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

bbc.com

251–260 of 426 posts

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

#251
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.

Reform is not a far right party. It is important not to polarise.

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

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until one has a battery thermal runaway event. Or an entire truckload of batteries catches fire. StasheD is an engineer and firefighter, quite eye opening. https://youtu.be/diaUMNONpvw?si=7lxYS8iJHLvCTUkt

The odds of an EV catching fire are lower than for a gasoline vehicle. And safer, less-flammable kinds of battery are in development. Less-flammable kinds of gasoline are not.

Is that an aged adjusted statistic?

Or is it comparing with the entire gasoline vehicle fleet?

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

#253
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Absolutely. It's annoying though that EV's need that extra Darth Vader on wheels sound to warn pedestrians, I'd prefer them to be as quiet as possible.

A lot of jurisdictions have laws that say electric cars must emit thatbnoise while driving. Which is basically because you might not be able to hear them over the louder sound of gas cars. I hope that that requirement can go away if we get to near 100% electric.

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

#254
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironic, considering it was Johnson that started it before Khan "took the flak"

Conservatives flipped on multiple of their policies after Reform's success on local election in 2025 and started to copy Reform UK. Even the Labour shifter right after 2025.

How's Reform UK Ltd. done since then? They've lost 2 by-elections and beaten a bin. Sterling job I guess if you listen to any of their members.

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That’s a hyper local measurement, and temperature dependant. You’d sure notice if the air in your kitchen was swooshing around at 671 miles per hour.

It squeezes me with approximately the weight of an elephant sitting on my chest. But humans are adapted to this and don't notice. It helps that the insides of my lungs are being squeezed outwards by the same force. Otherwise I surely couldn't breathe.

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

#257
Europe should hurry up adopting ULEZ in every dense urban area. It's completely worth it in terms of health, neurological development, noise and quality of life, and has practically no downsides but "boohoo" from those who make everything into a culture war. A good start would be to immediately ban all two-stroke mopeds aka "super polluters" (emitting 50x as much PM2.5 as a truck), and then follow up with Diesel trucks and delivery vehicles.

It's ridiculous that we voluntarily emit fossil fuel and oil fumes in our densest urban areas.

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

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odds of an EV catching fire are lower than for a gasoline vehicle. And safer, less-flammable kinds of battery are in development. Less-flammable kinds of gasoline are not.

Is that an aged adjusted statistic? Or is it comparing with the entire gasoline vehicle fleet ?

Why ask things that you can easily look up?

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

#259

- Fuck diesel cars [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 war…

- Fuck two stroke engines even more

"Levels in the raw 2S scooter exhaust were as high as 300,000 μg m−3 or 146 p.p.m.(v) from idling. The EU annual mean limit for the protection of human health is 5 μg m−3 (ref. 13), while the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommends that workers wear special breathing equipment when exposed to benzene at levels exceeding 1 p.p.m. for 15 min. Waiting in traffic behind a 2S scooter, for example, at junctions and while the scooter is idling, may therefore be highly deleterious to health." [0]: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms4749

But cities are full of shitty mopeds and old Vespas, for no benefit but cultural cosplay reasons.

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

#260
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…

You don't need to seperate the clean and dirty air. Mixing them isn't as efficient but it should still be roughly 63% efficient (1-1/e).

The point isn’t that the HEPA filter won’t work under those conditions, it’s that if you can get away with not separating the clean and dirty air, you can achieve better filtration overall with a higher flow, lower resistance filter at a lower noise level. HEPA filters shine in use cases where you need single-pass filtration, like vacuum cleaner output filters or clean room air filters. If you don’t separate clean and dirty air, the filter will still work, but you aren’t taking advantage of its main distinguishing quality, which is its single-pass filtration performance.

If you get to recycle the air through the filter several times, MERV-13 offers much better performance tradeoffs for a residential air purifier because you can recycle the air through it much faster at acceptable noise levels. My home air purifier recycles the volume of my home every 15 minutes or so, vs HEPA filters which produce totally clean air, but since it just mixes with the dirty air that doesn’t matter as much as the rate at which it cleans air.

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