything the developed world uses, they mostly export natural resources.

That top 10 was for childhood deaths from air pollution per capita and included mostly poor nations with less healthcare. When you look at consumption based accounting for e.g. CO2, the list is very different, namely for 2022: !. Singapore 2. United Arab Emirates 3. Qatar 4. Saudi Arabia 5. Kuwait 6. Brunei 7. Malta 8. Belgium 9. United States 10. Oman source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-ca…

[dead]

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#99

Post by NoahKAndrews »

Calwestjobs wrote: post #79
nomilk wrote: post #43

Something I haven't quite figured out is why my perceptions of cities' air pollution differ dramatically from their readings as reported by air quality sites. I suspect readings are quite dependent on the specific location of the reading device. E.g. if the air quality monitor is located in a claustrophobic city street with lots of motorcycle traffic (e.g. Nha Trang), air pollution might be through the roof, but 100m…

Percentage wise absolutely, said beach can have 99% less pollution. but in absolute terms, pollution is so high in that street that even 1% of said beach pollution (which is already 1% of street) is already out of bounds of limits considered safe. Blue "haze" is pollution, not fog (water vapor). Look, people do not understand scale, one motorcycle/lawnmower can have emissions of 300 cars equipped with catalytic conve…

The faster acceleration and tendency to be heavier do usually make EVs worse for tire pollution, which if nothing else is a really good reason not to pinch the accelerator if you own one.
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