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

bbc.com

191–200 of 426 posts

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

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4x the rate is "almost the same"??? https://www.verywellhealth.com/risk-of-lung-cancer-in-former...

The lifetime risk is approximately 1.3% for women and 1.8% for men. For regular smokers: 11.2% for women and 14.8% for men. So about 15 to 30 more likely to get lung cancer. Bringing that down to 4x is close to "almost the same".

Might be that I am not reading probabilities correctly, but how do 1.3% -> 11.2% and 1.8% -> 15% become "15 to 30 times more likely"? Sounds like less then ten times?

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

#192
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.

My anecdote would be the revesre. Living in the country gave me bad hay fever/asthma in the city much less asthma.

You discovered that you have an allergy.

Not exactly the same thing.

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

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 right latches onto anything where a small minority are upset and amplify it. They are the ultimate rage baiters.

Somehow I don’t think that is the exclusive domain of the Right.

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

#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 grew up a the edge of London and the difference in pollution was visible (i.e. you did not need instruments to see signs of it).

4. There was also a reduction in sales of diesel cars which had been heavily encouraged (because of lower CO₂ emissions) in previous decades.

5. As the articles notes, there have been a lot of other changes at roughly the same time. It only mentions one, but there have been significant lifestyle changes, so a lot of potential confounding variables.

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

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You joke, but of course...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/01/fake-tweets...

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

#198
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Indeed.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/18/london-under...

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

#200

Newsflash, living in a healthy environment is healthy!

Of course, but governments and corporations have consistently argued otherwise.

In the UK's far-right media culture, Khan's ULEZ is painted as fringe extremism, not as a common sense public health measure.

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