Shameless plug, I've been working on a community air quality monitor for my little community https://millerbeach.community
I live a few miles from steel mills, oil refineries, who take advantage of Lake Michigan, constantly polluting both air and water, occasionally dumping/"releasing" more toxic chemicals than permitted and don't raise the alarm for a few days: https://www.in.gov/idem/cleanwater/2576.htm, killing thousands of fish, closing water intake, parts of the National Park, etc. etc.
I've lived in Gary, IN since 2016, moving from the UK. A few weeks ago, a young lad from Gary died of a really rare cancer: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/us/ben-watkins-masterchef/ind...
Last week, my 3 month old daughter got diagnosed with really rare genetic disorder called Kabuki Syndrome, on top of heart disease.
Who knows if either is/was caused by living so close to steel mills and/or pollution, but I'm skeptical. Did I cause/impact/increase/etc my daughter's condition by choosing to live next to a steel mill? I just have to accept that I'll never know the answer to that question.
It is indeed sad that a 9 year old died from purely preventable air pollution.
However, through her death and the resulting judgement, we (royal) can start holding polluters and companies liable. And through that, we can start to effect strong climate based change, through a series of steep punishments of wrongful death and the like.
I sincerely hope her death is not in vain, but as a loud bell to start a wave of changes.
The "first"? What did they label all of those?
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/smog-kills-thous...
One very simple thing that we can do a much better job at is preventing people from idling their cars in pedestrian areas. I walk through supposedly eco-conscious Berkeley every day, and without fail there is at least one car stopped at the curb, idling, often while the owner plays with his phone. The problem has gotten much worse now that food-order apps are more popular.
I think that people have some kind of magical belief about car exhaust being harmless. It's like: okay, sure, a common form of suicide is to lock yourself in your garage and idle your car engine. But if you're outside, then magically the exhaust fumes become completely harmless... because (checks notes) air breezes or diffusion or something. Really, people?
I have a strong suspicion that in decades to come we will realize that car exhaust causes many of the big neurological disorders, like Parkinson's.
Asthma from air pollution completely destroyed my life, that's all my life is about at this point.
The first signs are that it's harder to sleep at night, because the mucus goes into your airways. If you feel that, move away far from any street with many cars while you can.
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 like VPNs where it just comes down to SEO, marketing, and affiliate links.
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.
Thought for sure this would be an article about the great smog.
I go to London occasionally for work.
Since I live in a high-altitude location, I really enjoy running when I travel, since I can go faster and farther and sight see at the same time.
The amount of diesel exhaust you breathe in running through London is pretty crazy compared to other cities I've been in. And I know that they have worked very hard to reduce this, so not trying to knock the UK or London itself. Just something I noticed and felt running along the Thames.
I bet there loads before the passing of the clean air act in 1960 ish i think. The London smog was notorious for killing people
> Delivering a narrative verdict, Mr Barlow said levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) near Ella's home exceeded World Health Organization and European Union guidelines.
There are WHO and EU guidelines? I had no idea.
Most my life, I've lived in a city where the AQI is usually >250 during the day, and it's been in IQAir's top polluted cities[0] for the past 2 years.
I recently finished reading Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution by Tim Smedley, which is excellent and well worth a read if you are interested in this area.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/clearing-the-air-9781472953339...
> ...a detailed blueprint for saving our cities. Suggested measures include a ban on all petrol and diesel cars in city centres; the replacement of diesel buses and trains with electric vehicles; and an end to the use of wood-burning stoves and coal fires. It’s an achievable vision, he insists. “However, whether it happens in 10 or 100 years is down to public pressure and political will.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/31/clearing-the-a...
I also built a few monitors to add to Sensor.Community (a contributors driven global sensor network that creates Open Environmental Data), which are pretty easy to make.
There's a neat feature in the BMW X5 xDrive45e (a petrol plug-in hybrid SUV) - when you enter a low emissions zone, it automatically switches to battery power.
Moving emissions away from the tailpipe in heavily populated areas seems like a great idea.
There's no free lunch though. The emissions are still happening, just in different places where they're, ideally, less likely to affect people.
It's a better situation but it's not yet perfect.
I think this can be taken with a grain of salt, as Coroner in the UK sometimes is quirky, like that one time they recorded a person died from THC overdose ( https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/gemma-moss-marijuana-... ) and that was then widely used to discredit any legalisation movement and make access to cannabis for patient impossible for a number of years. I can easily see this verdict is politically motivated and unlikely scientific.
I don't like how the girl's death became a focus point for a crusade against cars in general (even though I'm a fan on public transport myself). By most measures, London's air is great as it is on average. However, some sources of pollution are local, like a big busy road, and the girl, unfortunately, lived near one (the article mentions she lived near South Circular Road). Trying to make the air clean on average is really counterproductive compared to, say, making buffer zones around roads with more greenery, tackling local pollution instead of averages.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19826344
The article and the people commenting seem to generalize this death to air pollution. But the article itself specifically quotes NO2 as the cause of death.
High concentrations of NO2 can be directly attributed to diesel engines which is a much easier problem to tackle than the general problem of decommissioning ICE vehicles.
I'm regularly shocked by the air quality outside of my apartment ever since I bought a few high quality air filters. As soon as I step outside I can easily smell the difference in air quality, even when websites report that the air quality should be fine.
I've been taking sulforaphane supplements to help protect myself from air pollution as well. Here's a reference [0] to support the claim that sulforaphane helps protect against air pollution:
> Sulforaphane optimizes glutathione, serving as a nutritional "seatbelt"
> But consumption of this non-nutrient appears to be important – even essential – for optimal health. Sulforaphane promotes the production of glutathione, a powerful antioxidant that facilitates the body's excretion of a wide range of toxic substances, including pesticides, aflatoxin, and air pollutants. Glutathione binds with many of these toxins and forms mercapturic acids, which can be excreted and measured in urine.
> Robust clinical evidence has demonstrated that sulforaphane is beneficial for people who live in areas where air quality is poor due to pollution levels. An intervention study in Qidong, China, an area known for its high levels of air pollution, found that sulforaphane markedly increased the production of mercapturic acid metabolites of benzene and acrolein, known carcinogens present in air pollution. These effects manifested within 24 hours of sulforaphane administration in a dose-dependent manner.
> More importantly, however, these effects were sustained – even after several months – demonstrating that sulforaphane did not exhaust the body's capacity to protect itself from environmental threats and suggesting that regular consumption of sulforaphane in foods or dietary supplements provides a kind of nutritional "seatbelt" that protects against future toxic exposures. These findings have relevance for people living in the western part of the United States, where forest fires, which are sources of many airborne pollutants, are common.
With Covid-19 Rates Rising Adding an Air Purifier To Your Home is the Single Most Important Thing You Can Do to Improve Your Health [0]
[0] https://kylebenzle.medium.com/adding-an-air-purifier-to-your...
Air quality in London for example (similar for other UK urban areas) is better now than in hundreds of years. [1]
Even the Thames is much cleaner than it has been in generations.
It should be 'drinkable' but it's not as bad as used to be.
Diesel particulate pollution is the primary problem. London black cabs are diesel. There is a good case for banning diesel in metro and even suburban areas over time and requiring at least hybrid. Electric busses actually make more sense than cars due to the high regeneration of stopping.
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?
The amount of dirt thatin the air is surprising. Taking it out of my ionizator weekly. I doubt it’s healthy
Millions a year (every year) die from air pollution globally. In a sense it is also contagious - your habits and consumption can impact those near you.
Air pollution kills slowly so it isn't visible enough to trigger a culture war, so CNN doesn't care.
Why is this hacker news?
A child with serious asthma issues should not be living near a major traffic artery, this could have been a quickly remedied social situation.
'A 2018 report found unlawful levels of pollution, which were detected at a monitoring station one mile from Ella's home, contributed to her fatal asthma attack'. The girl lived '25 metres from the South circular' in Lewisham.
Listing her death with claims 'air pollution' were a factor are almost certainly true (it would be interesting to see the autopsy data) but also serve the WHO's and other agendas.
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/article/40/20/1590/537232...