Live data from Hacker News

High air pollution could diminish exercise benefits by half – study

scienceclock.com

61–70 of 81 posts

Re: High air pollution could diminish exercise benefits by half – study

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please note that air quality in an area varies dramatically over time. You are looking at a current snapshot with maps like that. The map linked below has his more historical data and I can see several _weeks_ this past year in my area (which currently has very good air quality) where the PM 2.5 weekly average exceeded 25ug/m^3. https://map.purpleair.com/air-quality-raw-pm25 Localized phenomena like a neighbor starti…

> Localized phenomena like a neighbor starting a fire, Summer evenings at home in my small Ohio village are often a health hazard, a polluted nightmare driven by the perverse compulsive ignition of so-called 'recreational' yard fires by pyromaniac neighbors. If it is an Ozone Action day and/or a Heat Advisory day, it is near certain that one or more of the Don't Tread On Me jamokes who live nearby will come out of th…

I’m not familiar with Ohio village, but I grew up in unincorporated county land in the Texas boonies. My dad had a burn barrel, and would dump oil into the ground “putting it back from where it came”. Even as a kid, nothing about it felt right. Just that experience alone gives no doubt to service members working the burn pits qualifying for disability

Re: High air pollution could diminish exercise benefits by half – study

#62

And all the while, nothing is done to get old 2-stroke mopeds of the road in Europe. It’s such a low hanging fruit to get those hyper polluters out of cities but in an individualistic society, personal cult status seems more important than common health.

These seemed like the obvious EV conversion target to me before cars for Europe. Why have these not been converted to EV?

Re: High air pollution could diminish exercise benefits by half – study

#63

If you have ever been to a city that has banned fossil fuels then you can absolutely tell the difference, to most of the overpopulated European cities that I have visited. It’s astonishing how peaceful and comfortable it is to run or even stroll when every breath is just 100% refreshing; you feel 10 pounds lighter. Meanwhile the blackened filter of our home HVAC needs replacement again… and allergies.

Which cities are you referring to? Some cities have policies that discourage gas and diesel cars, and plans to outlaw them by 2030, but I'm not aware of any that have banned them outright yet.

Zermatt (Switzerland) is one

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermatt#Transport

This is a more fun / less clinical read: https://www.motortrend.com/news/swiss-town-went-straight-hor...

Re: High air pollution could diminish exercise benefits by half – study

#64
post #44
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the future electric cars and heat pumps will improve the situation.

When everyone on this planet want to live like the average European or American heat pumps and EVs won't save you from pollution

To my knowledge air quality in Europe and the US is better than in many places where people aspire to live like the average European or American.

Re: High air pollution could diminish exercise benefits by half – study

#65
post #48
post #46

I am hoping by the end of the decade smartphones start having pm2.5 and co2 sensors built-in and then next decade smartwatches Once EVERYONE starts seeing air-quality on their phones every hour of the day everywhere they are, they will start to care and then eventually, maybe do something about the politics to improve air-quality Imagine the game-changer if air-quality was in the next iPhone They already make sensors…

Yeah it’d be cool if the phones had sensors. Everyone can see local AQI already though; weather app has AQI, and you can tap on it for a local region map, as well as a table of pollutant details.

the "local AQI" is usually from a single government sensor for 100 mile radius which is useless as pollution is highly localized (think neighbor idiots burning leaves all day)

also doesn't tell you indoor air quality which where you sleep REALLY matters if the co2 is sky high

best third party AQI network is PurpleAIR but even with them certain cities have few or none

https://map.purpleair.com/air-quality-standards-us-epa-aqi

airgradient barely has any in some US states

https://www.airgradient.com/map/

US doesn't even have mandatory air-quality sensors at airports, which it should because that's where most of the other weather measurements are coming from on most apps, even if you are 30-50 miles away

Re: High air pollution could diminish exercise benefits by half – study

#66
post #18

I want to pull two quotes from the article. > “Our findings emphasise that exercise remains beneficial even in polluted environments,” lead researcher Professor Po-Wen Ku said in a statement. [...] “We don’t want to discourage people from exercising outdoors,” said Co-author Professor Paola Zaninotto. The health effects of exercise outdoors are combined from two effects: - Positive effects due to exercise. These star…

I remember an interview with the producthead of Google Earth (the desktop client), she said when photographing all the streets, the cars also checked for air pollution: She mentioned a capital in Europe, where the amount of particles under certain sizes differed by 10x from one crossing to the next.

Surely it wasn't because the Google car was driving behind an ancient diesel with a blown catalytic converter...

Re: High air pollution could diminish exercise benefits by half – study

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, fossil fuel (pollution) has been marketed as a masculine culture thing now. In the free (=individualistic) West, I expect it to stick around for at least another 50 years.

I expect less than 10. Once you drive an EV, every big noisy diesel feels impotent and gutless. Kind of like a small yappy dog that’s all bark and no bite. There’s just nothing like the zero-lag gut-punching acceleration of an EV.

Like many other "masculine culture" things, the propaganda sold to men about what's masculine doesn't necessarily have a connection to reality.

Re: High air pollution could diminish exercise benefits by half – study

#68
Hiking in the hills / mountains is one of the healthiest sports there is, unless you already have messed up legs. Or other mountain sports, but at least those I do have additional risks of injury or death that most folks would find unacceptable.

Not everybody has easy access to mountains, but then we all forge our paths through life and at least at certain points of life we have some wiggle room to choose where to spend the rest of it. Polluted big cities may (or may not) bring more wealth but there is a cost.

I look from my balcony on a large forest which is natural reserve, begins right in front of us. On the other side of the village there is a 15km band of vineyards on steep hills. I go up and end up in wild hills fully covered in pine forests and actually OK for winter sports (planning to do skitour there tomorrow morning). I go the other side and its 100km wide lake with crystal clear water, highly swimmable in summer. Highway is few km away, 100m lower.

Coming to city makes me realize the various not OK smells I didn't sense when I was living there. Not regretting the move (but sure as hell hoping some part of work will remain WFH so its not just kids reaping benefits of living on a more healthy and overall better place)

Re: High air pollution could diminish exercise benefits by half – study

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, fossil fuel (pollution) has been marketed as a masculine culture thing now. In the free (=individualistic) West, I expect it to stick around for at least another 50 years.

I expect less than 10. Once you drive an EV, every big noisy diesel feels impotent and gutless. Kind of like a small yappy dog that’s all bark and no bite. There’s just nothing like the zero-lag gut-punching acceleration of an EV.

The industry is trying their best to fight against it. The EU is currently planning to ban new ICE cars from 2035, but the conservative German government & car lobbyists are trying to get them to drop those plans... That, combined with high tariffs for cheap asian EVs will probably artificially keep us on ICEs for a while longer.

Re: High air pollution could diminish exercise benefits by half – study

#70
post #65
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it’d be cool if the phones had sensors. Everyone can see local AQI already though; weather app has AQI, and you can tap on it for a local region map, as well as a table of pollutant details.

the "local AQI" is usually from a single government sensor for 100 mile radius which is useless as pollution is highly localized (think neighbor idiots burning leaves all day) also doesn't tell you indoor air quality which where you sleep REALLY matters if the co2 is sky high best third party AQI network is PurpleAIR but even with them certain cities have few or none https://map.purpleair.com/air-quality-standards-us…

> the “local AQI” is usually from a single government sensor for 100 mile radius

What’s your source on this? IPhone’s AQI report says it’s from Breezometer, which links to Google’s Enterprise AQI offerings, which claim 500m resolution and multiple sources (“over 70 local indexes”). I don’t know but would speculate that Purple Air might be one of the licensed sources.

https://mapsplatform.google.com/maps-products/air-quality/

Post reply on HN