cease all travel and live to 88
Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone
141–150 of 426 posts
Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about biking near a highway? E.g. in Chicago the lakeshore bike trail is next to a busy 8 lane highway
I remember I’ve read somewhere that jogging is actually net harmful for health in the city due the air pollution.
Shame you cant remember the source. Ive long since wondered if its actually more deleterious for my health to cycle to work in London due to air quality. I came to the conclusion that youre damned if you do and damned if you dont in the end, as in London at least, many of the tube lines have particulates higher than is considered safe
Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone
#143Anecdata 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.
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?
Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone
#144Earlier 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.
Almost certainly some asbestos dust still in there from prior decades as well, the tube is absolutely filthy and never cleaned properly
Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
The street isn't the problem. Cars and trucks are. If those streets were filled with people walking, cycling, etc., the health penalty of living next to one would vanish overnight.
Ok that's not what I consider a "busy street" but I get your point, need better wording there.
Generally, the busiest streets are pedestrianised; you just can't move that volume of people in cars.
(Actually, the _very_ busiest streets are probably major bus gates (where, again, there are no cars), those can have fairly ridiculous density at peak times.
Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
My anecdote would be the revesre. Living in the country gave me bad hay fever/asthma in the city much less asthma.
Same. I visit my family in London and my sleep improves because of no hay fever. Though then I get black boogers, horrible chalky hair, a renewed sense of misanthropy etc
You need a NMAID Non-Misanthropic Anti-Inflammatory Drug.
Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 particle…
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.
Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That doesn’t solve brake and tire particles. Regen braking means significantly less brake dust, especially at city speeds and with blended braking. > Although…rail might solve those? Trains still have brakes. Some can regen brake but because they usually don’t have batteries they need the rail or overhead gantry to support inputs. But on a passenger-mile basis, I expect an electric train produces essentially no par…
The usual brake on a train that can't do regenerative breaking is a big grid of resistors to dump the energy as heat. It's much less wear and tear than friction brakes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_braking
And diesel hydraulic trains (and some buses) usually use these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retarder_(mechanical_engineeri...
Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone
#149Using scientists being "stunned" should take the same amount of relevance as someone being "slammed" in article titles.
I'm obviously supportive of less pollution etc etc but looking at the actual graph results I wouldn't describe them as 'stunning', the needle barely moved. But of course, they have to have something to make headlines after spending so many million on the study and who knows how many billion on ulez.
I'm not one of these anti ulez people I think it's good. But you can imagine the pressure to spin tepid results into headlines.
Re: Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe at least subways tend to have lousy air: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/subway-air-pollution-dispro... But I expect it's much better in open-air rail systems.
I was thinking open-air yes, tunnels do indeed have major issue. With pollutant concentrations, road tunnels are the same ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13619... ). For all that I did not care for them originally this is probably something full-height platform screen doors help with, assuming the trains themselves are also filtered that would keep the pollutants clear of drivers and users, a…
Impossible to retrofit, of course, but what helps more are big tunnels. Modern ~9m diameter single tunnel systems are a lot better for this than old 3.5m diameter double tunnel systems.