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Where does air pollution come from?

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Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#101

Post by fads_go »

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…

electric cars do not have emissions, true, but generating the electricity to power them does generate emmissions.

Also, electric cars are heavier. This means not only higher tire pollution, but also they are inherently less fuel efficient.

electric bikes, on the other hand,

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#102

Post by rsynnott »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #94
rsynnott wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 b…

> 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.

Thing is, they're usually _lying_ when they say that. A while back I was looking at buying a house that was near a local authority recycling centre, so went on the EPA's website to see if there were any complaints about it, and went down a rabbit hole of reading regulatory action documentation (everybody needs a hobby). A very common pattern was, basically, company says "if we fix this, we'll have to close", regulator says "don't care, it's the law, fix it", company fixes it, and unaccountably fails to close like they promised, life goes on.

There are exceptions, of course, but a lot of "following the rules will make us unviable, so let us ignore the rules pls" rhetoric from companies is just rhetoric intended to marginally reduce costs. See RoHS; manufacturers acted like it would cause the collapse of modern civilisation, EU pressed ahead anyway, and 20 years later somehow modern civilisation is still there, albeit with somewhat less lead and mercury.

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#103

Post by jajko »

oblio wrote: post #78
worldsayshi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curated meat might eventually make a dent. Hopefully.

Lab grown meat seems to be comparable to classic meat in terms of environmental impact so at the moment it seems to be better purely in moral terms. I wish we'd bite the bullet and go all in on vegetarian and vegan foods but we need to invest a ton in them to make them more palatable and easily accessible, including to poor people.

I don't think vegetarian is enough, since it often means diary, which goes back to cows as one of highest polluters.

Could be that one needs way fewer cows to produce diary equivalent to beef, that would invalidate above sentence. Anybody knows this?

I've lived for maybe 6 months in cca vegan diet when backpacking in India and Nepal (apart from infrequent paneer cheese, their meat in cheap dhabas was not great to be polite - either chicken bits chock full of bones or very chewy mutton), but I wouldn't consider it the best idea for everybody alive. Also those indian spices helped mentally to feel like eating great, but I know very few (specifically) men in Europe who would find it acceptable replacement (women seems more reasonable in this).

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#104

Post by jajko »

spwa4 wrote: post #61

I wish articles like this would give some attention to how much we've already improved. We used to drive leaded gasoline, for example. The amount of damage that caused puts NOx to shame.

As mankind? Think how many cars were there in South America, Africa or Asia 50-70 years ago. Its what now, 100x more?

Even in Europe its at least 10x but probably more compared to my childhood where I lived (east & west). My parents used to play as kids on the roads next to their places, those few cars per hour were slow and easy to spot and hear. Now its a car every few seconds at least.

We also found plenty more way to pollute and more types of materials to burn. Also all is now permeated with micro and nano plastics.

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#105

Post by acdha »

spwa4 wrote: post #61

I wish articles like this would give some attention to how much we've already improved. We used to drive leaded gasoline, for example. The amount of damage that caused puts NOx to shame.

It’s true that we’ve stopped some especially bad things - the anti-CFC campaign should get more attention – but part of the problem is that we haven’t improved in aggregate. If Californians drive cars which get 50+ mpg with low emissions, but a hundred million people in India start driving new cars with less strict emissions controls, the planet is in aggregate worse off. Something over half of the CO2 in the atmosphere was emitted after 1990, which is a general proxy for the rest of the world industrializing.

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#106

Post by carlosjobim »

TimByte wrote: post #24

It's wild how many pollutants trace back to the same root cause: burning stuff. Fossil fuels, biomass, agriculture byproducts - it’s all combustion and decomposition in different forms.

I would say it's completely expected that air pollutants come from smoke.

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#107

Post by dynm »

Perhaps the most surprising sources of particular matter is... sea spray. As water crashes around, stuff in the water (e.g. salt) often ends up suspended in the air. This apparently contributes a non-negligible percentage of PM2.5 matter in coastal areas, though exact percentages are hard to come by.

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#108

Post by xethos »

NoahKAndrews wrote: post #99
Calwestjobs wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And intuitively, they're likely better for brake dust pollution. Many will only have to actuate the physical brakes once per trip (to prevent calipers from seizing over time), and can use regen for the rest.

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#109

Post by roxolotl »

rsynnott wrote: post #102
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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 b…

> 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. Thing is, they're usually _lying_ when they say that. A while back I was looking at buying a house that was near a local authority recycling centre, so went on the EPA's…

It doesn’t even have to necessarily be intentional lying. It is a strongly held belief that regulations are unfair and close businesses. Even many of those in favor of them think of them more as a bitter pill than as something that’s a genuine good. So everyone involved can just think “well if we do anything about this we’ll be out of jobs” and nothing will be done.

Re: Where does air pollution come from?

#110

Post by jplrssn »

0xEF wrote: post #77
Lutger wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The rich don't actively avoid air pollution, not really. A very significant and underestimated source of pollution is burning of wood. BBQ, fireplaces and stove, even expensive modern 'ecodesign' heating solutions that burn wood: these all cause massive and dangerous air pollution. And it is often, in my country at least, somewhat of a luxury thing. As soon as you get out of the poorest of area's, you smell…

Do you have data on how much wood burning contributes to air pollution compared to, say, burning fossil fuels? On the surface, your comment sounds like more rhetoric trying to shift the blame from the companies to the consumer, an unfortunately common problem that is getting us nowhere in correcting environmental problems. That said, if there is data displaying this discrepancy, I'll happily change my mind.

Here’s one UK datapoint from a few years ago:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/15/wood-bur...

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