201–210 of 426 posts
Isn't this common sense? What is being "stunned" !!
In this case:
"While we would expect children's lungs to grow year on year, our results indicate that the London children's lung growth had accelerated during the four years to 'catch up' with the control group in Luton to reach similar levels of lung capacity," researchers say.
"I was absolutely stunned when I first saw the results," Prof Chris Griffiths, a senior author on the study, at Queen Mary University of London, told the BBC.
"The speed of catch up in lung capacity in the London group was surprising and impressive."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
NO2 is a very hazardous air pollutant which doesn’t get a ton of attention. The main sources are combustion engines and gas stoves. Asthma looks to be mostly caused by gas stoves. I’ve got a sensor that can detect no2 and it noticeably spikes when using gas. Switched to induction after that.
>Asthma looks to be mostly caused by gas stoves. Do you have a source for that? Because as far as I can see, asthma isn't _that_ less common in countries where gas stoves are barely used, such as germany. Still has like 60-70% of the asthma cases the US has. There's also a ton of other pollutants the US hasn't yet forbidden, but the EU has, which could also explain a lot of the difference in rates. Don't get me wrong…
'Replacing gas stove can help asthmatics as much as some drugs, US experts find'
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/24/replacin...
[0]: https://www.zh.ch/content/dam/zhweb/bilder-dokumente/themen/...
"High diesel-family averages were approximately 1–3 g NOx/km. Most gasoline-family averages clustered around approximately 0.02–0.15 g/km."
[1]: https://publications.tno.nl/publication/34635198/KxBBl3/TNO-...
"TNO tested in-use vehicles directly at the tailpipe. Three diesels with DPFs emitted: 3.9–5.3 million particles/cm³ at warm low idle. The same report measured warm Euro 5 direct-injection gasoline cars without gasoline particulate filters at: 50,000–60,000 particles/cm³ at low idle."
[2]: https://d-nb.info/137495313X/34
"In 2017, the highest diesel was approximately 12 g black carbon/kg fuel, versus roughly 0.4 g/kg for the highest gasoline car. In 2023, the highest diesel was roughly 8 g/kg, versus approximately 0.7 g/kg gasoline."
[3]: https://trueinitiative.org/insights/true-brussels-emissions-...
"approximately 5% of measured Euro 5b/Euro 6 diesel vehicles exceeded one million particles/cm³, and this small group produced more than 90% of the particle emissions from the tested diesel group"
A few things standout to me from the article. 1. London when the ULEZ was brought in was already a lot less polluted than historically.Are there gains from that? London was not that bad by global standards. 2. This was followed by the benefits of COVID lockdowns (not a phrase often used!) as pollution dropped much further. 3. Is this effect even across London? Suburbs vs centre, different types of housing etc.? I gre…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
HEPA filters are counterproductive in standard air purifiers. Air purifiers pump their cleaned air directly into the dirty air of the room. It doesn't matter if that cleaned air is extremely clean, because it's immediately mixed with dirty air. What actually matters is how much clean air you produce: the "clean air delivery rate" (CADR). The more effective the filter the more it restricts airflow. If a filter is only…
So EVs are better than ICE for air quality, but fewer cars even better.
So punchline, probably a good idea to electrify all the cars yeah?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, the only places to build houses with reasonable costs are in areas that weren’t already built out with very expensive houses. Which will tend to be less desirable areas, by definition. One approach, of course, would be to also make existing houses less expensive/desirable. Notably, wealthy people tend to have the resources to fight efforts to do that.
The other approach is to expand what land is available to build on. I understand that in the UK, farmers consider it a lottery win if they get planning permission for some of their farmland to become housing. Despite what many in the UK think about it "being full", this is mostly an illusion from how cramped are the parts in which the houses are allowed to go; the country as a whole is mostly undeveloped. (There are…
Building on farmland has national security concerns (as countries are slowly realizing), as the country ends up dependent on foreign food imports after awhile. Can't grow food effectively when there is a subdivision there instead eh?
In most high demand areas (which are the ones everyone is complaining about, generally), all the decent land (or even just 'normal' land) is already developed.
Bonus - next time around, even the flood plain land might be 'too expensive' to develop on, and folks will only be able to afford houses at the dump, or in a swamp, or the like. Yay.
A few things standout to me from the article. 1. London when the ULEZ was brought in was already a lot less polluted than historically.Are there gains from that? London was not that bad by global standards. 2. This was followed by the benefits of COVID lockdowns (not a phrase often used!) as pollution dropped much further. 3. Is this effect even across London? Suburbs vs centre, different types of housing etc.? I gre…
2. Definitely kickstarted it, but we're looking at taking that impact and continuing it for some 5 years after covid ended now.
3. You can look at the ULEZ map and it really covers everything but the outer tube line suburbs [1].
5. The control group in Luton, presumably, has the same lifestyle changes - it's not that far away (about 30 miles), so it is as close as you can get to a one to one comparison, not accounting for the fact that Luton is likely to be more deprived than London (especially in the council estates, which have horrible reputations).
[1] - https://tfl.gov.uk/ruc-cdn/static/cms/images/ulezdetailedmap...
