Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Air pollution cancer breakthrough will rewrite the rules

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 71 posts

Re: Air pollution cancer breakthrough will rewrite the rules

#41

Post by goodpoint »

gniv wrote: post #22

> 99% of people in the world live in places where air pollution exceeds the WHO guidelines Wow. I knew cities are polluted but this is extreme. In 50 years we might look at pollution as we look at smoking now, a terrible self-inflicted wound on civilization that took way too long to acknowledge and fix.

> In 50 years we might look at pollution as we look at smoking now, a terrible self-inflicted wound on civilization

I'm convinced in 500 years we'll look as today's civilization as barbarian.

Like drug addicts, we know we are poisoning ourselves and destroying the natural resources we depend on and we cannot stop.

Re: Air pollution cancer breakthrough will rewrite the rules

#43

Post by flakeoil »

highwaylights wrote: post #38
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the fraud of the whole Dieselgate scandal. We were all getting excess NO2 pumped out of diesel engines. Effectively shortening all our lifespans.

Diesel is a scandal many orders of magnitude bigger than asbestos and smoking, and we'll look back on it with that reverence. That in the UK most diesel drivers remove their particulate filters to increase fuel efficiency (meaning that essentially every white van on the road is rolling coal like a Texan), makes it all the worse. It's not even the lung damage, the brain damage that's been caused (there's ongoing resea…

> in the UK most diesel drivers remove their particulate filters

Are you sure about that? Sound quite crazy to me.

> to increase fuel efficiency

How much would that save?

> Diesel is a scandal

Yes, what the car manufacturers did is horrible and it is also horrible that governments did not find it out or enforce it. An even bigger scandal is that UK diesel drivers remove their particulate filters to save a few bucks. How insane and selfish do you have to be to do that?

Re: Air pollution cancer breakthrough will rewrite the rules

#44

Post by ryukafalz »

gniv wrote: post #22

> 99% of people in the world live in places where air pollution exceeds the WHO guidelines Wow. I knew cities are polluted but this is extreme. In 50 years we might look at pollution as we look at smoking now, a terrible self-inflicted wound on civilization that took way too long to acknowledge and fix.

It’s the suburbs too. Not hard to see why: we’ve reshaped our society around cars, and they’re spewing pollutants into the air everywhere.

EVs won’t necessarily improve this, by the way: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...

> The outcome is critically dependent upon the extent of regenerative braking relative to use of friction brakes on the BEV, but overall there will be only modest changes to the total local emissions of particles from a passenger car built to current emissions standards.

Re: Air pollution cancer breakthrough will rewrite the rules

#45

Post by soulofmischief »

goodpoint wrote: post #41
gniv wrote: post #22

> 99% of people in the world live in places where air pollution exceeds the WHO guidelines Wow. I knew cities are polluted but this is extreme. In 50 years we might look at pollution as we look at smoking now, a terrible self-inflicted wound on civilization that took way too long to acknowledge and fix.

> In 50 years we might look at pollution as we look at smoking now, a terrible self-inflicted wound on civilization I'm convinced in 500 years we'll look as today's civilization as barbarian. Like drug addicts, we know we are poisoning ourselves and destroying the natural resources we depend on and we cannot stop.

Why wait? I see modern society as barbaric right now.

Re: Air pollution cancer breakthrough will rewrite the rules

#46

Post by argiopetech »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #24
gniv wrote: post #22

> 99% of people in the world live in places where air pollution exceeds the WHO guidelines Wow. I knew cities are polluted but this is extreme. In 50 years we might look at pollution as we look at smoking now, a terrible self-inflicted wound on civilization that took way too long to acknowledge and fix.

Don't forget the fraud of the whole Dieselgate scandal. We were all getting excess NO2 pumped out of diesel engines. Effectively shortening all our lifespans.

While Dieselgate was certainly a scandal, it was more significant as an example (now known to be one of many) of cheating than as an act of NOx pollution. The NOx standard for an average heavy-duty truck/bus allows (by my math) 3.8x more NOx per hour than VWs were emitting before the scandal and subsequent fixes. There are more heavy-duty trucks and busses (16 million) on the roads today in the USA than there were non-conforming TDI engines sold in the entire world (11 million), and the trucks run many more hours per day.

I'm not trying to diminish the severity of VW lying to the public, but we shouldn't hold Dieselgate up as a unique (or even particularly egregious) act of pollution.

The calculus may be different for Europe, but they still have 6 million trucks and busses on the roads.

Re: Air pollution cancer breakthrough will rewrite the rules

#47

Post by phlofy »

tartoran wrote: post #42

Wonderful, don’t worry about polition, just take this pill… I know it’s cynical take but we should take pollution way more seriously in the place

Don't know about you but I'd rather not get cancer while we sort out our polution problems, thank you very much.

Re: Air pollution cancer breakthrough will rewrite the rules

#48

Post by radu_floricica »

flakeoil wrote: post #43
highwaylights wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diesel is a scandal many orders of magnitude bigger than asbestos and smoking, and we'll look back on it with that reverence. That in the UK most diesel drivers remove their particulate filters to increase fuel efficiency (meaning that essentially every white van on the road is rolling coal like a Texan), makes it all the worse. It's not even the lung damage, the brain damage that's been caused (there's ongoing resea…

> in the UK most diesel drivers remove their particulate filters Are you sure about that? Sound quite crazy to me. > to increase fuel efficiency How much would that save? > Diesel is a scandal Yes, what the car manufacturers did is horrible and it is also horrible that governments did not find it out or enforce it. An even bigger scandal is that UK diesel drivers remove their particulate filters to save a few bucks.…

Also cost. It's about EUR200 to (illegally) remove it, and quite a bit more to change it every 100k or so (numbers are not exact, been a while since I researched).

Re: Air pollution cancer breakthrough will rewrite the rules

#50

Post by sendfoods »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #37
thebeastie wrote: post #5

Proponents of fasting will love this, since the idea is that not eating for a while will cause the body to scavenge for this old / damaged cell material.

Spermidine does this as well. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15548627.2018.1... If you want to know how to increase it ask me how.

> If you want to know how to increase it ask me how.

how?

Post reply on HN