Action To Tackle Air Pollution Failing To Keep Up With Research

Globally, outdoor air pollution is second only to tobacco as greatest cause of lung and respiratory cancers. From a report: This year marks a decade since the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) gathered in Lyon, France, to unanimously declare that air pollution caused cancer in humans. Air pollution was classified as a type 1 carcinogen, the most certain category possible. This was mainly based on more than 20 years of research in particle pollution and lung cancer. The number of research studies has almost doubled since the IARC meeting in Lyon, with even more evidence on lung cancer in never-smokers, but governmental action to reduce air pollution has not kept up.

Globally, outdoor air pollution is second only to tobacco as the greatest cause of lung and respiratory cancers. This holds true in almost all parts of the world, with a notable exception of low-income countries where people (especially women and children) also breathe smoke in their homes from cooking on open fires. In the past 10 years new studies have linked air pollution to other cancers, including breast and bladder cancer. These have also been associated with nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant from diesel traffic that is being targeted by low emissions zones in many cities. There is emerging evidence of links to childhood leukaemia too. For those people with lung cancer, smokers and never-smokers, their prognosis and survival appears to be reduced if they live in a polluted area. Research includes a recent study of more than a quarter of a million people with lung cancer in Pennsylvania. This raises questions about the impact of air pollution on the way that cancer progresses and how it may change the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

Of course it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Because only one thing matters. Carbon. Carbon, carbon, carbon! The Marsha Brady of environmental causes.

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[rossdee]

At the moment in western hemisphere the biggest pollution is burning vegetation. This has increased due to droughts made worse by global warming.

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[mspohr]

Just stop burning stuff.
Stop burning everything. It's all bad. Wood, grass, fossil fuels. All bad.
Electrify everything powered by wind and solar.

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[smoot123]

If there is one thing Biden should be commended for it is the gas stove ban.

Well, let's talk about that. From summary and fine article, they're talking about particulate pollution. Gas, AFAIK, emits very few particles. Burning coal and maybe diesel fuel does, at least without soot scrubbers.

So, if I wanted to do something quickly about particulate pollution, I'd encourage fracking and a rapid conversion of coal power plants to natural gas. We know that works, can be done rapidly, and makes economic sense. It's a great mitigation measure. I'd also encourage exporting fracking techno

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[Shugart]

Professor Richard Muller tried to help the Chinese with fracking. They wouldn't listen. It seems there is more to Chinese politics than the central committee. Local politics made it impossible to develop their natural gas resources. The only search results I got were about criticism of Muller for even trying. I couldn't find anything about what he said about the problems he ran into.

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

Except for fracking poisons water supplies. You wanna shit where you eat? Also, fracking is one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases; the wells, piping, & storage leak massive amounts of gas into the atmosphere & the industry shows no interest in cleaning that up. It makes far more sense to dump fossil fuels as quickly as possible & go for renewables as far as is feasible.

But back to the particulate pollution problem, a lot of it comes from rubber tyres, soot from exhaust, etc.. We can

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[Shugart]

Perhaps but China in 2022 was building a coal fired power plant every week. Pick your poison.

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

What's that got to do with directing future investments into energy supply? If there's a feasible choice between fracking vs renewables, which is better to choose? Yeah, that's rhetorical.

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[Shugart]

True but China isn't going full renewable. They will not do that. So you've got natural gas, coal and nuclear to fill the gap.

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

Name a country that actually is. I mean in deed, not word.

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[rally2xs]

Bottom line: Only way to zero pollution is zero humans. Otherwise, humans need energy that they can afford, at least at these population levels, and burning stuff is how to afford it.

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

Nope. Renewables are cheaper. Much cheaper. The only reasons we're still using fossil fuels are because of inertia & corruption.

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[mspohr]

Burning natural gas also produces NOx which are toxic. "Natural" gas also contains things like benzene, mercury and sulfates.

Exposure to elevated levels of these air pollutants can lead to adverse health outcomes, including respiratory symptoms, cardiovascular disease, and cancer

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[smoot123]

Burning natural gas also produces NOx which are toxic.

Well, "can" produce NOx. I don't know that a well tuned and ventilated gas stove does at a level anyone but the State of California regulators cares about. But let's not quibble.

That's what I couldn't tell from the article summary. Are they talking particulate pollution or all combustion products?

Not surprised

[Dadoo]

Can't say I'm surprised. One of my wife's best friends died of lung cancer a few years ago. The weird thing is that it was the same type of cancer smokers get, and she'd never touched tobacco in her life, and I'm pretty sure neither of her parents smoked.

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[Shugart]

Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer.

Second only to tobacco

[ickleberry]

This might be true but something like 9 out of 10 lung cancer cases come from tobacco smoking. Here in Europe air quality has been steadily improving since the 90s but for the past 10 years they are making an absolutely huge deal out of the air pollution that remains and I can't quite figure out why

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[smoot123]

Here in Europe air quality has been steadily improving since the 90s but for the past 10 years they are making an absolutely huge deal out of the air pollution that remains and I can't quite figure out why

I'll assume that was a real question. Advocacy groups rarely go away because once you build an organization and steady funding stream, it's very hard to say "good job team, problem solved, time to close up shop." There are always more battles to fight and fighting them makes you relevant. More to the point, it keeps you employed.

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[timeOday]

Some things are just timeless truths, regardless of whether they are actually true. Try posting "nobody starves in America" and see how that goes. You will be accused of being confidently incorrect [reddit.com] and 'staggeringly ignorant' by a bunch of people who are supremely confident, yet never quite manage to point to who it is exactly that is starving in America.

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[techno-vampire]

A great example of this is the March of Dimes [wikipedia.org] which was founded by FDR in 1938 to fight polio, and reinvented itself to fight birth defects after the Saulk vaccine came out.

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[Kurrelgyre]

There are maladies caused by air pollution that aren't lung cancer.

PM2.5

[ZipNada]

The small particle pollution appears to be the most damaging. Mainly from fossil fuels, we need to get away from them ASAP.

"Emissions from combustion of gasoline, oil, diesel fuel or wood produce much of the PM2.5 pollution found in outdoor air"
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resourc... [ca.gov]

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[buck-yar]

Is that Tesla made with the stroke of a magic wand? Nope. Its made by a huge network of factories. Factories which produce obscene amounts of pollution. Then there's the rare earth raw materials, for which electric vehicles need significantly more than internal combustion engine cars. Lithium, etc is mined with great harm to the environment by poverty people in often in African countries. Modern day slavery IMO.
But its ok because its Democrats doing it. These green scams are brought to you by corporate cont

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[ZipNada]

Tesla's are made "by a huge network of factories"? Who told you that? Is the Nevada gigafactory a huge network?
https://www.fastcompany.com/90... [fastcompany.com]

The lifecycle of battery electric vehicles reduces GHG emissions by 65% compared to a petrol cars today. And almost no lithium comes from Africa, the largest producer is Australia by far. Chile is a distant second place.

Fusion Energy is Behind!

[Arzaboa]

Action to get us to fusion energy is also behind behind the research.

--
It is impossible to imagine a more complete fusion with nature than that of the Gypsy. - Franz Liszt

This is BS, at least in the US

[HBI]

The second leading cause of lung cancer is radon, which cannot be considered air pollution, as it is a natural constituent of the atmosphere.

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[HBI]

Sure, not filtering all the uranium out of the soil - which is all over the place, including in the oceans - amounts to dumping oil back into the ground.

What a fucking idiot.

Wait????

[MostlAnonymousCoward]

An international agency with no authority and funded by cancer research gathered to say that based on correlation data dense population areas which had higher pollution (as well as other problems) tended to have more cancer. Then within 10 years we havenâ(TM)t banned all air pollution. Even though production of products that produce less air pollution causes air pollutionâ¦. Please reach out. I have some beach front property in Arizona to sell you.

Compare the effects from space:

[John Smith 2318]

The automobile vs tobacco. Just look at it objectively.

Not shit

[atomicalgebra]

There are so many dumb fucks who oppose nuclear energy in favor of fossil fuels. We are not going to solve air pollution and climate change without nuclear energy you dumb fucks.

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[rally2xs]

Fusion.

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[groobly]

Fairy dust.

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[rally2xs]

Things are moving remarkably quickly in that arena now. There is reason for optimism WRT fusion.

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[atomicalgebra]

Fusion is a delaying tactic for fission. Show me a single working fusion reactor that produces more energy than it consumes.

Re: Not shit

[rally2xs]

That's the thing... it happened just a few months ago.

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[atomicalgebra]

Nope. I saId "Show me a single working fusion reactor that produces more energy than it consumes." Recent fusion advancements don't actually do that. But please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

monomania

[groobly]

The problem began when the EPA declared CO_2 to be "pollution" even though it has zero toxicity. Scotus agreed. Now the only thing that matters to the monomaniacal is CO_2.