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

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

#361

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.

I live in a rich and socialist country. Guess who lives next to the highway...

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

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Safe enough to not be allowed on air freight. Safe enough to not be allowed in checked baggage on commercial passenger aircraft. Safe enough to kill e-bike riders, safe enough to kill people at home charging their e-bike / e-scooter / electric car. Perfectly safe. No trade offs, just safety.

All of those apply to gasoline

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

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A street full of EVs in a traffic jam is also pretty good. No exhaust pollution and low tire wear due to low speeds and low acceleration.

Sure, but it still has the 90% of issues caused by ICE cars.

EVs aren’t a panacea but they’re a lot better than a 10% improvement. You still have tires but losing engine particulates, fumes, noise, and heat is a huge win in a city - bike or walk near one and you can feel the difference.

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

#364

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…

Too bad the tire particulates likely get worse, both because EVs are heavy, and because they have more low-end torque and encourage driving that leads to more tire wear. I don't have sources but it's my educated guess from recent experience with a few EVs But I'll take it if diesels and two-strokes will die in a fire

There’s a massive confound around vehicle size, too: EV buyers are less likely to get massive trucks and SUVs because that extra bulk drives cost up and range down, and when you’re comparing tire particulates the numbers will be more favorable for a EV sedan compared to an ICE SUV.

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

#365
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.

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 suffered a bit from NO2 living near Oxford Street which got mentions such as "London’s Oxford Street is world’s worst place for toxic NO2 pollutant" https://www.cityam.com/londons-oxford-street-worlds-worst-pl...

It's better now with more EVs and low pollution vehicles and the street should be pedestrianised from October.

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

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never once been in a property that had an exhaust fan sufficient. I’ve had the exhaust on full blast and the spike on the air quality sensor on another floor of the house is rapid and massive. I suspect a sufficient ventilation would require something more like a lab fume hood that can pull a negative pressure on the area around the stove. And from what I have seen, a good number of exhaust fans are straight up…

There's a filter in it you're supposed to change regularly when they're in that configuration.

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

#367

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...

Outdoor pollution ---> Use these for transportation: walk, bicycle, e-scooters, public transit, electric 2 wheeler, EV Indoor pollution ---> Use these for cooking (induction, electric resistance) stove, heatpump waterheater and furnace for HVAC Would also be nice to do: stop using coal, gas power plants. These are usually farther out from cities and probably not the most urgent. (except when Elon Musk or new DCs deci…

One one hand you laud EV cars and on the other you say cars and automobility have killed 60-80 million people (nearly as many as communism).

However what you don't talk about is how much progress as been possible thanks to cars. Like researchers/scientists driving to work.

The switch to EV is happening: but things like packing as many people as possible in cities and preventing them from having a car and giving them authorization to go to the country-side once a year ain't happening any time soon.

We should be celebrating the switch to EVs and to safer cars instead of hating on individual transportation.

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

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What source of energy will provide energy at night or bad weather? I would like to note that batteries at end of life are chemical waste and have to be disposed properly. "End of life electric vehicle batteries in China to 2060 and related resource management implications" https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-026-03555-3 "The EOL batteries contain a wide range of toxic and hazardous materials that can leach into th…

>I would like to note that batteries at end of life are chemical waste and have to be disposed properly. As far as countries like the US is concerned we need to mirror our policies with lead acid batteries. Recycling chains need to be setup and monetary penalties for not recycling a battery when buying a new battery. Ideally I think this should be for lithium batteries from BEV & Home Storage, all the way down to dis…

This already happens. There are many companies recycling batteries. The batteries of tomorrow are the batteries of today. They are permanent infrastructure.

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

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never once been in a property that had an exhaust fan sufficient. I’ve had the exhaust on full blast and the spike on the air quality sensor on another floor of the house is rapid and massive. I suspect a sufficient ventilation would require something more like a lab fume hood that can pull a negative pressure on the area around the stove. And from what I have seen, a good number of exhaust fans are straight up…

There's a filter in it you're supposed to change regularly when they're in that configuration.

They contain a feels good filter to make you think something is happening. But to actually filter the pollution you'd need a activated carbon filter for the n02 and a hepa filter for the smoke. Which none of them contain and would clog rapidly.

It's massively easier to just not create the no2 by replacing gas with induction, and to vent the smoke outside rather than trying to trap it in a filter. I think the introduction of cheap consumer air quality sensors like from IKEA will start to make this problem a lot more visible to people.

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

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar can be deployed in months, produce immediately. Solar is dirt cheap and continues to get cheaper. 21 - 25% efficiency is normal now and most likely we'll have tandem (silicon + peroskvite) with 45% efficiency. With each doubling of production, solar costs continue to go down. In a decade or two, maybe we'll be able to print solar like paper or textile, or spray paint on any surface. Or grow solar from microorga…

It currently takes so long to deploy nuclear in the West, because the West mostly dismantled the nuclear supply chains, starting in 1990s. At that time coal and gas power plants were seen as better than nuclear power plants and no expansion of nuclear energy was expected. For example Germany was still building new coal power plants in 2005-2007. https://energytransition.org/2016/10/germanys-last-new-coal-... https://…

China builds more renewables per month than the nuclear target they’ve very slowly expanded over a half decade and aren’t scheduled to reach until at least 2030. 70% of China’s electric generating capacity will be renewables by 2027. You could replace current global nuclear generating capacity at parity with capacity factor with batteries and solar in under two years.

Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy+ 2026 - https://www.lazard.com/media/kcfconhf/lazards-lcoeplus_vf.pd... [pdf]

> Renewables Remain Lowest Cost New-Build Generation; All Generation Faces Increasing Cost Pressure: Despite rising and inflationary cost pressures across all generation technologies, renewables remain the most cost-competitive form of new-build generation on an unsubsidized basis and will account for the majority of near-term capacity additions in the U.S. Continuous upward revisions to demand projections have driven a sharp increase in announced new-build gas generation despite a 15-year high LCOE, which is expected to continue to rise, and historically long development and equipment delivery timelines.

China Keeps Beating Renewable Targets And Missing Nuclear Ones - https://cleantechnica.com/2026/07/25/china-renewable-targets... - July 25th, 2026

> China set a 2020 wind target of 210 GW and finished the year with about 282 GW. Its solar target was 110 GW, while delivery reached roughly 253 GW. The later commitment to reach at least 1,200 GW of combined wind and solar by 2030 was crossed in 2024, six years early. By the end of 2025, China had about 640 GW of wind and 1,202 GW of solar, for a combined 1,842 GW. Nuclear moved in the other direction: about 50 GW against a 58 GW target in 2020, and about 62 GW against a 70 GW target in 2025. The current goal of 110 GW by 2030 may still be achieved, but the previous record gives no reason to convert it directly into a forecast.

> This is not evidence that Beijing has quietly abandoned nuclear power. China has the world’s largest reactor construction programme, continues approving new units and is building an increasingly domestic supply chain around designs such as Hualong One. The divergence lies between approval and operation. Another difference is that when renewables blow past targets China set much bigger targets, but when nuclear misses targets, the targets don’t change. That difference is harder to explain than the results.

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