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

bbc.com

101–110 of 426 posts

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

#101
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…

Also he had the kid switch to smoking filtereds

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good start, but for VOCs and gases you'll need activated carbon. Those 2-in-1 filters do exist but cost more. And many are scams because they don't have enough volume of activated carbon.

Getting rid of the VOC source, if possible, is much easier than trying to filter it. > Those 2-in-1 filters do exist but cost more. And many are scams because they don't have enough volume of activated carbon. Any filter with a little bit of carbon added is going to be useless after a few days, or maybe even hours. The only VOC filters that work have multiple pounds of carbon, with the good filters having upwards of…

I was referring to the gases from the cars on the highway more than easily removed indoor sources.

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

#103
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.

You can switch it off, or make it play one of several different ridiculous sounds.

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

#104
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't it depend on the mix of diesel/petrol/electric? In particular many cities ban or restrict diesel.

Tyre pollution is significant regardless of fuel source.

EV's have 100% reduction of NOx/tailpipe VOCs, 100% reduction in soot/tailpipe particulates, 70% reduction in brake pad dust (due to regenerative braking), in exchange for 25% increase in tire wear.

Vehicles are capped at emissions of 3mg/mile of particulates and 30mg/mile of VOC's. Something like 1-2mg of tire material actually becomes airborne PM10 particles every mile (and only about 10% of that for PM2.5 particles).

So, EV's really do a great job reducing emissions from 35mg/mile to https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11636205/#:~:text=W...

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

#106
post #36
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.

Pretty sure that's due to the tube.

Yeah, seems way better now than it was in the 90s though. They’ve improved the ventilation a lot.

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

#107
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not like they do it on purpose rubbing hands

Housing development happens at random?

Developers build apartments where they can make money from them, in other words where they can rent them for enough that they'll make back their investment. It's very expensive to build housing, so the only way to make the investment back and have low rental prices is to try to make the building costs as low as possible. A big part of those costs is the price of land.

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

#108
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.

Bloody Sadiq Kahn and his militant sharia ulez improving the health of forriners. /s

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

#110
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?

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.
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