Polluted Air Shortens Human Lifespans More Than Tobacco, Study Finds (wsj.com) 104
Cigarette smoking and other uses of tobacco shave an average of 2.2 years off lifespans globally. But merely breathing -- if the air is polluted -- is more damaging to human health. From a report: That is the conclusion of a report published Tuesday by the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute, which identified air pollution as the world's top threat to public health, responsible for reducing average life expectancy by 2.3 years worldwide. China, once the poster child for smog-filled skies, has been a surprise success story. Between 2013 and 2021, the world's second-largest economy improved overall air quality by more than 40% while the average lifespan of residents increased by more than two years, according to the report.
By contrast, four countries in South Asia -- India, Bangladesh Nepal and Pakistan -- accounted for more than half of the total years of life lost globally due to pollution in the atmosphere over the same eight years. India alone was responsible for nearly 60% of the growth in air pollution across the globe during that time. If India were to meet World Health Organization guidelines for particulate pollution, the life expectancy for residents of capital city New Delhi would increase by 12 years. An increase in wildfires in places such as California and Canada has renewed attention on the dangers of polluted air. Around 350 cities globally suffer the same level of dangerous haze that enveloped New York City in June at least once a year, according to calculations from environmental think tank Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which aggregates data from dozens of official government sources.
By contrast, four countries in South Asia -- India, Bangladesh Nepal and Pakistan -- accounted for more than half of the total years of life lost globally due to pollution in the atmosphere over the same eight years. India alone was responsible for nearly 60% of the growth in air pollution across the globe during that time. If India were to meet World Health Organization guidelines for particulate pollution, the life expectancy for residents of capital city New Delhi would increase by 12 years. An increase in wildfires in places such as California and Canada has renewed attention on the dangers of polluted air. Around 350 cities globally suffer the same level of dangerous haze that enveloped New York City in June at least once a year, according to calculations from environmental think tank Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which aggregates data from dozens of official government sources.
Air pollution in India (Score:5, Interesting)
A note that, unlike the pollution in China, the worst air pollution in India is not due to industry or automobiles, but due to the agricultural practice of "stubble burning," which is clearing fields for the next season's planting by burning. This can be replaced with other practices... but the other practices require equipment that is expensive, whereas just burning the fields costs pretty much nothing.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
whereas in some US cities . . . (Score:1)
whereas in parts of some US cities, the leading air pollutant is bullets . . . also quite effective for shortening lives . . .
Air pollution has increased, also life expectancy (Score:3)
India - Historical Life Expectancy Data
Year Life Expectancy Growth Rate
2023 70.42 0.330%
2022 70.19 0.330%
2021 69.96 0.330%
2020 69.73 0.330%
2019 69.50 0.330%
2018 69.27 0.430%
2017 68.97 0.440%
2016 68.67 0.440%
2015 68.37 0.440%
2014 68.07 0.440%
2013 67.77 0.670%
2012 67.32 0.670%
2011 66.87 0.670%
2010 66.43 0.680%
2009 65.98 0.680%
2008 65.53 0.620%
2007 65.12 0.630%
2006 64.72 0.630%
2005 64.31 0.640%
2004 63.91 0.640%
2003 63.50 0.640%
2002 63.09 0.650%
2001 62.69 0.650%
2000 62.28 0.660%
https://www.macrotrends.net/co... [macrotrends.net]
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Could the reason for this trend be demonstrated by your own sig?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Huge number: Number of years of life lost when a young child dies.
Tiny number: Proportion of people who die in childhood.
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life expectancy at 65 years also show a general trend of going up. It's by only a few years over two decades but it does eliminate infant mortality from the statistics.
Re:Air pollution has increased, also life expectan (Score:4, Insightful)
Correlation versus causation, buddy.
Increased access to medical services, clean water, health education and so on probably increased even more, yielding a net increase in life expectancy despite the negative impact of air pollution.
Do you realize the numbers you presented show India being BEHIND the worldwide average? It's ranked 126th out of 201 in 2023, which is shameful. Still, came a long way from the average of 36.63 years, back in the 50s.
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Your are correct. Increased access to all the beneficial things you list is made possible by economic development, which has the downside of pollution.
There is a choice. No growth, less pollution, lower life expectancy, or high growth, pollution, increased life expectancy. As always, there are trade-offs. Yes, lowering pollution is highly desirable, but there are downsides and unintended consequences.
Pollution is a necessary evil on the path the fully-developed nation status. Once that is achieved, the
All Effects, Not One (Score:2)
That's just better sanitation (Score:2)
Not all trasnport (Score:2)
Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh gee, he would have lived to 95, but smoking killed him at92 and a half years - what a waste of life! 8^/.
Indeed, with many human's need to castigate other people as "the others", the main effect is it gives non-smokers a much needed hate target. If not smoking, they'd find some other thing to use to channel their hate.
I don't smoke - quit in 1976. It's a remarkably stupid habit, but I don't have the hatred so many do.
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think they should have used that confusing comparison. What they are saying is that bad air quality in general is taking more total years of life from the global population than smoking now - but that's an average of everybody including nonsmokers. In other words much of the reason is because fewer people are smoking.
Are we not collectively past the hate of smokers for the most part? It's such a small minority now and the restrictions everywhere have mostly eliminated secondhand smoke. Seeing a smoker at all has become a bit of a peculiarity.
I suspect we'll see somewhat of a resurgence with weed, but few people chain smoke it and many who use it don't smoke it.
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Are we not collectively past the hate of smokers for the most part?
Perhaps where you are - smokers in my area are as hated at the same level as KKK members hate people with dark skin tone.
You underestimate the human nature of needing to hate the other.
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Perhaps where you are - smokers in my area are as hated at the same level as KKK members hate people with dark skin tone.
I have a tendency to dislike people who throw butts (or other garbage) on the ground, get into crowded elevators reeking of smoke (or BO), or stand next to the entrances to buildings and blow smoke (cigarette, vape, or otherwise) into busy thoroughfares. Is that what smokers in your area are up to? I can't say I've ever met someone whose immediate reaction to seeing a person enjoying a cigarette off in the distance is "hatred".
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Life expectancy is a difficult thing to measure and compare as it's just a quantitative number that doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. As you said, shaving two years off your life expectancy when most people in the developed world might look at 90+ years with the tail end of it finished in a nursing home might actually look like a bonus.
But when that 2.2 years actually means a lung cancer at 50 and the inability to walk a flight of stairs without having to take several breaks, it's a huge diff
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While it is true that smoking isn't that good for ya, it isn't like that 2.2 years less on average is coming off of the good side of life.
Oh gee, he would have lived to 95, but smoking killed him at92 and a half years - what a waste of life! 8^/.
Nope. Healthspan quite reliably follows lifespan. If you get the ax 2 years earlier, then this probably means you're getting the disease which made last years of your life miserable 2 years earlier too. Conversely, exercise and healthy eating habits extend healthspan just as much as they extend lifespan.
And YES, that's *on average*, don't bother retelling the story about your grandma who smoked like chimney and lived to 100.
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And YES, that's *on average*, don't bother retelling the story about your grandma who smoked like chimney and lived to 100.
My Grams didn't smoke, and she only lived until her mid 90's died and died of Alzheimers over a 15 year period. At least she didn't have lung cancer that took her out in maybe 2-3 years.
At least she didn't smoke.
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You have no idea what you're talking about, dying of cancer is typically an absolutely shit way to die. Any sensible person would choose the extra three years even if they are mediocre.
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You have no idea what you're talking about, dying of cancer is typically an absolutely shit way to die. Any sensible person would choose the extra three years even if they are mediocre.
I know a whole lot more than you. Let me tell you about my MIL. Didn't drink or smoke. Exercised regularly. At 68, she became demented, and had to be put in a home - She screamed and cried every day, and begged us to kill her. Things like Haldol eliminated the screaming, but not the constant crying. Her doctor put her on anti Alzheimer's drugs. ten years of her living that way. Pissing and shitting in Depends, she had no Idea who she was but she did no that she was desperately unhappy. The really cool thin
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I'm sorry you and your family had to experience that. Dementia sucks. Cancer also sucks.
Thankfully, we've learned a lot about how to treat many forms of cancer in their early stages. Although late-stage cancer still can't usually be treated in any way that's much preferable to the cancer itself.
There's still WAY too much we don't know about Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. There are a lot of known correlations, and a lot of speculation, but we're still far from being able to prevent, treat, or c
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I'm sorry you and your family had to experience that. Dementia sucks. Cancer also sucks.
Indeed!
Thankfully, we've learned a lot about how to treat many forms of cancer in their early stages. Although late-stage cancer still can't usually be treated in any way that's much preferable to the cancer itself.
There's still WAY too much we don't know about Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. There are a lot of known correlations, and a lot of speculation, but we're still far from being able to prevent, treat, or cure it.
The thing that I'm concerned about is say we do cure Alzheimer's. What will kill old people next?
I've studied a lot of longevity matters, largely out of curiosity. There is one really big elephant in the room. The composition of our skeletons is not designed for the years of service we are thinking about. They don't even last our present lifetimes. Calcium phosphate and cartilage are actually designed for the lifespans we originally evolved with. I see these old husks of people who are bedridden
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Some humans have lived to be 70-ish, if they survived infant mortality, for most of recorded history.
Today, in less dysfunctional societies than my own, many people live to the 80s now while still in reasonably good health.
If we learned from those societies and tried to do more of the beneficial things they're doing, and less of the hugely dysfunctional things we are (for instance, eating a diet of almost entirely processed and non-nutritious "food"), we could probably achieve similar results.
As someone in
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Some humans have lived to be 70-ish, if they survived infant mortality, for most of recorded history.
Today, in less dysfunctional societies than my own, many people live to the 80s now while still in reasonably good health.
If we learned from those societies and tried to do more of the beneficial things they're doing, and less of the hugely dysfunctional things we are (for instance, eating a diet of almost entirely processed and non-nutritious "food"), we could probably achieve similar results.
As someone in late middle age, I'm less concerned about when I die, and much more concerned about making sure I don't become any more of a burden to my family, financially or otherwise, than I already am now.
It's always interesting - we've allowed more people to live longer, but we've not cracked a seeming unmoveable barrier - there aren't any 300 year olds around.
And yes, My main goal is not to be a burden.
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Some further thoughts drawn from my faith tradition, which I realize most people no longer believe, but I still do.
The Biblical account has people born before the Flood living for hundreds of years, or in a handful of cases close to a thousand.
But then the Flood. Only about 8 people survive that.
After the Flood, lifespans start to drop, at first quite quickly, possibly due to greatly reduced genetic diversity and inbreeding/incest immediately afterward (some of it documented in Genesis). They then shorte
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What an ignorant take, and interesting that it was your takeaway from the article. Sure, the purpose of the article was to give us a reason to hate smokers.
Sucks to be you.
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Those averages are because some bodies clean up smoke better than others. Some people have zero affect on lifespan. The ones more susceptible lose 10-15 from heart disease or 20-30 from lung cancer. Averages hide the impact for the people most affected.
I kind of like breathing (Score:2)
So yeah, it is coming off your prime years, just in the form of an overall worse quality of life. You're not noticing it because human beings are adaptable animals, so we get used to it. Like how somebody with Anemia might get used to it, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't feel a whol
Air pollution isn't more poisonous than tobacco (Score:3)
Understand what they're comparing here. They're using figures based on deaths in the entire population. The entire population breathes the polluted air. Not all of the population smokes. Looked at from one point of view, that *does* make air pollution more dangerous, since everybody has to breathe it. But be aware what the figures mean.
Sliding scale (Score:3)
How polluted is "polluted", there is a huge sliding scale.
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Not just that, but what is cigarette smoke? Air pollution is more hazardous than air pollution!
Smoking tobacco should be illegal in public. It should be legal in your car if and only if you keep the windows rolled up. If cigarette smoke is so great, you should want more of it! You should want it absorbed into your upholstery! I certainly don't want it coming into my car, which is what commonly happens when people smoke with their windows down. Smoking cannabis is illegal in public even though it has been sh
CO_2 (Score:2)
Not CO_2.
My head is spinning (Score:2)
For what reason would someone perform a comparative analysis based on dissimilar criteria?
"The world's second-largest economy improved overall air quality by more than 40% while the average lifespan of residents increased by more than two years"
"By contrast, four countries in South Asia -- India, Bangladesh Nepal and Pakistan -- accounted for more than half of the total years of life lost globally due to pollution in the atmosphere over the same eight years. India alone was responsible for nearly 60% of the
If this is true, then why? (Score:2)
If this is true, one should expect Victorian era London (famously the worst urban air in the industrial revolution) would have markedly WORSE life expectancies than that of say the US generally (which was 90%+ agricultural at that point).
But it doesn't.
If we look at the overlap decades in our sets of data 1860-1900 by decade
London: 36 39 41 42 49 ...no meaningful difference.
USA: 39 39 39 44 48
London from https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net]
US from https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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You're comparing life expectancy at birth, in an era where infectious disease was the overwhelmingly more common way to die. Aside from the fact that detailed data about air pollution and its effects on health were non-existent 150 years ago, it would be difficult to ascertain how air pollution affects mortality when everyone is dying of tuberculosis and cholera before they develop other symptoms.
A better measure would be to compare modern cities with different levels of pollution today, and develop a direc
Smoker's mind (Score:2)
Scientists are just as corruptible as politicians (Score:2)
I have no idea if the study is honest or not. But these days, a 'study' is worthless without knowing who paid to have it made.
Well as you can quit smoking ... (Score:2)
Yet they try to force us there (Score:2)
Re: Yet they try to force us there (Score:2)
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> Environmentalists blame the cars - however busses and lorries are a huge problem also
The focus is usually on cars because the ratio of pollution created to the benefit they provide is much higher than busses and trucks. A bus can carry, say, 30 people (city busses have a capacity of 40 to 80 but let's say they're rarely jam packed). A bus does not create more pollution than 30 personal cars. Therefore, the thinking goes, that busses are the better option. As a bonus, fewer cars means lighter traffic, w
Re: The smog in your city is car tires (Score:2)
You don't need walkable cities, although they are good. You need elevated PRT on a rail. It gives you everything you get from cars without most of the drawbacks.
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If the smog these cars emit are shortening my life, then they should be forced to add anti-smog devices to the extent that they no longer emit that shit or are forced electric. Electric not good enough? Necessity is the mother of invention.
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Half of California's energy comes from green energy.
The other half is burned cleaner is a massive powerstation than your cars poorly maintained or otherwise performance modded engine.
The amount needed to be burned is a tiny fraction of your stupid vehicles.
Just had to get ahead of that dumbass argument.
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Fuck tires. The real culprits are diesel trucks and gasoline cars to a lesser extent. I live in the hills overlooking SoCal, the thick layer of brown smog is the most depressing thing to drive into. Fuck your ICE vehicle. Fuck diesel trucks. Fuck semis. If the smog these cars emit are shortening my life, then they should be forced to add anti-smog devices to the extent that they no longer emit that shit or are forced electric. Electric not good enough? Necessity is the mother of invention.
And California is known for some of the toughest climate and vehicle smog laws, and in many case they are setting the standards in the USA...and SoCal still suffers from smog?
What's wrong with that picture? Would fewer laws and less enforcement yield cleaner air in SoCal?
Re: The smog in your city is car tires (Score:5, Informative)
Those laws exist because SoCal used to be MUCH worse. The problem is it's a valley so the winds coming in from the pacific can't blow it away. And when I say "Much worse" I mean it used to look almost apocalyptic; It's not hard to find side-by-side photos if you care to look.
So the laws have had a profound positive impact on air quality and probably could stand to be even stricter.
=Smidge=
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In the 1950s and 60s, cars emitted much more pollution, and it was common in Los Angeles to burn trash in backyards.
Emission standards were a big help. So was the ban on burning trash.
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"What's wrong with that picture?"
You. You're what's wrong with that picture. You compare the result to some idealized absolute when you should compare it to the alternative. You think smog is an issue now, imagine what it could be like with "fewer laws and less enforcement".
"Would fewer laws and less enforcement yield cleaner air in SoCal?"
A really poor troll, either that or a sad right winger. Is that you, SuperKendall?
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What's wrong with that picture?
Geographic features that trap hydrocarbon and NOx pollution in LA [wikipedia.org], as well as the concentration of multiple large cities into a sprawling megalopolis where well over a million cars spend hours a day in heavy stop-and-go traffic.
Would fewer laws and less enforcement yield cleaner air in SoCal?
No. This isn't a magical problem that you can fix with magical thinking. It's a geographic problem and it requires a combination of regulatory and technological responses.
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If you wanted to end the power issues overnight, you would break the power monopolies in CA, and have the grid be maintained by a company, with many producers being paid for their energy by the consumers. Today, if you have a large warehouse and can produce more power than you need, you can not sell it without per
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Or instead of forcing people to do what's right, simply internalize the negative externality [wikipedia.org] by increasing the gas tax to cover the cost of air pollution, up to $1,600 per person annually [fullerton.edu] and use the money to pay hospitals to treat respiratory illnesses. Then people will voluntarily switch to electric cars or bikes or transit in orde
Re: The smog in your city is car tires (Score:4, Informative)
Or instead of forcing people to do what's right, simply internalize the negative externality by increasing the gas tax to cover the cost of air pollution, up to $1,600 per person annually and use the money to pay hospitals to treat respiratory illnesses. Then people will voluntarily switch to electric cars or bikes or transit in order to lower their costs, reducing air pollution; and people who are injured by air pollution won't have to use their health insurance to pay for it, lowering premiums for everyone.
Majority of PM 2.5 from cars comes from tires and brakes rather than combustion. EVs are about a half ton heavier than their ICE counterparts of the same vehicle class. While regen offsets brake wear extra vehicle mass increases tire wear vs the ICE counterpart. Electric cars stand a good chance of supporting substantive reductions in CO2.. not likely to also be the case for PM 2.5. The studies I've read in the past that looked into this found EVs to be similar sometimes worse than ICE in terms of primary PM 2.5. Best case similar or better when attempting to account for secondary PM 2.5 which is something with huge error bars attached to it. In general would expect PM 2.5 to be a wash between ICE and EV.
What is likely controlling in the future in terms of vehicle PM 2.5 is tweaking material properties of braking and tire systems to reduce PM 2.5 rather than being a question of EV vs ICE.
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Besides being directly generated by (1) brake wear/tire wear/road dust and (2) tailpipes, there's a third source for PM2.5 which is secondary formation from precursor emissions such as sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and ammonia (NH3)...due to chemical reaction in the atmosphere [epa.gov]. Those gases come from tailpipes.
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Besides being directly generated by (1) brake wear/tire wear/road dust and (2) tailpipes, there's a third source for PM2.5 which is secondary formation from precursor emissions such as sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and ammonia (NH3)...due to chemical reaction in the atmosphere. Those gases come from tailpipes.
This was explicitly addressed in my statement.
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Those gases are real, but it's also true that per-vehicle tailpipe emissions are a minuscule fraction of what they used to be. Where I live we have large numbers of brodozers and growdozers that roll coal, and also carbureted vintage shitpiles that run rich AF, one and all. Sequential fuel injection is truly one of the greatest automotive advances, and combining it with coil on plug is like a miracle (now that coil packs are cheap, anyway.) VVT doesn't hurt, either, except when it's junk.
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Fuck tires. The real culprits are diesel trucks and gasoline cars to a lesser extent. I live in the hills overlooking SoCal, the thick layer of brown smog is the most depressing thing to drive into. Fuck your ICE vehicle. Fuck diesel trucks. Fuck semis.
OK, I guess you must think your food gets delivered by fairies sprinkling fairy dust.
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OK, I guess you must think your food gets delivered by fairies sprinkling fairy dust.
Nobody is saying we should live without food. What we're saying is we should use a less polluting method of delivering.
Trucks should switch to electric.
Tires should use improved polymers and/or electrostatic plates [cnn.com] to absorb the dust.
We should also make intermodal (truck-to-train-to-truck) work better so it is used more often.
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Yessir! There's nothing on earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-car monorail!
Monorails are terrible (Score:3)
Re: Monorails are terrible (Score:2)
Just make trains where there is no room for trains? Great plan
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What's sensible to try depends on where you're starting.
Making cities more walkable is a reasonable solution in Europe and older eastern US cities, because the core of the cities evolved around the constraints of walking. Except where it has been removed by "slum clearance" much of the urban fabric to create a walkable city still exists. There's lots of *marginal* changes that can be made to recover some of that lost function.
Marginal changes -- low hanging fruit if you will -- are a great way to get starte
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In most cities in the US, the cost of building that much infrastructure is astronomical. Partial systems don't help much - people need to get form their houses to
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Re: The smog in your city is car tires (Score:2)
In fact, calling our exhaled breath - which releases carbon - "pollution" at all is a massive stretch.
Re:The smog in your city is car tires (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, so this is the new Russian propaganda you're flogging today? Tire particulate is a minor component of smog, and way heavier than the poison gas that comes out of IC engine exhausts. Your distraction tactic of trying to deflect counter-responses onto Musk's stupid vacuum tube boondoggle is probably factual but saying that you think that cutting exhaust will immediately be offset by tire wear and that "it might be a wash" is completely disingenuous and you know it. Seriously, who is paying you for this garbage astroturf?
Re:The smog in your city is car tires (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, so this is the new Russian propaganda you're flogging today? Tire particulate is a minor component of smog, and way heavier than the poison gas that comes out of IC engine exhausts.
Yeah - I have no idea where that tire rubber thing came form, but in addition to that, Air quality is so much better than in the late 50's, mid 60's, at least in the USA.
Moscow might be different however.
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Yeah - I have no idea where that tire rubber thing came form,
Straight out of rsilvergun's ass presumably. He has the weirdest, stupidest takes on everything to slander automobile ownership. Two seconds of googling "smog" would have shown him how bad air quality used to be and that it wasn't because of tire dust.
Seoul brought me back (Score:2)
I spent a lot of time in the ROK from 2007-2013. My first trip to Seoul was like going back to Hoboken in the 1970s. The smell was just as vivid. Too bad my grandmother wasn't around to make dinner.
Air quality is better because less manufacturing (Score:2, Interesting)
The world is a counter intuitive place. I literally thought the same thing you did when somebody here on
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I mean, that's great for Europe (Score:2)
I think European cities have fewer cars. You still have parts of your cities that just aren't suitable for them. I see some signs of that changing, which is sad, and if it continues you'll have the same smog problems we do.
That said, I don't see how we can keep basing our society a
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Re:Air quality is better because less manufacturin (Score:5, Informative)
"So I googled rather than just say "You're wrong!". And yes, smog is mostly tire particulates."
No you didn't, you just lied about it. Here's what the EPA says (you know, what you get from googling it):
https://www.epa.gov/transporta... [epa.gov].
Can you not read? (Score:1)
"Particulate Matter" is tires. You're breathing tires. Do you work for a tire company's marketing firm or something?
Re:Can you not read? (Score:5, Insightful)
Particulate matter is particles. That includes solid particles and liquid droplets in the air. It includes smoke, soot, dust, pollen, mists, aerosols, and so on. Literally any type of combustion results in particulate matter in addition to all the other nasty chemical products.
Particles from tires contribute about 10% to all particulate matter, and the particles are on the larger end of the size spectrum (some too large to classify as particulate matter at all as they don't remain suspended in the air).
You're not "breathing tires" but you are definitely breathing soot, smoke, unburnt fuel, and nitrogen oxides though.
=Smidge=
Yeah, you are (Score:2)
As I pointed out before, it's 2000 times more than from your tail pipe [washingtonpost.com]
Or maybe it's not astro turfing. Maybe the tech bros on
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What you are claiming: "Smog is mostly tire particulates"
What the article claims: Most air pollution is non-tailpipe pollution, since tailpipe pollution has been significantly reduced and is no longer the dominant component. (From this, you seem to incorrectly infer that the pollution must therefore be tire wear particles, and even more incorrectly imply that the overall problem is getting worse and not better)
What the study referenced in the article [sciencedirect.com] says: Tire wear particles contribute 5.5%-8% of pollution
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rsilvergun blathered:
"Particulate Matter" is tires. You're breathing tires. Do you work for a tire company's marketing firm or something?
Nope.
The "particulate matter" that the EPA is talking about is diesel exhaust. Unlike gasoline-powered ICE, diesel engines generate significant amounts of DPM [ca.gov] - i.e. unburnt hydrocarbons - stuff that's full of ring-shaped carbon molecuiles that are really freakin' poisonous to human lungs.
If you've ever been stuck behind a semi accelerating up a 6% grade, you can actually see those particulates in the exhaust it emits. It's also the major component of the sooty grit that covers every ou
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So I googled rather than just say "You're wrong!". And yes, smog is mostly tire particulates.
To be more specific, the PM2.5 component of particulate air pollution (that is, the smallest particle sizes) is mostly tire particulates (in some places; mostly those close to freeways).
This is not quite the same as smog ("smog" is mostly used these days as shorthand for photochemical smog [byjus.com], which is typically considered the result of photochemical reactions of organic combusion byproducts, nitrogen oxides, and air), but is also dangerous.
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Oh, so this is the new Russian propaganda you're flogging today? Tire particulate is a minor component of smog, and way heavier than the poison gas that comes out of IC engine exhausts.
Yeah - I have no idea where that tire rubber thing came form, but in addition to that, Air quality is so much better than in the late 50's, mid 60's, at least in the USA.
Moscow might be different however.
Most importantly, the formula for tire and asphalt wear says that it's proprtionate to mass an axis is bearing to 4th power. So the right way to handle this is to ban heavy vehicles like busses, and make everyone travel solo in a small, light car.
Whaaaa? Not so concerned about tire particles all of a sudden?
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Otherwise known as a motorbike or bicycle.
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Huh? (Score:3)
This is why I can't stand the right wing. You gish gallop (google it) and are the kings of "every accusation is a confession".
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Well, we do know from solid research that the more right, the less intelligent and the less capable of fact-checking people become on average. It gets proven here on /. every day as well.
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The smog in the (small) city that I live in comes from Canadian wildfires.
But even if we are talking about The Cities , (180 miles to the southeast) the smog is still from Canadian wildfires.
"you need walkable cities"
I walk to work (1 mile), but I can't walk to the walk in clinic because its too far and too dangerous getting across the highway. (i do walk to the main clinic which is only 10 minutes away.)
How old are you? (Score:3)
The cities in the US are dreams compared to the 1970s.
The big contributor back then, moreso than ICE exhaust, was coal. The stink and brown air coloration was hardly to be believed.
Same is true of the ocean, actually. I grew up on the Jersey Shore. The water was literally brown, probably from untreated sewage from NYC dumped into the (East and Hudson Rivers) leading to the ocean. It's blue again now.
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In Cleveland, Ohio, not far from me, fumes from a steel mill located directly underneath a bridge (Clark-Pershing) [imgur.com] caused it to corrode to the point where it had to be closed and torn down, after only about 50 years of service.
People in nearby neighborhoods didn't live long by modern standards, because they were breathing, among other things, aerosolized sulfuric, nitric, and hydrofluoric acid, to name just a few. These things also caused acid rain which caused significant harm not only locally but far u
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> most of it is from particles of your tires flying off.
[Citation Needed]
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Tyre particulates are an all vehicle type problem and overhyped for EVs [rac.co.uk] plus less brake wear so less brake dust