Toxic Air Killed More Than 500,000 People in EU in 2021, Data Shows (theguardian.com) 109
Dirty air killed more than half a million people in the EU in 2021, estimates show, and about half of the deaths could have been avoided by cutting pollution to the limits recommended by doctors. From a report: The researchers from the European Environment Agency attributed 253,000 early deaths to concentrations of fine particulates known as PM2.5 that breached the World Health Organization's maximum guideline limits of 5ug/m3. A further 52,000 deaths came from excessive levels of nitrogen dioxide and 22,000 deaths from short-term exposure to excessive levels of ozone.
"The figures released today by the EEA remind us that air pollution is still the number one environmental health problem in the EU," said Virginijus Sinkevicius, the EU's environment commissioner. Doctors say air pollution is one of the biggest killers in the world but death tolls will drop quickly if countries clean up their economies. Between 2005 and 2021, the number of deaths from PM2.5 in the EU fell 41%, and the EU aims to reach 55% by the end of the decade. The WHO, which tightened its air quality guidelines in 2021, warns that no level of air pollution can be considered safe but has set upper limits for certain pollutants. The European parliament voted in September to align the EU's air quality rules with the WHO's but decided to delay doing so until 2035.
"The figures released today by the EEA remind us that air pollution is still the number one environmental health problem in the EU," said Virginijus Sinkevicius, the EU's environment commissioner. Doctors say air pollution is one of the biggest killers in the world but death tolls will drop quickly if countries clean up their economies. Between 2005 and 2021, the number of deaths from PM2.5 in the EU fell 41%, and the EU aims to reach 55% by the end of the decade. The WHO, which tightened its air quality guidelines in 2021, warns that no level of air pollution can be considered safe but has set upper limits for certain pollutants. The European parliament voted in September to align the EU's air quality rules with the WHO's but decided to delay doing so until 2035.
I take this with a grain of salt! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't believe anything in such reports now. It has become a bunch of propaganda. They manipulate all death causes to whatever fits with the agenda they want to impose and force on populations now. Slashdot seems going full in with two FA in a row!
Re:I take this with a grain of salt! (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess the problem you have is twofold, first one of belief. But this is no statement of faith, it is an information. Information does not have to be believed. It can be checked. According to Claude Shannon, information is the recipocal to probability. Now you have your first approach: How likely do you think is it that half a million people have died last year in the EU of causes which are linked to toxic air? (Be aware, that a single death can be linked to many causes at the same time. People for instance, which are already weakened by a past illness might die from toxic air more easily.) This is your baseline, from which you can measure the information content of the article.
Second, it might be correlated with laziness. Checking the information means work, which you are not readily do. Instead, you look for the cheapest possible exit: Just doubt everything. Henri Poincaré put it this way: To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
PS: My personal problem with the article is the usage of the word "doctor", when it actually meant physicians. Not every physician is a Medical Doctor, and most actual doctors did not write their thesis in Medicine, but for instance are Doctors of Law or Philological Doctors.
Re: I take this with a grain of salt! (Score:2)
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MD is not the same as PhD, you are correct, but it's still correct to call them a medical doctor.
Re: I take this with a grain of salt! (Score:4, Informative)
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PS: My personal problem with the article is the usage of the word "doctor", when it actually meant physicians.
I have the same problem. It looks like when using "the king's English" it would be acceptable to use "surgeon" when speaking of any physician, even if that physician is a general practitioner that would be unlikely to perform anything close to surgery but stitch up a wound. Such a person is trained in surgery, licensed to do so, and so is a "surgeon". Though in the USA a "surgeon" is considered something of a specialty among physicians so mention of surgeons making some claim, versus a physician, would i
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PS: My personal problem with the article is the usage of the word "doctor", when it actually meant physicians.
i agree with your overall analysis but this one is easy:
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the study, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease, injury, and other physical and mental impairments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:I take this with a grain of salt! (Score:5, Interesting)
You could for instance mitigate some of your doubts by looking in the article and check how they come to the numbers they claim.
The crux if the issue is that heart disease and diabetes are more common in urban environments due to lifestyle and spoiler alert so is pollution. These studies don't even try to actively falsify their own claims by seeking out contradictory evidence.
The bottom line of the study is an extraordinary claim that a 17% reduction in annual PM2.5 over about a decade and a half (e.g. a change of only about 3 ug/m^3) resulted in 41% reduction in pollution deaths in 2021 in the middle of a pandemic.
Yet the WHO "concentration response function" (CRF) that is assumed in the death calculations is linear and equates to 8% RR change per annual 10 ug/m^3. I would love to hear how the study squares that circle but they don't say. If you or anyone has any ideas I would love an explanation.
I guess the problem you have is twofold, first one of belief. But this is no statement of faith, it is an information. Information does not have to be believed. It can be checked.
Yea right, good luck with that. The CRF is based on a meta-analysis of about a hundred different studies. Has it been checked? Did anyone ever bother to feed the linear assumptions back in and try and falsify their findings? Where is THAT work? Does it exist at all?
According to Claude Shannon, information is the recipocal to probability. Now you have your first approach: How likely do you think is it that half a million people have died last year in the EU of causes which are linked to toxic air? (Be aware, that a single death can be linked to many causes at the same time. People for instance, which are already weakened by a past illness might die from toxic air more easily.) This is your baseline, from which you can measure the information content of the article.
It's better not to play this game at all and if you do go there in any attribution of causation there needs to be a credible definition and standard conveyed. It can't be sick person who is going to die soon anyway being pushed over the edge. That's not a useful or credible metric. It can't be like these crazy studies claiming DST changes kill dozens of people a year. If you do shit like that people will tune out and you will be ignored.
I also think that it is fundamentally wrong and misleading to communicate pollution risks in terms of number of deaths. The studies should instead focus on the impact of pollution upon average life expectancy of years lost.
Second, it might be correlated with laziness. Checking the information means work, which you are not readily do. Instead, you look for the cheapest possible exit: Just doubt everything.
This is a fruitless enterprise. Accusing people of laziness won't accomplish anything useful. People have competing interests on their time and attention. This is very much where political concepts such as legitimacy, integrity and trust unavoidably creep into the picture. One can't expect people to give every crackpot the time of day. These types of studies have been surfacing repeatedly for many years now and I am no closer to believing them today which is a shame because obviously pollution is bad for people yet the numbers are ridiculous and impossible to believe.
When I for example recently read about the impacts of air pollution on life expectancy in India I checked and discovered regions with the highest pollution having some of the highest life expectancy in the country and regions with lowest pollution having some of the lowest life expectancy. This to me is evidence PM2.5 pollution is ultimately a small minor player in terms of life risks.
If you compare for example Bangladesh with Europe they have similar life expectancy (74 vs 77 years IIRC) despite Bangladesh having an annual average PM2.5 pollution more than 4x that of Europe.
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I presume they, of course, carefully excluded the literal millions of COVID-19 deaths in 2021, right?
In some language in EU it is used interchangeably (Score:2)
In some country you always say doctor , when the qualification is physician. e.g. in french you always say doctor. In fact even some translation tool do the exact same issue you cite : e.g. here is what I got from medicà : "Dictionary. médica noun, feminine (plural: médicas f) doctor n (plural: doctors) physician n."
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But this is no statement of faith, it is an information.
Yes, "an information" that we don't trust because it is likely to have been shat out by someone with a "narrative" to push. Since early 2020, I have done a 180 from trusting the CDC, FBI, and mainstream media. They all finally went so far with their statements that were logically and empirically disprovable that overnight my trust in them simply collapsed. My first instinct regarding any "content" is to try and decipher just which narrative they are pushing.
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Sure, I generally do take several, I'll definitely take my annual influenza shot, of which I've probably had 25 in my life, I'll definitely get some Tdap boosters soon. I've got a couple more for Hepatitis A and B. I'll certainly have my daughters take their 2-3 HPV vaccines fairly soon.
Why do you want to be a disease-ridden 17th century peasant?
Re:I take this with a grain of salt! (Score:4, Informative)
Read the summary again, more carefully. They are not saying that pollution directly killed all those people. They are saying that they died earlier than they otherwise would have, if it were not for the pollution.
It's like smoking. It's not guaranteed to be the cause of death, but it can take years off your life, and make the years you do have a lot worse than if your lungs were in good condition.
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Dirty air killed more than half a million people in the EU in 2021
Really, is that in addition to the millions that died in the EU from COVID? [who.int]
Re: I take this with a grain of salt! (Score:2)
Just stick your head back in the sand already. Especially with COP28 ahead, you might short some wires the coming weeks.
More news you better not read, for your mental wellbeing and all.
https://www.theguardian.com/li... [theguardian.com]
""In-utero exposure to air pollution may lower semen quality and increase the risk of reproductive system disease in adult men. Exposure to PM2.5 and nitrogen oxide may shorten the distance between the anus and genitals, or the anogenital distance, in the womb, a sign of lower testosterone act
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Constructing false narrative (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Constructing false narrative (Score:5, Informative)
Well, there are places in the EU where you wouldn't want to be. For every Vienna, there is a Bucharest [eurasiantimes.com].
That's not to say there ain't far worse places on the planet, but not every place in the EU smells of roses either.
Re:Constructing false narrative (Score:4, Informative)
Been there, also in Krakow and Plovdiv from the top ten (also in some of the others but they are not in the EU). There are many reasons to avoid Bucharest, but air pollution isn't really one of them. Mixed feelings about Krakow, but not going to Plovdiv is a mistake, it has some really well preserved Roman ruins.
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Well, there are places in the EU where you wouldn't want to be. For every Vienna, there is a Bucharest [eurasiantimes.com].
That's not to say there ain't far worse places on the planet, but not every place in the EU smells of roses either.
True. Hungary for example, Hungary smells of a stack of moldy portraits of Miklos Horthy and moth eaten old KUK army uniforms
.
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Well, there are places in the EU where you wouldn't want to be. For every Vienna, there is a Bucharest [eurasiantimes.com].
That's not to say there ain't far worse places on the planet, but not every place in the EU smells of roses either.
Almost as if the EU is a confederation of different countries, each with their own governments, economies, issues, et al.
It's not just the EU, individual countries have their own ups and downs, For every country's Berlin, you have a hole like Frankfurt.
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Frankfurt is ok... as long as you can somehow avoid the train district.
In the eternal words of a German comedian "The traveling exhibit 'hands off heroin' now does a performance in Frankfurt, you can be part of it by taking a handful of change and throw it in the air, it's akin to throwing a handful of corn into a flock of pigeons. Try to be good at your feet if you want to join the fun, though".
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Parts of the EU have quite bad air pollution, mainly big cities. London was terrible, before it left the EU (well, it still is).
Other parts are doing a lot better. And yes, parts of the developing world are much, much worse, with far, far more shortened lifespans.
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"Parts of the EU have quite bad air pollution, mainly big cities. London was terrible, before it left the EU (well, it still is)."
Not only the air, they pump raw sewage into rivers, lakes and oceans >1000 times per day, 400.000 times a year.
Re:Constructing false narrative (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not saying 500,000 drop dead from air pollution, they're saying that there were 500,000 deaths where air pollution was a contributing factor. That's a very different claim.
It is also known that air pollution impairs brain development and lowers intelligence. That doesn't mean everyone is an idiot, it just means that if we had cleaner air, people would have brains that were slightly healthier.
The false narrative isn't coming from the science.
Re:Constructing false narrative (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not saying 500,000 drop dead from air pollution, they're saying that there were 500,000 deaths where air pollution was a contributing factor.
This would have been more reasonable take, however the "Toxic Air Killed More Than 500,000..." is rather unambiguous in its meaning.
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This paint a picture of EU as a toxic wasteland
No it doesn't. It makes you stop and think.
which is laughably not true
oh, maybe not in your case.
Loss of trust in institutions (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Loss of trust in institutions (Score:4, Interesting)
When that train derailed in Ohio earlier this year there were all kinds of claims of toxic fumes, which only turned to claims of different kinds of hot fumes when those managing the spills resorted to burning off some of the spilled chemicals than risk it contaminating the water supply. It was quite easy to verify that the air was not dangerous from the many air quality tests done. Then came rumors that the machines doing the testing were tampered with by "them", whomever "them" might be to fulfill their fantasy of a conspiracy theory.
Trust in media is a problem with the growing ease of making convincing fake images and videos. Maybe if news media sought out to get things correct than get things first would help. I can understand the desire to get things first but then when reporting things first they need to point out how their primary source might not be trusted, and when more facts are revealed then they need to own up to getting things wrong in the with an earlier report. But many news outlets are actually opinion outlets, a means to convey the opinions of the people that own the media outlet. There are places that put getting things right above getting things first, but they are rarely found on cable television.
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One would think that media organizations that support strong journalism values would the the antidote to the relatively new social media landscape where anyone can share whatever fringe belief they hold, but unfortunately even media behemoths like the New York Times have lost public trust in recent years. While it's true that the NYT has always had a liberal lean in the opinion pages, it was always understood that the newsroom was supposed to be separate from the opinion pages, and the NYT always ran op-ed
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The problem is because of the way people process the headlines. The claim isn't that 500,000 dropped dead from air pollution, but rather that 500,000 deaths had air pollution as a contributing factor.
Air polluted with known carcinogens, for example, would be expected to bump up the number of deaths where cancer was the primary cause. But the spike in cancer deaths would, in part be because of the air pollution.
Air with other contaminants might increase the number of cases of lung disease. It would be the lu
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The problem, then, is not with the institutions but with the schools. Schools need to teach critical thinking, logical thinking, analysis, deep diving, and skepticism.
Public schools aren't going to teach students to be critical of the government.
I recall sitting in a university history class, at a state funded university, where we learned how prior to World War Two public schools in Germany were used to teach what the political parties in control wanted them to teach. The next week we moved on to the post-war era, and to England. In England many schools had been bombed, many of the school teachers died, and so the government funded the construction of schools and the t
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Statistics don't show significant difference between private schools and public schools, except on the standardised tests needed to get into college. So there's no obvious benefit to private schools.
Indeed, in America, many private schools are religious institutes that teach Creationism and other religious propaganda, rather than anything vaguely to do with the universe we live in. Frankly, I'd rather see those banned. They are causing far more damage to the minds of the innocent than public schools.
Other t
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Wow, that was just a load of nonsense.
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I'd put more faith in your very interesting comment if you'd remembered that what would be private schools in the USofA are known as "Public Schools" in the UK.
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but our trust in our institutions has fallen drastically. This is one of the big challenges of this next generation: rebuild trust.
Let's look at this another way and see how it sounds:
but our critical thinking abilities have risen drastically. This is one of the big challenges of this next generation: reduce critical thinking.
Or: trust no one.
Re: Loss of trust in institutions (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s a lot easier to rebuild trust when people donâ(TM)t put up headlines like 500,000 killed by air pollution last year.
If 500k people dropped dead from air pollution, hell, if thousands died from acute ozone exposure as the summary implies, I think people would notice.
OK (Score:2, Insightful)
"The WHO, which tightened its air quality guidelines in 2021, warns that no level of air pollution can be considered safe but has set upper limits for certain pollutants."
OK, I stopped reading here. Just like "There is no safe amount of animal protein". Or "No safe amount of ionizing radiation". Total nonsense....
The chemical compound pollution that comes from the exhaust of a modern day car is 98% less than what it came out in the 90-ies. Particulate's main source in a vehicle is the tires. The amount is
Re:OK (Score:4, Interesting)
But as for the statement on China, that's just silly. Climate change is a global issue: whether we reduce CO2 here or in China doesn't matter, it's equally beneficial. Air pollution however is a local issue, if China emits less particulates, we do not benefit. So unless you want to spend € to save lives in China, it's fine to help them improve air quality in China. But I think that air quality is very much a matter of local government.
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The critical thinking among us have to wonder when the environmental fear mongering started.... 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020? Because there were of load of us back in 1990 thinking that the goals of more efficient use of energy, and the 85% cheaper solution was more impactful than forcing something twice expensive were good, but the messaging always h
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Every study into air pollution in Europe I have read backs up your claim: the amount of air pollution in the air today is the lowest it has been in over a century, and is still falling, despite continued population growth. At this point, those studies that claim hundreds of thousands of deaths as a result of pollution are beginning to sound a lot like fear mongering.
Which the article says:
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Between 2005 and 2021, the number of deaths from PM2.5 in the EU fell 41%...âoeThe good news is that clean air policy works, and our air quality is improving,â said Sinkeviius.
How is that possible? The annual average change in PM2.5 pollution during that time was only about 3 ug/m^3.
WHO's CRF is a linear function /w 8% RR change per annual 10 ug/m^3.
How do you get a 41% reduction from a change of 3 ug/m^3?
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Every study into air pollution in Europe I have read backs up your claim: the amount of air pollution in the air today is the lowest it has been in over a century, and is still falling, despite continued population growth.
The air quality in London has been awful for ceturies (plural). You don't get a prize for clearing a bar that's buried underground.
At this point, those studies that claim hundreds of thousands of deaths as a result of pollution are beginning to sound a lot like fear mongering.
Oh fuck off.
Re:OK (Score:5, Insightful)
So much nonsense, it's hard to know where to begin.
EVs are not significantly heavier than fossil cars. Nobody with any power that I know of wants to see a "90% reduction in car ownership", certainly not the EU which commissioned and published this report.
The WHO's statement needs to be understood in context. The WHO is saying that governments should do all they can to reduce all forms of pollution, and that the WHO is unwilling to specify a safe level of any pollutant that would be an excuse for governments to ignore it.
Honestly, this reads like one of those Facebook conspiracy theory posts by someone who just wants to carry on driving their 4 litre panzer around the urban streets.
Re:OK (Score:5, Informative)
EVs are not significantly heavier than fossil cars.
EVs are about 30% heavier than corresponding combustion engine cars:
Whether it is significant is subjective. EVs have much better acceleration. That leads to more road and tire wear and more particulate pollution. Increased EV weight has only a small impact on infrastructure. The more concerning negative impact is on lower safety in case of a collision.
https://www.politifact.com/art... [politifact.com]
Re: OK (Score:2)
Donâ(TM)t state facts to leftoids.
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Do electric cars require tire changes more often?
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3. Synthetic fuels that are carbon neutral are an evil scam by greedy German auto corporations!!!!!
More like a scam pushed by liberal and conservatives that want to keep the status quo alive, because they willfully ignore the price of synthetic fuels. Not even the car industry really want synthetic fuels.
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https://www.efuel-alliance.eu/... [efuel-alliance.eu]
And yes, the people who build nice cars want them. The people who just build appliances probably don't care.
https://www.euronews.com/my-eu... [euronews.com]
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I see the marketing noise of the efuel allicance, but I also see very little evidence that supports their claim. In fact, research in other fields very directly con
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The only significant exception is Porsche.
BMW also plans to continue building ICE cars along with electrics. I'm surprised the Italians don't seem as enthusiastic as they stand to lose among the most classic marques, but I rather suspect the super wealthy will continue to get their combustion engined Ferraris regardless of what any laws say.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/... [thedrive.com]
Electric cars are already cost-competitive with fossil fuels, and every improvement in battery technology further moves the bar. Best case projections for synthetic fuels have them at least 50% more expensive than fossil fuels, so no, they are not cost competitive.
50% is nothing to me, or to anyone who likes nice cars. I'll restate an analogy I often use - digital watches are far cheaper and more accurate than mechanical ones. Why wo
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"OK, I stopped reading here." So your remarks are completely ignorant of the main body of the article?
"the exhaust of a modern day car is 98% less than what it came out in the 90-ies". The article (which you didn't read) does say "Between 2005 and 2021, the number of deaths from PM2.5 in the EU fell 41%" because pollution declined. This supports their claim that "clean air policy works".
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Reasons we can only speculate... let's speculate then, shall we. It might have something to do with that "climate change" thing and the survival of civilization. Maybe you can speculate a better reason, but until I hear it, I'll go with the obvious one.
The agenda to reduce car usage is hardly hidden, I hear it being spoken of openly all the time. Usually by someone with a reasoned argument, and a vision. I might not always agree with them, but man, it sure beats the drivel about hidden agendas, secret caba
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Me, I haven't reached that point of suicidality yet. I'm not quite ready to start breathing from the tailpipe.
This is insane take. Before you do anything drastic, pause to consider you might not have the full picture. The doomsday cultism is as old as human civilization, so far none of them came true.
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None of the other doomsday cults talked about carbon dioxide. Again, quite a reasoned and sane take, compared to the ideas offered up by the opposition - Heaven's Gate, etc.
Anyway, my analogy was way off. We're already sucking the tailpipe, have been for some time. The decision is whether we pull it out of our mouths.
Truth be told, that's not a great analogy either. Drunk driving is much better analogy. You're still on the first of AA's twelve steps, by refusing to acknowledge the problem with your consumpt
Need more nuclear fission power plants. (Score:2, Troll)
There was a study some time ago about how Germany closing their nuclear power plants caused many premature deaths, because that lost generating capacity was replaced by natural gas and coal.
One complaint about nuclear power that comes up whenever studies like this come out is the cost of nuclear power. Nuclear power is going to remain expensive until there's development of the technology. Had we got it stuck in our heads that solar power "cost too much" in the 1970s, or whenever, then we'd be having all o
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There was a study some time ago about how Germany closing their nuclear power plants caused many premature deaths, because that lost generating capacity was replaced by natural gas and coal.
No such study exists with credible sources, because it's not true.
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This article was about premature deaths from particulate pollution. Fossil fuel plants have more particulate pollution than nuclear plants. Increase of deaths is expected when you replace nuclear plants with coal plants. MacMann's claim seems believable. Your claim seems to be pulled out of thin air. Maybe you can provide some reasoning...
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Although it is true, that does not refute MacMan's claim. The study might have been for the recent period from 2018 onward or the study might have claimed that lignite and coal would have dropped even more if nuclear closures would be postponed. If lignite/coal use would have dropped even more then it is reasonable to assume less deaths from air pollution. Therefore claim the nuclear closures caused increase of deaths seems reasonable.
But you have shown that nuclear closures are not that much bad if the re
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A lot more lignite specifically could have been dropped if the conservatives in power for most of the last 20 years didn't drag their feet as much as possible. But hey, we have to protect the 30k jobs in the coal/lignite processing industries, but who cares about killing the 100k jobs related to wind energy alone.
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It may be different from what MacMan exactly wrote but the consequence of closing nuclear plants ahead of their maximum possible life did result in lignite/coal emissions which would not need to be there otherwise. From this point of view, he was right. And his claim is still fully true in 2022.
Germany made a mistake. They started closing nuclear plants before coal plants. There is no way to spin this positively by pointing to the renewables in Germany. Politics sucks.
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No such study exists with credible sources, because it's not true.
I read about such a study on a website called "Slashdot", perhaps you've heard of it?
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
If you want to believe that Carnegie Mellon University isn't a credible source then perhaps you could provide a credible source that points to some study showing otherwise. I doubt there's people that will dispute that coal power produces air pollution, and this air pollution will shorten lives for those that breathe it, which I guess leaves the question on if the increased use of coal was
Re: Need more nuclear fission power plants. (Score:2)
Nuclear is scary, so government makes it expensive. Yet there are plenty of backyard scientists that have built a nuclear reactor and are experimenting with a few thousand dollar investments. Dangerous, to the person standing close, sure, but costly not really. It literally takes a few bricks and some fissionable material to get to a nuclear power source as the infamous death core has shown. Nothing about it is complicated or expensive.
Cleanup their economies? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Obvious BS (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone realises that this is obviously nonsense, right?
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It's not nonsense. The problem is with your interpretation, not with the findings.
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It's hard to evaluate the 500k statistic without knowing the total number of deaths in that period. Does that represent most of the deaths, or a small amount? A quick web search brought me to this page [statista.com], which claims "Europe" had 9.6 million deaths in 2021. I put Europe in quotes because that is what the page says and the EU is not necessarily the same as Europe, especially as that graph goes back further than the EU. But it's probably a good rough estimate.
Interestingly, it's clear from that graph that
Two pollution stories in a row? (Score:2, Troll)
Really?
C'mon with everything going on in the world everyday we have two air pollution = mass death stories in a row posted very shortly apart?
Surely, there had to be -something- else in the queue worth posting?
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Hm yeah that makes sense. Just filler day. Good point.
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Neither article claimed air pollution caused mass death. That is purely your interpretation, the actual claims made say nothing of the sort.
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Neither article claimed air pollution caused mass death.
I don't know about you, but that's exactly how I read that first sentence.
Dirty air killed more than half a million people in the EU in 2021
The fine print may have backed down on that claim. But that's not the first impression the story gives.
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The headline is not the story and is rarely even a summary of the story. The headline is simply a title given to get people to look. And journalists rarely get the science right anyway, so you should really skip the article and go to the sources.
You've been on Slashdot long enough to understand that the Slashdot summary will be less useful than the article (which is why us greybeards will tell people to RTFA) and that the article will be less useful than the material it is based on, because articles need to
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so you should really skip the article and go to the sources
But that's not what millions of readers (voters) do. They see the headline and panic. A few of the more enlightened ones might click on the included link, see The Guardian article which says essentially the same thing and panic even more. "OMG! Confirmation!"
And journalists rarely get the science right anyway
So what do we do about that? Tell them to shut the hell up? How well do you think that will go over in a "free" society? It'll probably just generate a push back of "OMG! Oil companies are trying to suppress the science!!!"
How many billions died in China? (Score:1)
Having lived in both, I'm casting a serious doubt on this.
But you know, anything that further deindustrializes Europe, and removes them from the global economy, I'm all in!
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You're assuming the article means 500,000 dropped dead from air pollution. That is not the claim. The claim made is that 500,000 people had causes of death where air pollution was a contributing factor at some point.
So where air pollution is worsening lung health, they saw a spike in deaths from lung diseases. That spike will be, in part, caused by the air pollution. So the air pollution led to their premature deaths, but it didn't kill them as they went out for a stroll.
Likewise, where air pollution contai
that was quick (Score:1)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-... [bbc.co.uk]
only 2 years ago did britain have their first death from air pollution. interesting how any of the other 499,999 slipped under the net
And still ... (Score:2)
Naa, fake news! (Score:2)
Obviously what happened is that "Modern industrial processes allowed more than 500'000 people in the EU to realize their reincarnation options earlier!"
I do get that it is harder to lie when LLMs do not help you (Bing refused...), but do you know nothing?
Absolute Nonsense (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
yet somehow nobody died,
Loads of people dies you twat. Stop making shit up.
data shows (Score:2)
I find data shows to be very entertaining. These kind of shows are a lot like kabuki, and they are of course works of fiction.
this is classic lying with statistic (Score:2)
You'd struggle to find more than 1,000 deaths caused by "toxic air" in any given year, barring a disaster like a chemical plant discharge.
The ACCURATE title for this is "toxic air CONTRIBUTED to the deaths of xxx". The only people at risk of death-by-air-pollution are those that are already on the edge, and this is just pushing them off the cliff.
"Bad air" didn't kill all those people, most of them "died from complications due to asthma or COPD" etc. And their death certificates will agree with me on this
Even if their numbers are true (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So why isn't the population crashing??? (Score:1)
Video evidence? (Score:2)
I'm a frequent visitor of watchpeopledie sites but never once seen toxic air killing anyone. Please link one.
um, NO, "toxic air" did not kill anybody (Score:1)
People PROVABLY died from heart disease, strokes, diabetes, COPD, lung cancer, etc and some politically-biased people with an agenda decided that because air pollution can make ANY terminal medical condition worse, it would be right to attribute the deaths to the pollution rather than the underlying terminal health condition. The people who whipped this garbage up cannot point to a single human being who was perfectly healthy, walking along down the street of some European city, and then WHAM! dropped dead
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Informative)