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Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

bbc.com

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Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#81

Post by astatine »

subygan wrote: post #42

completely anecdotal. my earliest childhood memories in india were of asthma, sinusitis and constant cold. this was consistent until i was 26 and since then I've moved to the US and lived in New York with 0 days of sinusitis or breathing trouble. and i fallback to trouble breathing when i go home again. even New York is so much more better than Bangalore or my small village in the middle of coffee farms

Bangalore has historically (over decades) been known to have a high incidence of asthma due to the high pollen in the air. It's been made worse in recent years due to pollution. The pollen is present for a significant portion of the year while other pollen regions in the world tend to have it for a smaller duration.

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#82

Post by bad_username »

OutOfHere wrote: post #12

I use air purifiers mounted on my windows, running continuously except in the deep summer and deep winter. This makes my air contain 50-100x fewer particulates than the outdoor air. In contrast, the best I can achieve with floor air purifiers as people have them is a 5-10x reduction. The window purifiers also keep excess CO2 and VOCs out.

Health improvements are not measurable any more if you go below 5 mcg/m2 average level of PM2.5 particulates. For 50x reduction to be beneficial, you need to live in an area where the pollution is 250 mcg/m2, which is an extreme level found only in a few unfortunate places on Earth. 5-10x reduction is reasonable almost everywhere.

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#83

Post by gambiting »

Aurornis wrote: post #80
Sha1rholder wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they cut corners? Activated carbon isn’t expensive.

You simply cannot put enough activated carbon in a little foam thing that goes in front of a filter to do anything useful. The real activated carbon filters have 10s of pounds of carbon. The little black foam thing that comes with those 2-in-1 carbon filters is useless.

And manufacturers do a sneaky swap too, my Coway 150 which is a great air filter by the way, came with a nice thick grid of hexagonal cells each filled with carbon granules - that insert alone weighs like half a kg. I ordered official filter and carbon filter replacements off their website ....got a thin carbon "foam" that weighs maybe 50g instead.

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#85

Post by pasc1878 »

ecshafer wrote: post #3

Anecdata I was living very close to a busy highway, and my young daughter was wheazing when she had a cold, we had to give her medicine via a nebulizer. When we moved out to the country more, far away from any major roads, these issues all disappeared within a couple months.

My anecdote would be the revesre.

Living in the country gave me bad hay fever/asthma in the city much less asthma.

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#86

Post by solatic »

Aurornis wrote: post #60
ecshafer wrote: post #3

Anecdata I was living very close to a busy highway, and my young daughter was wheazing when she had a cold, we had to give her medicine via a nebulizer. When we moved out to the country more, far away from any major roads, these issues all disappeared within a couple months.

Living very close to busy highways is known to generate poor air quality. I recommend anyone in those locations buy an air purifier for their kids' rooms. I bought a couple reasonably priced HEPA purifiers and I change the filters on schedule. Replacement HEPA filters are very cheap. Also watch out for things that we do indoors that can generate bad air quality. I had a friend who bought a VOC meter and noticed very…

Agreed, just buy air purifiers with HEPA filters and change them regularly. The main expense is buying one for every room, but it's one of those expenses you wish you had made sooner.

DHH is also a fan (pun not intended?): https://world.hey.com/dhh/air-purifiers-are-a-simple-answer-...

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#87

Post by Koffiepoeder »

alansaber wrote: post #43
satvikpendem wrote: post #4

Using scientists being "stunned" should take the same amount of relevance as someone being "slammed" in article titles.

Scientists are only allowed to be stunned when results exceed 5 sigma of deviation

Or when their papers are retracted for political reasons.

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#88

Post by denismenace »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #72
anon48293 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “ Smokers don't magically undo the damage they did to their lungs after they stop smoking” Except that they do undo the damage. “ After 15 years, your chances of getting lung cancer are almost the same as someone who has never smoked.” https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/lung-cancer/prevention/

4x the rate is "almost the same"??? https://www.verywellhealth.com/risk-of-lung-cancer-in-former...

The lifetime risk is approximately 1.3% for women and 1.8% for men. For regular smokers: 11.2% for women and 14.8% for men. So about 15 to 30 more likely to get lung cancer. Bringing that down to 4x is close to "almost the same".

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#89

Post by Symbiote »

bilekas wrote: post #21

> strongest evidence yet that local clean air zones could help reduce some of the harm caused by pollution during childhood. It's incredible this is even in debate. It's one of those intuitive things well known since the reduction of coal burning and smog during the industrial revolution in London?

The right (Conservative) and far right (Reform) parties both say they will abolish low-emission zones and other measures to reduce pointing traffic.

They made it into a culture war topic.

Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone

#90

Post by walthamstow »

glenngillen wrote: post #15
stuaxo wrote: post #2

I've needed my inhaler way less since the ULEZ came in. Visiting London used to mean blowing your nose to black snot for a week afterwards, these days living in London it's pretty good.

I've not lived in London for more than a decade. I always thought the black snot was from the Tube. Is it not?

I've lived in London all my life and I only get black bogeys on days that I've been on the tube. Before COVID that was every day.
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