Air Pollution Harm To Unborn Babies May Be Global Health Catastrophe, Warn Doctors (theguardian.com) 132
Air pollution significantly increases the risk of low birth weight in babies, leading to lifelong damage to health, according to a large new study. From a report: The research was conducted in London, UK, but its implications for many millions of women in cities around the world with far worse air pollution are "something approaching a public health catastrophe," the doctors involved said. Globally, two billion children -- 90% of all children -- are exposed to air pollution above World Health Organization guidelines. A Unicef study also published on Wednesday found that 17 million babies suffer air six times more toxic than the guidelines. The team said that there are no reliable ways for women in cities to avoid chronic exposure to air pollution during pregnancy and called for urgent action from governments to cut pollution from vehicles and other sources.
Re:fake news! The Unborn Are Not People! (Score:3)
Got to be fake news, since the overlords with stock in Planned Parenthood have informed us that the unborn aren't people, and thus, can't be harmed by pollution or abortion.
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While I commend your use of satire, and sarcasm. Sadly enough, I fear there are groups who believe this type of things. I often fear that I may had caused the Flat Earther movements myself, from a few Sarcastic comments I had made 20 years ago online, making fun of climate deniers, by making up some stupid scientific sounding explanation on why the world was flat. After Trump became president and the rise of the Flat Earther. I fear ever using Satire and Sarcasm publicly without a disclaimer would cause
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Given the weight problems of some people, if this planet is spherical, it will be flat by the time they are finished roaming around,
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If the weight problems are severe enough, everything will eventually self-shape into a sphere again, due to the laws of physics.
Re:fake news! (Score:4, Insightful)
As for cars, modern vehicles emit a lot less particulates than old ones. Despite an increase in car ownership and usage, cars aren't even the number one contributor to particulates anymore in many places. If you want to improve air quality, in most cases it isn't cars that should be addressed first. The problem is not flat earthers denying the impact their vehicles have, but environmentalists tilting at the same old windmills instead of tackling actual major sources of air pollution. Though to be fair, in certain cities, older cars and especially 2 stroke mopeds certainly are part of the problem. And I'm speaking of particulate and carcinogenic emissions only of course, not greenhouse gases.
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Unfortunately, for example, the UK is currently demonstrating that city air pollution causes increased deaths and disability from heart and lung disease that is as high as any "third world" country.
Cars, busses, trucks are the main cause of pollution in the UK (and most cities around the world).
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Lots more cars than trucks or busses. Lots more pollution from cars.
Here's a good one:
Diesel cars 10x more toxic than trucks and busses.
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
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That's only half true [gizmodo.com]. To summarize, the major cause of air pollution in many cities is when ammonia from farms combines with pollution from vehicles to form PM 2.5.
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I think this is just Mother Nature helping clean the pool a bit
We'll see if you feel the same when it's your child that is born with defects.
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Again. Why should there be defective children born in a society where abortion on demand until the very last moment is a viciously defended thing?
My own home environment was terribly polluted. So I am not terribly impressed by this narrative. Been there. Done that.
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Because some defects may not be apparent until birth?
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Again. Why should there be defective children born in a society where abortion on demand until the very last moment is a viciously defended thing?
Anti-abortion activists are the vicious ones killing real human beings. Pro-choice activists are the ones peacefully trying to maintain their medical autonomy.
Further, arguments about eugenics are a red-herring. Most reasonable people accept abortion as the only ethical choice if an embryo has a severe lung defect and can only possibly be born to suffocate seconds after the cord is cut. But the main argument is "it's my medical decision, not the state's, and certainly not the decision of a bunch of peop
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Let me define "choice" for you. It's when you can decide between more than one thing. Lots of pregnant women don't want to get a late-term abortion.
Nor do I see viciousness on the part of those defending abortion rights, only on the part of those attacking them. Let me know when abortion-rights activist form cordons around places where anti-abortion groups
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Exactly right. Because of course, to malthusian eugenicists, if you aren't blond haired blue eyed with white skin, it's a birth defect.
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That's the problem with these kinds of studies. They take the worst of the worst conditions and then try to apply the conclusions to planet as a whole.
So, what they want to say is that my Power stroke Diesel Pickup should be outlawed because in China or India, pollution is crazy bad in densely populated cities.
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You only need to look at the pollution maps in rural areas. Green fields may only be two blocks away from the housing developments along the freeway and main surface roads, but the pollution on those streets is as a bad a major city.
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Actually, I have looked at those pollution map and your statement is complete bullshit. Also, there are very real environmental indicators that you can look to (like the local plant life) to see how polluted your local environment really is (or is not).
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Your diesel truck should be banned because it is killing you and your neighbors every time you drive it.
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But it's so effective on Antifa punks.
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Actually the study was done in London on babies born there. The harm was local.
Re:No surprises... (Score:4, Insightful)
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." - from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
These were very cold words from a very cold character that has come to epitomize callousness and indifference in the popular mind. Ebenezer Scrooge the money-lending, usury-gouging skinflint stands for everything that is wrong with your kind of comment, but there it is modded up to +3. Shame, Slashdot, shame. If endorsing the villian of a Dickens book doesn't grab you as shameful, rest assured that the "decrease the surplus population" comment is today most frequently applied to Republicans. [youtube.com]
"Are there no prisons? Are there no work farms?"
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"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." - from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
These were very cold words from a very cold character that has come to epitomize callousness and indifference in the popular mind. Ebenezer Scrooge the money-lending, usury-gouging skinflint stands for everything that is wrong with your kind of comment, but there it is modded up to +3.
Fair enough, but let's not forget that Dickens made Scrooge a villain who was redeemed by the spirits of Christmas. He changed his ways dramatically and become very charitable for the rest of his life.
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Well, thank goodness polluted air doesn't cross international borders.
Re: No surprises... (Score:2)
So Chinese coal furnace pollution sneaks across the pacific and helps explain the smog in Los Angeles?
You understand that as pollution travels, it dissipates, right?
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China and the US don't share an international border.
No problem then.
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Headline: "Air Pollution Harm To Unborn Babies May Be Global Health Catastrophe, Warn Doctors"
First sentence of TFS: "The research was conducted in London, UK"
From TFA: "The study analysed all live births in Greater London over four years"
Admittedly, London is a fairly dirty city that has been violating EU pollution limits forever. Even so, according to this [numbeo.com] it's similar to New York and other first world cities.
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Anyone who enjoys living there doesn't understand the true meanings of enjoying and living.
FTFY
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Stacking people like cordwood is a lot more environmentally efficient than spreading the same number of people out all over the landscape. I have seen a city of over thirty million that actually works. The trains run on time, up to five subway levels deep plus an elevated level, there's no crime and life is pretty good. Why do cities like that have to be Asian?
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Stacking people like cordwood is a lot more environmentally efficient than spreading the same number of people out all over the landscape. I have seen a city of over thirty million that actually works. The trains run on time, up to five subway levels deep plus an elevated level, there's no crime and life is pretty good. Why do cities like that have to be Asian?
You specifically describe Tokyo correct? Do you mean 'Why do cities like that have to be Japanese? A big part of it is cultural and Japanese culture itself tends to manifest in cleanliness, precision, conformity, punctuality, respect and social order. This isn't true for many other cultures of the world many of which are Asian.
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Stacking people like cordwood is a lot more environmentally efficient than spreading the same number of people out all over the landscape. I have seen a city of over thirty million that actually works. The trains run on time, up to five subway levels deep plus an elevated level, there's no crime and life is pretty good. Why do cities like that have to be Asian?
Because they require a certain degree of totalitarianism to work, as well as a population who isn't already used to having more space and freedom.
Re: No surprises... (Score:2)
I have seen a city of over thirty million that actually works. The trains run on time, up to five subway levels deep plus an elevated level, there's no crime and life is pretty good. Why do cities like that have to be Asian?
Right - how is it Asian people figured out something that we white people couldn't/haven't?
Please define "no crime" and "life is pretty good" - I suspect the former is a lie, and the latter only applies to the folks You personally met, not all 30 Million residents.
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I can only report what I saw: subways where everyone was well behaved no matter where in the city I was going, even if I got off in a neighborhood of what we would call project housing for the poor: plain concrete high-rises with small neighborhood parks where old people watched over flocks of grandchildren at play. No violence, no graffiti, no fear.
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A large contributor to that is, that the Asian folks live in very homogeneous societies.
The world is way, way overpopulated (Score:1, Insightful)
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Most Western countries, where a good fraction of such pollution is still produced, is in a general demographic decline. Population increases, which will level out, cannot be the only explanation for this.
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Population increases, which will level out, cannot be the only explanation for this.
Actually, population decrease is a major cause. As birthrates fall, adults have more time to work, and less money is spent on education and other childhood expenses. This means that more resources can be channeled into industrialization and economic growth. This is known as a "demographic dividend".
China implemented their one-child policy 38 years ago, when China and India had similar GDPs and produced similar amounts of pollution. China's population growth slowed dramatically, and has started to decl
Troll, Minus Infinity (Score:1)
It's not an "unborn baby", it's a "choice".
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> It's not an "unborn baby", it's a "choice".
Too true. They only care about the fetus when it suits their particular narrative du jour. Tomorrow proto-humans will just be fodder for the garbage cans again.
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You're only encouraging him. Don't do that.
Re: I'm committed to clean air and water (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't believe a blastocyst or unformed fetus is a child. It's a triviality to me: personhood laws are ludicrous, insurance should cover birth control, and HSAs and FSAs should cover condoms (to control the spread of STDs).
What's a travesty is that so many children face neglect and abuse in our over-populated foster home system, and in families who didn't want and can't support a child. We treat children like chickens: fight to have them birthed whenever we get a hint that some breeder hen might have found a rooster, and then roll them through the factory farm with no real care toward their emotional needs. A piece of skin scraping which happens to have DNA distinct from those in the human population isn't a person, nor is it a concern; it takes a good while before it starts to change into something more.
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> I don't believe a blastocyst or unformed fetus is a child.
So no insurance coverage for preemies then?
The line between "child" and "unformed fetus" blurs every day due to advances and technology. Depending on your mood, one lump of cells could either be dumpster fodder or a human child we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to save.
Re: I'm committed to clean air and water (Score:4, Informative)
A premature birth is only viable because it contains not only fully-formed organs, but a fully self-supporting system. That system may be insufficient and, depending on who you ask, viability may include viability if hooked up to a support machine rather than just viability to survive without care.
this [blogspot.com] is a blastocyst.
Generally, abortions occur prior to 9 weeks. Beyond 9 weeks, you need surgical abortion; up to that point, you can have a drug-induced abortion. At about 9 weeks, the heart finishes dividing into chambers; internal organs are roughed-out, but nowhere near developed. Even the neural tube has only just curled up to take the place of the brain and started differentiating into scaffolding, not yet becoming an actual brain.
Viability is generally agreed upon at 24 weeks, although the low-point number is 20 weeks. Interestingly enough, premature infants seem to not have active default-mode neural networks (basic brain function) until around 30 weeks. In simple terms, a fetus isn't capable of being aware until around 25-30 weeks, although we think they can respond to (but possibly not experience) pain around 20-24.
The 20-24 week delineation avoids the upper end of the extreme, landing before the brain is capable of maybe being aware. The 9-week medical abortion limit is well before brain formation.
Remember as well: you're a person, being a sum of your experiences and your ability to think, reason, and engage in self-preservation responses. A fetus doesn't have a stress response and so no display of self-preservation behavior. It's rather conservative to consider an infant a "person" even at birth; yet we have this wonderful option to identify a missed menstrual cycle (at 4 weeks), test for pregnancy, and perform a drug-induced abortion (by 9 weeks), far before one would seriously begin to wonder if it's perhaps a living being and not just a blob of tissue. 24-week abortions may be legal in many places, but they're horrendously-stressful on the mother (surgery) and generally-unpleasant, so it's easy to encourage people to make that decision early.
Depending on your mood, one lump of cells could either be dumpster fodder or a human child we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to save.
Surprisingly, my parents were vocally against abortion until my mom got pregnant again--then they had an abortion a few weeks later. They seem to have forgotten this since then. Mood seems to vary.
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Learn the distinction between inside a woman's body and outside. It's important.
Here's a helpful guide.
http://www.coursewareobjects.c... [coursewareobjects.com]
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insurance should cover birth control, and HSAs and FSAs should cover condoms (to control the spread of STDs).
Should car insurance cover oil changes, tires, and fuel? That's a serious question.
Health insurance, at least at one time, was to cover unexpected health costs that are too expensive for a person to cover out of pocket with ease. I remember someone commenting that treating a broken arm used to cost maybe $200. The poor kid would be driven to a hospital by a parent, school nurse, or other responsible adult, the visit with the physician would be about $50, maybe an x-ray would be taken for $50, $50 for the
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Should car insurance cover oil changes, tires, and fuel? That's a serious question.
Car insurance actually doesn't cover damage done to your car by lack of maintenance: if you don't change the oil and the engine dies, your insurer won't replace it (or even total out your vehicle!).
Health insurance, on the other hand, covers all of the costs of pregnancy. As such, the insurer has a risk stake in helping to avoid unwanted pregnancy. This is the same reason insurers now 100% cover wellness and surcharge you if you don't get physicals.
If you make insurance pay for condoms then you'll have to follow new rules.
HSAs and FSAs are paid out of your own pocket. You h
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Even an AC should understand such a simple argument.
It's not about personal responsibility here unless you want to walk that line. Either we can cover the costs of condoms and other forms of birth control (up to and including abortions), or we can down the line cover the cost of a child that grew up in terrible conditions, probably without a dad, to drain public education resources (school isn't cheap), government support and welfare resources (those aren't cheap either), and of course tying up courts and p
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Obviously a fetus becomes a human with full rights at some time during pregnancy, but because it's yet another scientific issue that has become politicized, there are only two positions that one may take:
1. Full human rights begin at the moment of conception ("Life");
2. Full human rights begin at the instant of birth ("Choice").
You are not permitted to use any other stage of development as your criterion.
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3. Full human rights begin on the 18th birthday. 75th trimester abortions are legalized for either parent. 'Abortion' right comes with the child support payment, and optionally, ends the payments.
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We have a nominal date of conception. It isn't perfect, but it's usable.
Therefore, we can set a specific time after the nominal date of conception as the limit.
I really don't have any respect for people trying to force their frames of reference on me.
A catastrophe? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it were truly a catastrophe, there should be many large cities where whole generations should have perished. In the US, prior to EPA reforms, many cities had far worse air pollution, yet the maternity wards in their hospitals weren't empty.
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Another week another alarmist The Guardian "The world is ending!" article. It's what they do.
There were (Score:2)
Also even before the EPA was founded there was work being done to clean up the air. Especially in the 30s-60s b
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If it were truly a catastrophe, there should be many large cities where whole generations should have perished.
You don't need to outright kill a population for it to be a catastrophe. Heck it would probably be a preferred outcome over disabling them or inflicting chronic illnesses on them instead.
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Since then, we've gotten used to children almost always growing up to become adults. High infant mortality rates are now generally considered bad.
If you'd rather go back to the time when the average family had four kids growing up to get some reasonable assurance of two surviving, well, I wouldn't rather do that.
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When the oil reserves eventually run out homodieselparticulitus won't be able to survive.
Total malarkey (Score:2, Informative)
The air has never been cleaner. 50 years ago there were noxious fuming automobiles and trucks. Factories spewed coal black smoke into the hazy gray skies. Half the population puffed on cigars and cigarettes, indoors, outdoors, even on airplanes, and in other public places -- even elevators. At least in America the problem has been solved.
So what if China doesn't care. That's their right. It's their country.
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We just offshored all the manufacturing industries to China and closed them down in the USA and Europe. Problem solved.
Re:Total malarkey (Score:5, Insightful)
We just offshored all the manufacturing industries to China and closed them down in the USA and Europe. Problem solved, once and for all.
But we all share the same pl-
ONCE AND FOR ALL!
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You seem to be ignoring air pollution crises that exist today in London, Delhi, Bejing as well as these US cities:
Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA.
Bakersfield, CA.
Fresno-Madera, CA.
Visalia-Porterville-Hanford, CA.
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ.
Modesto-Merced, CA.
San Diego-Carlsbad, CA.
Sacramento-Roseville, CA.
While it is true (Score:2)
Let me know if anyone gets the reference.
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And in some, the damage makes them unable to distinguish between "their" and "they're"....
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Too busy thinking of the apostrophe's.
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And in others, the damage makes them unable to distinguish between "are" and "as"....
Maybe a byproduct - intentional - or not, hardly (Score:2)
If humans coming out of this environment and are somewhat handicapped, they may be less critical, having to deal with their own issues.
And - does anyone think about fixing it - just look at the current power structure and what the priorities there are.. In particular, a retard on top...
For Reference... (Score:2)
Is it really so bad (Score:4, Informative)
I keep wondering when I read things like this: is it really so much worse than it was in the 1970s? OK, some places where economic growth has exploded recently may be much much dirtier now than they were then. But I went to London a few times in the late 1980s, and back then the city stank of exhaust fumes. Nowadays that is not the case anymore. I live in the Netherlands and I saw the big rivers getting cleaner, sensitive animals like salmon and beaver being reintroduced successfully, and the air in Amsterdam definitely improved. So I wonder: how come we hear more and more warnings like this? I can think of a few causes: fearmongery, increased knowledge about the impact of exhaust gases on your health, or maybe the planet as a whole really got a lot dirtier. But what is it really?
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Is that relevant - how it is today compared to some previous time?
Fact is that within London the study has measured a significant correlation of air pollution to low birth weight - meaning: even in today's London there's room for improvement.
If we can improve the lives of people shouldn't we try to?
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Of course we should, but that is beside the point I try to make here. I have the impression that thanks to all kind of legislation a lot of improvement of the environment has been achieved during the last forty years, at least in my part of the world. And still we get more and more quite specific warnings: not the ones we got in the 1970s ("If we go on like this the planet will be doomed!") but more warnings about specific kinds of pollution, be it CO2 or fine particles or NOx. So I'd like to know what the
"Unborn Babies" (Score:2, Interesting)
No such thing, they're just disposable discardable spare-parts "fetuses". Right?
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You start creating something as an act of creation or love or something. You work hard on it, and risk your health, and go through a lot of inconvenience. You may or may not be able to start all over. Then, depending on the pollution level, someone will generate a random number to see if the pollution proxies come in and smash what you've been working on to pieces.
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We could see species adaptions there that don't exist anywhere else.
So, once we pollute the environment we have to keep doing it or risk a population failure?
I'm only half serious. If we have humans that evolve to thrive in an environment laced with steroids in the water, antibiotics in the meat, and ammonia in the air and then later take that all away then we might have people getting sick from diseases that would normally have been killed off before.
I remember my sister telling me about places that began fertilizing crops with human sewage seeing a reduction in cases of
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We could see species adaptions there that donâ(TM)t exist anywhere else.
Just what we need. The first superhuman turns out to be a supervillain with the powers to telemarket to everyone at the same time.
no reliable methods? (Score:1)
Or Or Or Or (Score:1)