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The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

bbc.com

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Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#51

Post by hatsunearu »

wongarsu wrote: post #43
pietrovismara wrote: post #25

This pandemic gave me so much to think about air pollution. It puzzles me how we can have, just in Europe, around 800k yearly premature deaths caused by pollution[0] and still not care at all. On the other hand, covid-19 hasn't caused yet as many deaths but we quickly intervened, as it should be. Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution? - [0]: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/…

The EU has limits for suspended particulate matter, and at least in Germany all the major cities are battling to stay within the thresholds. A few cities ban diesel vehicles in the city, others put expensive air purifiers next to the measuring stations. People seem to love their cars more than their health, and other measures like modernizing heating don't seem to have much traction.

> others put expensive air purifiers next to the measuring stations.

well ain't that some shit. How is that crap legal??

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#52

Post by leetcrew »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #36
pmiller2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want the real reason? Fixing air pollution quickly would disrupt the global economy on a long term scale. Capitalism doesn't like that. Edit: Y'all so predictable.

The pandemic proved that disrupting the global economy to save lives wasn't an issue at all. The issue is the right people feeling threatened for their lives. As soon as you can convince rich people that their survival is at risk, and they can't just fly off to another planet or live in their own biosphere somewhere in the Alps, something will be done.

you (and the other commenters) are ignoring the time component, which is quite important here. when quarantine started, most people thought it would only be for a few weeks or a couple months at the most. obviously some people are resisting, but most are willing to make a short-term sacrifice to help slow the spread. telling people they need to permanently reduce their level of consumption to combat climate change is a much bigger ask.

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#53

Post by jokethrowaway »

pmiller2 wrote: post #32
pietrovismara wrote: post #25

This pandemic gave me so much to think about air pollution. It puzzles me how we can have, just in Europe, around 800k yearly premature deaths caused by pollution[0] and still not care at all. On the other hand, covid-19 hasn't caused yet as many deaths but we quickly intervened, as it should be. Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution? - [0]: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/…

You want the real reason? Fixing air pollution quickly would disrupt the global economy on a long term scale. Capitalism doesn't like that. Edit: Y'all so predictable.

The real reason is that people are too poor to care about pollution or those dead people, same as anywhere else in the world. Actually, the poorer the country the less people care about the environment or infections.

It's the same with covid too, it's the government which had to force close the economy.

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#54

Post by another-dave »

scaladev wrote: post #41
satysin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in [redacted], [redacted] and we often have high air pollution warnings and you really can feel it in the air. During lockdown, back in April and May, there was a noticeable difference in the air quality. It felt different. When we went out for a walk you could also tell the difference in noise pollution from there being so few cars on the roads. It was lovely. There is a church nearby that we can sometimes he…

I am not trying to undervalue your problems, but I suggest looking at some third world countries for some perspective. I live in one such place. In winter (which lasts for about 8-9 months each year) the air pollution is _horrifyingly_ bad: 250-300 µg/m³ of PM2.5 at day time, and 900-1500 µg/m³ each night. I am not bullshitting you, this is how we live. You can feel the taste of coal on tour tongue in a completely se…

The air pollution is at such a high level that people are dying from it.

I do count myself lucky that I'm not contending with levels in places like Delhi but personally, I don't want people to put it in perspective and conclude that comparatively it's not so bad.

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#55

Post by lambdadmitry »

kmfrk wrote: post #45

A lot of people are coming to terms with bad air quality, even in their homes. Air purifiers are selling like hotcakes, even where wildfires aren't a concern. One of the concerns I hope will stick after this thing is (largely) over. Something I would love for a HNer to solve is SEO for air purifiers: basically all Google results are absolute bullshit that make it harder, not easier, to make an informed choice. Much l…

I do believe that in a lot of cases people would be better served by measuring it first. I live in central London near a small street on the first floor and measured PM2.5 for a year, it barely ever went over 2ug/m3, with 10ug/m3 being safe long term threshold set by the WHO, which makes any PM2.5 air purification useless. Now, NO2 is a bit different and I haven't measured it, but common household air purifiers do nothing for it.

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#56

Post by LatteLazy »

I remember reading about covid death numbers and uncertainty around them. No one dies of HIV, they die of secondary infections. No one dies of obesity, they die of heart failure.

Maybe its time we had immediate, short term and general causes of death?

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#58

Post by lambdadmitry »

stuaxo wrote: post #6

I hope this will lead to changes in roads in London and other places. The closest school to me in London is next to a busy road with twice the legal level of no2, you can see all the buildings along that road are noticeably blacker from exhaust smoke. While electric cars may help a bit, rubber from breaking and tyres is an issue, and cares have been getting much bigger over the last 5 years.

Is the road or the school itself over the legal level of NO2? It does dissipate quite quickly, so it's important.

Dust and particular matter scares are definitely overblown. I live in zone 1, first floor with windows overlooking a small road, and I hardly ever saw PM25 level going over 2ug/m3 in a year I've measured it. Compare that to the safe long term exposure level of 10ug/m3 set by the WHO.

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#59

Post by zajio1am »

stuaxo wrote: post #6

I hope this will lead to changes in roads in London and other places. The closest school to me in London is next to a busy road with twice the legal level of no2, you can see all the buildings along that road are noticeably blacker from exhaust smoke. While electric cars may help a bit, rubber from breaking and tyres is an issue, and cares have been getting much bigger over the last 5 years.

In electric cars particulates from braking are also hugely reduced, as most braking is done by engine / recuperation.

Re: The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

#60

Post by jfk13 »

GordonS wrote: post #30
xiphias2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also PM2.5 is easy to filter out. Any cheap device can filter it out quite efficiently. For NO2 I tried all the most expensive devices, and none of them worked :(

This might be a silly question, but how would you filter stuff "emitted" by tyres?

As it happens, an article related to this came up just a couple of weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25246857
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