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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

#231

Post by 7952 »

graemep wrote: post #196

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…

Particulate pollutant levels decay exponentially and have a substantial drop off with distance. So levels across a large area (like London) are not the whole story.

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

#232

Post by inigyou »

smackeyacky wrote: post #219
patrickk wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re so inclined, you can build your own air purifier with laser cut panels or 3d printed panels and use a cheap ikea air filter and standard PC fans. All the parts are readily available, and user repairable. If you pair if with an Apollo AIR-1 you can have home assistant ramp up and down the fans with a PC fan controller based on live readings of PM2.5 in your home. I did this with the help of Claude code. http…

Didn’t the Apollo 13 crew make an air scrubber out of duct tape and hope? Surely a cardboard box, a box fan and a hepa filter covered in tape gets you 90% there

This was done during COVID and made international news.

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

#233

Post by inigyou »

enquirewithin wrote: post #143
Gigachad wrote: post #133

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.

I’ve often wondered about this. Does the area immediately above where the gas stove was have an exhaust fan that vents to atmosphere? I would have assumed a properly specced exhaust fan would capture and remove combustion products from a gas stove?

Air molecules move randomly at over 300 meters per second (not coincidentally close to the speed of sound).

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

#234

Post by inigyou »

mk89 wrote: post #173
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.

I don't understand why we keep on building right next to highways which are some of the worst things for our health. You don't need to live in the countryside for that. Just stay roughly 1km away from them and the situation is significantly better. There is evidence of a lot of ugly diseases caused by this, without even mentioning the constant 40+ dB background noise.

Because the highways are built to the places where people and jobs are?

Once you build anything of significance, a highway gets built to it anyway.

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

#235

Post by inigyou »

mrec wrote: post #110
glenngillen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yup, especially on the older lines (Northern, Victoria, Jubilee, Bakerloo). Particulate pollution can be two orders of magnitude higher than at street level. This tends to be glossed over when trumpeting the success of ULEZ measures pushing people away from cars and onto public transport, and I say that as a non-car-owner.

Just one more reason to wear an N95 on the Tube.

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

#236

Post by zekrioca »

simonsquiff wrote: post #51
XorNot wrote: post #5

So punchline, probably a good idea to electrify all the cars yeah?

100%, and not just due to no emissions / minimal break dust. The noise reduction is a massive dividend. I used to live in london 10+ years ago, and when I come back I’m stunned by the noise difference, it really is so much quieter especially in central london. EVs everywhere especially replacing the horribly noisy diesel black cabs and buses. Very noticeably different and much more pleasant, and improving all the tim…

That, and even better when coupled with good public transportation.

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

#238

Post by mrob »

OroPla wrote: post #221
mrob wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you only use 99% it means there are small particles you can't catch. Being faster is meaningless if you can never clean the air. Air purifiers are designed to run 24/7 and all they do is catch particles. Eventually all the particles will be caught. The one I got also detects if there is a lot of particles and will spin faster accordingly.

>If you only use 99% it means there are small particles you can't catch.

Air filters don't work like sieves. The smallest particles are easier to block than the mid-sized particles. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_filter_(respirator)

Clean Air Delivery Rate is often specified for specific pollutants. One is smoke, which is mostly small particles.

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

#239

Post by inigyou »

userbinator wrote: post #38

Short-term gains are likely to produce long-term negative effects. Hormesis and natural selection have been driving factor of evolution for a long time.

Anything you can do externally will tend to evolve out. That's why humans can't make their own Vitamin C and half of them need glasses. Keeping a trait in the population does require keeping up the selective prrssure, which is eugenics.

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

#240

Post by pjc50 »

Symbiote wrote: post #89
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.

The amount of wailing about this was unbelievable. London is a terrible city for driving in in the first place, and the idea of 10% of them having to change cars provoked totally absurd responses.

We're going to see the same when EV-only mandates, true zero emissions zones, start appearing across the next decade.

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