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UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

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Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#41

Post by derefr »

I wonder if they controlled for... why people choose to live where they live. I.e., this wasn’t an RCT; they could just assign people to live near highways or not. So the people who are living near highways are there for a reason.

Are residences near highways, perhaps farther from certain other things, like city centres? Such that a certain type of person (people with pre-existing [perhaps subclinical] mental issues of the type that might make them want to avoid people) would be drawn to live in these residences more than others?

To me, “living near a highway” sounds a lot like a euphemism for “living in the middle of nowhere”, since by definition all arterial roads connecting “somewhere” to “somewhere” through “nowhere” are highways. If you live somewhere isolated that’s accessible at all by road, and you don’t have the budget to build your own long stretch of lane out from the highway, then presumably you live on a highway.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#42

Post by sandworm101 »

derefr wrote: post #37
sandworm101 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what many overlook is many of these particles have nothing to do with emissions. Brake pads and tires turn to dust. So too bits of the road surface are slowly converted to fine particulates. Converting everyone to autodrive teslas powered by fusion reactors wont stop rubber from meeting asphalt. (Switching to manual transmissions would probably reduce the brake dust. Id like to see if european roads suffer as muc…

Tangential question: do trains produce fine particulates where their wheels meet the rail? I.e. is it bad to live near a train (or subway!) line?

Yes but far fewer. The metal turns to dust, but orders of magnitude less quickly than rubber/pads/road surface. The stuff carried by the trains is probably more dangerous than the train itself.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#43

Post by drcross »

papito wrote: post #27
Brakenshire wrote: post #12

Anyone living near a busy road is swimming in particulate matter on the micrometre and nanometre scale, and particles on that scale bypass the normal defences, get into the blood stream and saturate the body. Small particles can even move down nerves, it’s really not surprising that long term exposure causes neurological problems.

Quality of air definitely matters, but I wonder what actually has more negative effect - poor ppm levels or the stress from the noise. People think that's not a big deal and you just get used to it, but the truth is, your brain is ALWAYS processing that noise in the background as a source of potential danger, taking a long-term tall on your mental state. I work in an office with poor CO2 PPM levels, and constant nois…

The depth and breadth of neurological issues could not possibly be explained simply by noise. Humans lived in close quarters for most of our existence which would have included a lot of elevated noise levels.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#44

Post by sandworm101 »

Geeflow wrote: post #39
DenisM wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think Nissan Leaf is particularly good at neck-breaking acceleration, and it probably outnumbers the drag-racing Teslas. Even then, a Tesla isn’t particularly speedy in traffic.

I often drive a Renault Zoe which also isn't a sports car. I frequently leave sports cars behind at the traffic light. From 0-30 kph even the small/cheap electric cars are sport cars. And it is terribly tempting to develop a pedal-to-the-metal habit. So I assume tire dust will increase significantly in the cities.

Rate of acceleration isnt the issue. You may make more dust per second but so long as you are getting to the same end speed, and not spinning tires, the total amount of acceleration is the same.

In my experience, over braking is the greater problem. Front tires degrade more quickly than rears. The average driver brakes far harder than they accelerate.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#45

Post by Reason077 »

papito wrote: post #27
Brakenshire wrote: post #12

Anyone living near a busy road is swimming in particulate matter on the micrometre and nanometre scale, and particles on that scale bypass the normal defences, get into the blood stream and saturate the body. Small particles can even move down nerves, it’s really not surprising that long term exposure causes neurological problems.

Quality of air definitely matters, but I wonder what actually has more negative effect - poor ppm levels or the stress from the noise. People think that's not a big deal and you just get used to it, but the truth is, your brain is ALWAYS processing that noise in the background as a source of potential danger, taking a long-term tall on your mental state. I work in an office with poor CO2 PPM levels, and constant nois…

Yes, I wonder about the noise issue too. In my personal experience, living near a busy road had a huge effect on sleep quality which in turn increases stress levels and reduces wellbeing.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#46

Post by wkearney99 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #19
Brakenshire wrote: post #12

Anyone living near a busy road is swimming in particulate matter on the micrometre and nanometre scale, and particles on that scale bypass the normal defences, get into the blood stream and saturate the body. Small particles can even move down nerves, it’s really not surprising that long term exposure causes neurological problems.

I live in a side street about 100 yards from a major avenue in my city. You can see on our front porch the impact of particulates... it’s covered in gross sticky dust once we do our spring cleaning.

Likewise being under a flight path to a major airport. The white deck on our boat at a marina on the approach to BWI gets all kinds of particulates on it from the exhaust of planes passing overhead.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#47

Post by Reason077 »

zzzeek wrote: post #29
KallDrexx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how different living next to a highway is to living in a dense urban city though (like NYC) and if it's different why? In either case you have a lot of car traffic (probably closer to your place of residence than people that live close to a highway) Not to mention if you live in a dense urban city then you will spend more time walking directly next to traffic.

the one thing that strikes me as different, having lived in manhattan / queens / brooklyn for 25 years, is that by a highway there is high speed traffic, which is extremely loud and sudden, and a lot of it is heavy commercial traffic, heavier than what is feasible within an urban environment. the next time you're at a rest stop off of I95 just stand outside and listen to the noise of huge trucks blowing by at 80mph.…

I agree about light being an issue in cities, too. And it's gotten worse with the advent of LED streetlights.

But it's usually pretty easy to install blackout curtains if you want them. Or even just to buy a comfortable eye-mask for sleeping. Effective sound-proofing is much more difficult and expensive.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#48

Post by iguy »

derefr wrote: post #41

I wonder if they controlled for... why people choose to live where they live. I.e., this wasn’t an RCT; they could just assign people to live near highways or not. So the people who are living near highways are there for a reason. Are residences near highways, perhaps farther from certain other things, like city centres? Such that a certain type of person (people with pre-existing [perhaps subclinical] mental issues…

Or just that being close to a highway is often unpleasant, so those who can afford more pleasant parts of town have already done so. Surely they tried to control for wealth but it's easy to do so imperfectly. (Haven't read the paper, though!)

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#50

Post by Reason077 »

woodpanel wrote: post #26
mrob wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switching to electric vehicles would reduce brake dust even more, because they use regenerative breaking to avoid using the break pads when possible.

while switching to electric vehicles likely reduces break dust, such switch would simultaneously increase dust from tires, since increased acceleration. The latter being already 80% of urban "particulate matter" pollution.

Tyre wear does release particulate matter, but it's mostly heavy, large particles that end up on the road and get washed away by weather.

With the exception of tunnels, where heavy particles are constantly being churned up from the road surface and re-circulated into the air, tyre and brake wear is a relatively minor contributor to urban air pollution.

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