US Air Pollution Deaths Nearly Halved Between 1990 and 2010 (eurekalert.org) 134
An anonymous reader quotes a report from EurekAlert: Air pollution in the U.S. has decreased since about 1990, and a new study conducted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill now shows that this air quality improvement has brought substantial public health benefits. The study, published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, found that deaths related to air pollution were nearly halved between 1990 and 2010. The team's analyses showed that deaths related to air pollution exposure in the U.S. decreased by about 47 percent, dropping from about 135,000 deaths in 1990 to 71,000 in 2010.
These improvements in air quality and public health in the U.S. coincided with increased federal air quality regulations, and have taken place despite increases in population, energy and electricity use, and vehicle miles traveled between 1990 and 2010. [...] Still, despite clear improvements, air pollution remains an important public health issue in the U.S. The estimated 71,000 deaths in 2010 translates to 1 of every 35 deaths in the U.S. -- that's as many deaths as we see from all traffic accidents and all gun shootings combined.
These improvements in air quality and public health in the U.S. coincided with increased federal air quality regulations, and have taken place despite increases in population, energy and electricity use, and vehicle miles traveled between 1990 and 2010. [...] Still, despite clear improvements, air pollution remains an important public health issue in the U.S. The estimated 71,000 deaths in 2010 translates to 1 of every 35 deaths in the U.S. -- that's as many deaths as we see from all traffic accidents and all gun shootings combined.
It worked! (Score:1, Insightful)
Mission accomplished! We can roll back all the regulations now!
Coal is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a labor-intensive, dirty way of extracting energy from Mother Earth. It wasn't killed by regulations, either. It was killed by labor costs, and the final death knell was cheap natural gas from fracking.
Also, many coal jobs were utterly shitty. Imagine being the poor schmoe who drove a steam engine or shoveled coal into the boiler. Sounds romantic? Now imagine standing in a cab when it's 100F outside and 120F in the cab. Turn some valves while watching for signals and danger ahead, or shovel enough coal per minute to power a freight train in these conditions...
The Coal Age (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was a kid, we had a coal fire, and you'd shovel coal onto it hourly to keep the house warm. It was a PITA to light in the morning. When you went out, and came back to the house, the house was cold. You'd try to revive the embers and the house would take an hour or two to warm up.
Diesel trains had already replaced coal fired steam engines. There were still some coal fired power stations, and quite a few blackened buildings/lungs around those.
That was the age of coal. Long gone.
You can see Murray *Energy* trying to revive it with PAC bribes and revolving door EPA officials and marketing MEMES, but even old man Murray calls his company Murray *Energy* and not Murray *Coal*. Even his own company name shows, he's ashamed of coal.
Trump can pretend coal is "clean coal", but there's no way he'd let a coal fire power plant near his hotels or golf courses.
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You actually had a Christmas every year? You lucky bastards.
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I remember helping haul my grandma's long-unused boiler from her basement, est 500 lbs. We tied a rope and looped it around the fence outside to snug up to keep it from falling. The fence groaned quite a bit.
Her coal chute had heh long hehe heheheh long since been bricked up ehehehehehe.
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Diesel trains had already replaced coal fired steam engines.
Coal fired steam engines were initially replaced with oil fired steam engines. Some were even converted.
Re: It worked! (Score:2)
Re:It worked! (Score:4, Insightful)
Mission accomplished! We can roll back all the regulations now!
Yeah, it's kind of like the anti-vaxxer thing. Now that a whole generation has grown up without the threat of debilitating diseases because the majority of people got vaccinated and avoided those diseases they don't see them as a threat anymore. Maybe they'll learn better when their unvaccinated kids come down with the diseases but they'll probably mostly be lucky and avoid them since the vaccination rate is still over 90%.
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Or the voting rights act. John Roberts apparently thinks that, because Barack Obama got elected twice, there's no racial discrimination in voting any more - or none requiring Federal oversight. And then the next day, North Carolina enacted a voting law that was 'surgically targeted' to suppress the black vote. And this year, well the ostrich court thinks phony 'voter fraud' fears are a perfectly good reason to throw eligible voters off the rolls, etc, etc, etc...
Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in a catchy turn of p
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You're calling what comes out if the mouth of one of the four communists on the Supreme Court "logic". It's propaganda.
The Supreme Court is supposed to render decisions based upon the legal merits of a case, not engage in senile political activism.
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Sorry man. When it comes to the Supreme Court, the biggest dose of propaganda you're gonna get is the whole 'originialism' philosophy. That's nothing more than a well-crafted fig leaf for a philosophy that more or less is happy with the power structure as it is, and so finds a juditial philosophy of resistance to change convenient. Except, of course, when it conflicts with a change they want to make - in which case some other lie will be crafted to justify a decision at odds with that 'deeply held' judic
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Calling anyone who has ever been a member of SCOTUS a communist is propaganda of the ridiculous kind, especially coming from a Nazi* like you. Either you don't know the definition of communist or more likely you're just using it as rhetoric to denigrate someone you don't like. In either case it has no relationship to reality.
* Do you see, my calling you a Nazi is my rhetoric to denigrate you for your ridiculous assertion. But then I see you're promoting Ayn Rand in your signature so that explains a lot.
Re:NOOOOOO\ (Score:5, Informative)
Greenhouse gases cause long-term harm to Earth. The pollutants that cause more immediate deaths are things like nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and particulate matter.
You can remove the three pollutants above and still emit CO2 and methane, which causes long-term harm to climate which will harm humans in other ways.
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It's hard to write anything sillier. How do you harm the Earth - send it spiraling into the Sun? If you want not to be ridiculed, write sensibly and name specific things on Earth that are harmed, and how they're harmed. The Earth itself is pretty much invulnerable.
Humans generate nitric oxide internally; it's essential to human life.
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Us. Human civilisation is harmed. So are a lot of animal and plant species. If you want a full list of the main ways in which things on the Earth are harmed (and occasionally benefited) by greenhouse gases, see here [www.ipcc.ch].
Nitric oxide is present in human blood at concentrations of around 2 ppm - but exposure above 25 ppm is considered dangerous, and above 100 ppm will harm you in minutes [cdc.gov]. Also undesirable is how contact with water forms nitric acid, i.e. acid rain. And particulates [epa.gov] are just as bad. Air pollution
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Thou shalt not make unto thee any other parties yard signs.
Re:NOOOOOO\ (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it is because science is exposing what is. Climate change is real, however Carbon Dioxide which is considered the major factor in climate change, at current and projected levels will not effect our health directly, like with the other chemicals that are in smog, that we got good at filtering out.
Despite the fossil fuel industry paid claims, the left isn't trying to get rid of your energy, take away your car. The do see science for what it is and wants measured regulations to slow down such effect, unfortunately fossil fuel is the primary cause. As we are quickly expelling carbon, that took these plants millions/billions of years to collect. However if we slow down fossil fuel consumption and replace it with alternative energy then we can slow down globabl warming, and allow the earth to heal some of its problems.
But normal Air Pollution, is full of other chemicals that are directly bad for us, and we have little evolutionary strategies for dealing with.
Moved factories to China (Score:1)
Re:Moved factories to China (Score:5, Informative)
Except that manufacturing jobs in the US have been on the rise since 2010...
https://data.bls.gov/timeserie... [bls.gov]
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It's possible for both things to be true - if the dirtiest manufacturing jobs all got exported and replaced with cleaner ones.
Lies, damn lies and statistics (Score:2)
Except that's ignoring the economic crash that started in 2008 and got worse in 2009. Your own link shows that manufacturing jobs are down in 2018 by over a million from where they were ten years ago. And when you take population increases [multpl.com] into account, manufacturing jobs have kept shrinking as a sector of the economy, even as new jobs are "added".
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Except that the economy of pre-2007 was a well known bubble, and beside the point that I was refuting with the GP. An 8+ year increase in manufacturing flat out refutes his statement. The reason that it's a smaller sector is simply because of other sectors growing faster...back at your Lies.
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A well known financial bubble. Not one for manufacturing, which has been in steady decline since NAFTA.
Back at your lies, damned lies and statistics. Picking a Great Recession as your starting point for looking a job numbers in just about any sector of the economy is as dis
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The starting point isn't the point, or don't you get the fucking point?
Re:Moved factories to China (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a flaw in your argument.
You just flat out wrong.
The industrial economy in the United States has continues to be top in the world. While labor costs in the US may be higher, labor in the US is much more efficient. Many of these jobs that have been outsourced to other countries on the individual company may had been from some penny pinching, but many had found it wasn't as good of a deal as they thought. Also a lot of foreign countries will move their manufacturing in the US as well.
Now such a perception is because manufacturing is very closely tied to the state of the economy + hiring a lot of low-mid skilled workers (that creates lower turnover cost) means these industries will often be first to take a hit during an economic hit, thus getting all the stories of layoffs.
Raised in a blue collar family, I understand the tension that happens, and why my parents pushed me to go to college and get a degree. So now I am a few levels up. Where recessions will need to last a big longer until I am affected. However this had always been the case. However after WWII where the rest of the world was rebuilding, the US had a near monopoly, so such cuts in manufacturing didn't happen.
Crank up the coal! (Score:3, Insightful)
With all the other progress being rolled back by this government, we may as well start indirectly killing people in order to prop up an industry well into death spasms already. But hey, you'll win the electoral votes from West Virginia and Kentucky!
Oh wait, you would have anyway.
Solar jobs 260k, coal 77k (Score:5, Interesting)
Solar long surpassed coal for jobs. By 2017 its more than 3 times the number of jobs:
http://fortune.com/2017/02/07/us-solar-jobs-2016/
I wonder how much old man Murray made dollar for dollar for all the investment he made in getting Trump elected. He did a real dodgy deal, Trump announced a rescue plan for coal, on the back of it Murray swapped debts for equity. Then Trump's plan disappears with the equity holders screwed for the money:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-04/murray-energy-swaps-debt-on-heels-of-trump-plan-to-boost-coal
"U.S. Energy Department makes plans to exercise emergency authority to force grid operators to buy electricity from struggling coal and nuclear power plants."
Ha ha, as if you can force grid operators to subsidize coal. Of course it was fake, enough to let Murray cash out a little, but at 78 he doesn't have long to spend it.
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Solar long surpassed coal for jobs. By 2017 its more than 3 times the number of jobs: http://fortune.com/2017/02/07/... [fortune.com]
Coal generates ~30 times more power than solar [eia.gov], meaning it takes about 90 people in solar to produce the same unit of energy as in coal.
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Coal generates ~30 times more power than solar, meaning it takes about 90 people in solar to produce the same unit of energy as in coal.
Coal plants require constant maintenance to function, but solar plants don't, at least not PV ones. They are set-and-forget except for a battery replacement every decade or so — and newer batteries are extending that lifespan. Those 90 people in solar can produce as much lasting solar capacity every year than those 30 people in coal can produce through ongoing labor. And while they do it again next year, the 90 people working in solar will be putting in new capacity.
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And yet, it costs less per MWhr. Lower capital requirements, higher employment. Sorry, what was your argument?
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Solar is about 1% of the US electric supply - it simply cannot support the US without massive support from all the other supplies
1% right now. At it's current growth rate, 10% in 5 years and 100% in 10 years. It can't scale to those volumes, but it does give an idea of how fast its currently growing.
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More of this (Score:1, Insightful)
The war against CO2 is sadly overwhelming the real war we should be fighting, the war against emissions and real pollution.
Luckily as we can see emissions have naturally gotten a lot better, and with the inevitable switch to more electric cars along with improved ICE emission control tech in the next decade we should see even greater improvement...
Why one or the other? (Score:5, Insightful)
You talk as if CO2 reduction is antagonistic to airborne pollutant reduction. As if you can have one not both.
But if you're lowering atmospheric mercury, for example, swapping coal for solar tackles BOTH AT THE SAME TIME.
And swapping gas for electric vehicles reduces both NOx and CO2 pollution at the same time, as long as the car is recharged with solar or renewables, and not a coal fired power station.
I'm struggling to think of an instance where CO2 pollution isn't from the same source as the other airborne pollutants.... Asbestos maybe? That is an airborne pollutant not directly connected to CO2 that was eliminated.
You greatly underestimate ground pollution (Score:2, Insightful)
You talk as if CO2 reduction is antagonistic to airborne pollutant reduction. As if you can have one not both.
Although theoretically you can do both, think of all of the money spent on warning about CO2 that could have been spent of pollution eradication measures and education.
Just as a for-instance, you could take any anti-CO2 ad campaign and pay thousands of people to walk roadsides picking up long discarded trash, including a huge number of plastic bottles and bags. That would have a huge real impact on
Thanks for the NPC dialogue patch (Score:3, Funny)
Thanks to the programmers for the quick fix for the NPC dialogue repetition bug I mentioned above, you can close that ticket now.
I would like to see a little more variety in the dilig offered, but I guess there are only so many reaction trees you can program that get across the core Democratic Party values so clearly.
Keep up the good work!
No, itâ(TM)s just irrelevant (Score:2)
If we are lucky, the warming we see from CO2 would stave off the next ice age a while longer - but that does not mean Iâ(TM)m eager for greater CO2 emissions, I just find it itrelevant and like I said, a huge waste of resources that could be used to fight real pollution like ocean plastics and lots of bad land based pollution.
The money going to fight CO2 today is having virtually no impact - countries are doing what they would be doing anyway in general. Letâ(TM)s fight a battle against pollution
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Oh, if we don't fix the CO2 problem very, very soon then we definitely won't be worrying about another ice age.
We're nearly at the point where it becomes irreversible and goes runaway. Once that happens, there will never be another ice age.
The only real question at this point is exactly how uninhabitable the earth becomes. Do we just end up with a 20 degree rise, which leaves the vast majority of the planet uninhabitable for humans, or do we go on ahead to full Venus, with virtually all life impossible?
No
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Re: So you're PRO CO2?? (Score:2)
I'm pro-oxygen.
Now you've met two pro-gas people!
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Oh jeez, another humorist.
Islamism
Progressivism or whatever is the best name for modern leftist beliefs generally.
For historically verifiable events, an asteroid collision with Earth is something that's happened multiple times, and a bad one could wipe out humanity.
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The observational evidence we have collected shows the global temperature reached one degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels in 2017 (the difference between the global mean surface temperature from 1850-1900 and 1987-2017...Figure 1.2 from the recently released IPCC special report "Global Warming of 1.5 C"). Previous studies have found solar activity and volcanic eruptions to be of minimal impact, in particular over the past few decades.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, on the other hand, have
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Swapping coal for nuclear tackles BOTH AT THE SAME TIME and gives you baseload power to boot....
Re:Why one or the other? (Score:5, Interesting)
And swapping gas for electric vehicles reduces both NOx and CO2 pollution at the same time, as long as the car is recharged with solar or renewables, and not a coal fired power station.
I did the math on this some time ago and can't put my finger on the sources this instant, but it turns out that (because of the economies of scale) an electric car using electricity produced by a coal power generating station emits less CO2 than an equivalent-sized gasoline vehicle. Obviously, power generation with renewables is clearly better for the environment, but electric vehicles are better for the environment no matter what source the power generation comes from.
Re: Why one or the other? (Score:1)
There's a good chance that recharging an EV from coal-fired generation still emits less CO2 than an equivalent ICE per mile, because it will be burning at optimized levels to extract as much thermal energy as possible, which is easier than extracting mechanical energy.
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I'm struggling to think of an instance where CO2 pollution isn't from the same source as the other airborne pollutants
Not many. But sometimes they have a complex relationship. Want lower CO2,unburned HC and particulates? Increase combustion temperatures. But Whoops. NOx goes up. Volkswagen made the wrong decision and got their ass handed to them.
Re:More of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Emissions have not "naturally" gotten better.
They got better because the government passed laws saying "Meet these mileages by these dates."
Pollution did not "naturally" get better.
It got better because the government said "Reduce emission of particulates, NOx, SOx, and other crap to the following levels by the following years."
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Wow, that's a pretty bad NPC repeating dialog glitch there at the end. Can someone get a programmer in to fix entity 57515590?
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Can we start with the Antivaxers, Gluten-Free, and anti-GMO crowd.
Re: Cause of death? (Score:1)
If it fits your political agenda and narrative, then the cause of death is 100% known to be caused by pollution.
Re: Cause of death? (Score:4, Informative)
Statistics and data. For example, if you have elevated lung cancer rates in a conical plume downwind from a coal generating station, decreasing with distance and spread / concentration.
But the survivors donâ(TM)t know it (Score:5, Insightful)
Surviving due to regulations is not likely to be noticed by the survivor. Like not dying due to a prevented accident thanks to technology. So, Americans can keep going blasting big government and regulations, their favorite pastime, and lament on the price of medical insurance while spending their money on churches that never cured anyone instead. Growing trend: ignore experts as your personal opinion trumps their expertise. ....
Re: But the survivors donâ(TM)t know it (Score:1)
It's a sad day when this stereotype horseshit gets modded insightful.
What, too busy to call all Americans fat too? Got somewhere important to be and can't lay yet another cowboy reference on us?
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Surviving due to regulations is not likely to be noticed by the survivor. Like not dying due to a prevented accident thanks to technology. So, Americans can keep going blasting big government and regulations, their favorite pastime, and lament on the price of medical insurance while spending their money on churches that never cured anyone instead. Growing trend: ignore experts as your personal opinion trumps their expertise. ....
You know what also isn't noticed by the survivors? How many of their friends and family died because progress lagged behind where it otherwise would be.
This accrues like compound interest over the decades. What it 5% behind where we otherwise would be, in terms of deaths?
Trump and the Republican Party want you to die (Score:5, Informative)
Dead Americans are the only certain result.
Republican Party Death Cult
Re: Trump and the Republican Party want you to die (Score:4)
Oh stop it. Yes regulation is important and helps direct but too much regulation kills advances in technology.
But that hasn't happened here. All automakers were on course to hit prior CAFE targets. In fact, all automakers were ahead of schedule and also capable of exceeding the standard.
Electric cars are no where near ready for long distance travel
They are 100% ready for long distance travel where there is a quick charging network available, and if our government were competent, it would have participated in building one by now.
and especially autonomous driving which most people wouldnt trust because who takes responsibility of the cars actions
Irrelevant red herring, since ICEs can be autonomous as well. FUD DETECTED.
Power plants are running natural gas which is better. It has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans but society.
Increased natural gas production depends on fracking, and fracking both increases seismic activity and contaminates aquifers with the refinery wastes they are euphemistically referring to as "fracking fluid". Fracking is a predominantly republican-supported activity. QED, you are full of shit.
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Liar.
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fracking ... contaminates aquifers....
Liar.
Stop me when I'm wrong, but be damned sure I'm wrong, first [scientificamerican.com].
Re: Trump and the Republican Party want you to di (Score:2)
That technology came along because of regulation. When California says "raise your mpg or don't sell cars here" the mpg magically goes up, and smog goes down.
Funny, that.
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What gets you the better MPG with cars that require octane 91 is the turbocharger that creates the higher cylinder pressure.
It's not just turbocharging, though. Higher-compression engines have higher output, too. I drove a 1.6 liter Nissan Almera with a slush box in Panama and it was an absolute knockout, but it did take high-octane. I was stunned at just how good it was. Later in the same trip we had to rent a Toyota Echo, and I was equally stunned... but in a different way :)
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That's why they want to roll back auto and industrial emission standards.
Dead Americans are the only certain result.
Republican Party Death Cult
Good lord. Are you incapable of discussing politics in anything but such an infantile way?
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Leave Trump out of this.
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Democrats are pushing 700,000 abortions a year. I'd be careful where you're swinging that "death cult" moniker.
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Your argument is vile and immoral. It shows ignorance of fundamental principles of moral behavior: defending one side by claiming bad behavior on the other side is both illogical and morally bankrupt.
What you should have learned from your parents is that two wrongs do not make a right. Even if your were correct, and you are not, you expressed an overtly un-Christian point of view. While you pretend to take the moral high ground you a
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Who said that I exonerated anyone?
OP claimed the GOP were a death cult, I pointed out that the Dems have their own windows.
That doesn't excuse ANYONE.
L2READ. Dipshit.
Re: Wood smoke is increasing (Score:2)
Trees take carbon from the air. Burning a tree puts it back, minus what stays in the ash. There isn't magic carbon coming from nowhere when you burn firewood.
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Although some places do require filters on fireplaces and wood-burning stoves, there's a lot of wood burning that goes on unfiltered. Wood smoke is NOT clean, although generally it's not as nasty as coal.
Even if you burn only hard woods, lots of creosote builds up inside the chimney, and much more gunk gets into the air. I love a good wood fire, but I don't pretend it's clean.
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What kind of deaths are these? (Score:2)
Curious (Score:3)
I was curious how they determined the number of pollution related deaths...
Zhang, West and colleagues analyzed concentrations of two pollutants, known as PM2.5 and ozone, from a 21-year computer simulation of air pollution across the U.S. PM2.5 are very small particles suspended in the air that come from power plants, motor vehicles, industries, and some commercial and residential sources
They then related the declining concentrations of PM2.5 and ozone to the geographical areas in which people live and the causes of death in those areas, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to estimate deaths from air pollution during the period. They estimated deaths from ischemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and stroke related to PM2.5, and from respiratory disease for ozone. .
Interesting, but I'd be looking for some validation of this before pointing to it a fact. I've seen too many simulations, and estimations (both used above) that ended up being garbage in, garbage out.
The end of polluting automobiles? (Score:3)
Why did it fall so rapidly? Reason: the phase-out of leaded gasoline and the disappearance of automobiles that don't meet today's emission standards (EPA Tier 2 Bin5/CARB ULEV-II). Indeed, Los Angeles has experienced a lot less serious "smog days" since the late 1990's.
Clearly...this is due to Global Warming (Score:2)
I mean....global warming, the planet is getting hotter, less deaths from air pollution. ;-P
Anyone questioning the stats themselves here? (Score:2)
I'm just wondering how they come to these conclusions that "1 out of 35 deaths" has a cause of air pollution?
Seems pretty suspect to me, since it's not extremely common you hear of a coroner's report stating "air pollution" as the cause of death.
I mean, is this total counting every single time somebody stupidly runs a fossil fuel burning space heater indoors with no ventilation? Is this making an assumption that COPD sufferers who damaged their lungs by decades of cigarette smoking and now require oxygen a
? - ? === success (Score:2)
I will claim ignorance here, but could someone explain to me how you KNOW a single death, little lone a concrete number of them was caused by air pollution?
Contributed too? maybe. Even then , seem REALLY hard to prove unless you are using blatant coloration = cause type thinking.
so how do a say a number, that can't be reliably estimated went down? I read the abstracts and whatnot, but don't see anything publicly available that describes how they measured this. Did I miss it?
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