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

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331–340 of 426 posts

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

#331
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s not obvious to most customers that a corner’s been cut. Same reason most new construction in the US sucks. You can safely put a washer and dryer on the upper floor of a house if you add a proper floor drain, but you’re unlikely to see anyone add a floor drain in new construction because buyers aren’t looking for it. Now multiply that by everything a buyer isn’t looking for and you’re talking real money.

> You can safely put a washer and dryer on the upper floor of a house if you add a proper floor drain European here, we've always been placing washer/dryer stacks in our bathrooms without needing floor drains. We have machines with a system called Aquastop [1] that stop the water flow if the machine detects a leak inside the system. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquastop

There’s a wide range of such designs due to the various different failure modes from false positives to the kinds of leaks resulting in 10’s of thousands in damages they are supposed to prevent.

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

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those of us who don’t can just plug in at home.

Except for the many many people who don't have off street parking.

Who lives in the country that doesn't have "off street parking"? I'm having trouble envisioning that.

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

#333
In centuries gone past, members of the bourgeoisie would be directed by their doctors to summer homes and country estates so they could "convalesce in the countryside". It seems there was something to it, or at least there is now. (Even back then, it was explicitly about "fresh air".)

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

#334
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.

People don't fire their chimneys or have garden bonfires much any more, either.

Tell that to Germans. Winter air here is extremely bad.

Rising natural gas prices due to the Ukraine war also made even more people install fireplaces (as if that was cheaper).

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

#335
post #207

Seems electric cars produce the same or sometimes more non combustion particulates than ICE cars, eg. bits of road and tire that are flung into the air while driving. So EVs are better than ICE for air quality, but fewer cars even better.

But london tube have order of magnitude of dust pollution and buses damage roads (aka pollute) 30,000 (yes 30k) times more due to weight.

How do you get 30k?

A new Routemaster double decker weighs 12.6 tonne and carries up to 80 passengers. A typical car weighs 1.6 tonne and carries up to 4 passengers, they both have two axles. If we guess at half the rated passenger count then we have:

  Bus damages the road (12.6/1.6)^4 = 3845 times as much as a single car.
But it carries 20 times as many people so the damage is only 192 times per person. Still a lot of course but other pollutants such as NOx are surely so much less that it can be justified.

I'm sure my calculation is imprecise but surely not that far out. What have I missed or misunderstood?

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

#336

How about chopping down all of the London Plane trees next? Absolutely disastrous for public health. They are also all over Barcelona and cause nothing but respiratory misery. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/04/scourge-of-londo...

What other effects would that have?

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

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the many many people who don't have off street parking.

Who lives in the country that doesn't have "off street parking"? I'm having trouble envisioning that.

I'm having trouble envisioning that.

Yeah that seems to be the general problem here. Electric car champions and city dwellers living in a bubble.

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

#338

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 ?

Consider that every single human being on the planet carries around a lithium battery in their pocket, at a large percentage of those batteries have experienced such damage that would destroy the glass screen on those devices, and yet people are not bursting into flames regularly, and even the defective batteries that Samsung distributed for a while only made events extremely rare.

Lithium batteries are pretty safe in practice.

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a generator at the end of my street in a shipping container sized metal box, it also has a mini office and loo, and is used by the construction workers digging holes in the road. It has company spiel written on the side, promoting the box's environmental credentials, including the punchline: 'Zero NOX when generator not in use'. No shit Sherlock.

I look forward to the day coke is marketed as “zero fat!”

Why are you still looking?

During the 90s "Fat is evil" craze, all yogurt was replaced with "Fat free" yogurt that had 100 extra calories worth of sugar.

The yogurt aisle in the US is still primarily made up of this garbage product category which exists based on utter falsehoods pushed by the sugar industry. 30 years later and we are still constrained by what ignorant fad chasers in the 90s did.

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

#340

China has 350 million electric two-wheelers, 20 million EVs. China reduced air pollution from transportation by 80% in a decade. Delhi: 442. Lahore: 334. Beijing: 16. These are the levels of PM 2.5, one of the principle measures for air pollution, on November 19. How China cleaned up its air pollution – and what that meant for the climate: https://theconversation.com/how-china-cleaned-up-its-air-pol...

That’s part of it but I also think education, no caste system, efficient corruption etc. I sometimes watch those Indian manufacturing videos and it amazes me how much India is living in the past.

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