One of the most striking aspects of air pollution is how invisible yet pervasive its effects are. Unlike more immediate environmental disasters, air pollution slowly chips away at public health, reducing life expectancy and quality of life, often without dramatic headlines. The comparison to starvation as a "frailty multiplier" is an interesting one; pollution doesn’t always kill directly but makes people more susceptible to fatal conditions.
Regarding the reduction in SO₂ emissions from shipping fuel, I’d love to see more discussion on how international regulatory pressure (e.g., IMO 2020) managed to enforce compliance in an industry notorious for cost-cutting. Was it simply a case of the alternatives being feasible enough, or did global coordination and monitoring play a stronger role than usual?
I thought that this article will address an elephant in the room but either it missed it or I missed it.
My problem with pollution is that… you need to measure it, and those who pollute don’t do it consciously. Anecdotally I often drive through a small town. You can smell pollution, a plastic smell. In winter you can see column of smoke coming out of chimney. Sometimes it’s milky white, sometimes it thick black. There are many like that. I asked shop keeper is it happening often, she confirmed and said that no one is interested in doing otherwise, installing sensors was directly opposed by town council.
The town is not on a pollution map. Nearby cities are with medium-high pollution but that particular region is supposedly clean as reported by a single sensor positioned somewhere on a hill.
It’s not like there is one town like that in the world. There are nations that pollute heavily and don’t care and don’t meter the impact. I would be curious if all the effort, regulations etc. are worth it when applied to average Joe versus huge polluters.
> I asked shop keeper is it happening often, she confirmed and said that no one is interested in doing otherwise, installing sensors was directly opposed by town council.
One way to address this sort of localism (where there's a significant risk that the owners of the factory are slipping the town councillors the odd brown envelope) is a national regulator. The Irish EPA, which was created to take this sort of thing out of the hands of the local authorities, has been very effective in reducing nuisance pollution; the local authorities used to be mostly pretty useless. Any industrial facility of this sort would be required to self-monitor, and would be subject to inspection; it would have to respond to any complaints, and if the regulator wasn't satisfied it could demand improvements, on pain of withdrawing its operating license.
That small town might get even more pollution from all the cars driving through it, though. It's counter-intuitive, but columns of smoke from chimneys might often just be water, or be too high to really affect locally (but globally it matters, of course) compared to cars driving and flinging dust where people breathe.
In 2019, ambient air pollution claimed the lives of young children at alarming rates in several countries. Here's the top 10 list of countries with the highest number of deaths per 100,000 children under 5 due to ambient air pollution:
Nigeria – 18.95
Chad – 18.10
Sierra Leone – 12.02
Mali – 10.56
Guinea – 9.90
Niger – 9.64
Cote d'Ivoire - 9.04
Central African Republic - 8.79
Cameroon - 8.69
Burkina Faso - 8.68
These numbers highlight how air pollution isn't just an urban problem — it's a public health crisis in low-income countries where children are the most vulnerable.
Interesting article. I always assumed that a large part of the "soot" air pollution in cities came from car tyres as well, since their compounds are one of the main sources for the dust that deposits in apartments.
Particles from tires and brakes account for a significant chunk of pollution. I'm in the middle of reading Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles which goes into those details.
It's wild how many pollutants trace back to the same root cause: burning stuff. Fossil fuels, biomass, agriculture byproducts - it’s all combustion and decomposition in different forms.
For those who are worried about indoor air pollution like me, I found out thanks to this [dynomight post](https://dynomight.net/ikea-purifier/) that having an efficient air purifier is a low bar and is actually quite accessible to poor people like me !
Even cheaper is the DIY Corsi-Rosenthal box. We make a couple every few months and it does make a huge difference! Worked wonders during the wildfires a couple of years ago
I ended up purchasing a Lasko Air Flex[1]. It fits standard HVAC filters. It doubles as a white noise machine for me, it is quite loud. This review[2] indicates it works well but a bit power hungry, and it definitely gathered a visible amount of dust over a 1 year period.
Air there any air filtration systems that use water (maybe by bubbling air through water or a fine mist) to remove particulates? Like a canister vacuum cleaner, I'd love to be able to see the dirt/dust/particulates/gunk that is being removed from the air.
What still baffles me is the reduction in SO2 emissions due to regulations on shipping fuel.
How did the shipping industry accept / manage / afford to switch fuels (presumably, to more expensive ones) in order to follow the regulation ; as opposed to delay / deny / deflect, or plain old lobbying the hell against the changes ?
Are we in a "Montreal protocol" situation, where the alternative was existing and acceptable and in the same price range ?
Or did one actor implement coercion differently ? Was a standard change made, that enabled drop-in replacement ?
(If we were living under Discworld-like physics where narrativium existed, I would understand _why_ the change happened : it's making climate change worst, so of course there is all the power of narrative irony.
Are we in a world governed by narrative irony ? That would explain so many things...)
SO2 was the main driver behind the forest dieback. I'd estimate that the global investments in forrest property (mostly by old money) dwarfs the total cost for the switch to sulfur free fuel.
It is remarkable how fast the wheels of progress turn when old money faces the prospect of their assets being washed away.
Really wish they showed deaths per capita instead of raw deaths for all their data sources. It would be better for doing country by country comparisons
Something I haven't quite figured out is why my perceptions of cities' air pollution differ dramatically from their readings as reported by air quality sites.
I suspect readings are quite dependent on the specific location of the reading device. E.g. if the air quality monitor is located in a claustrophobic city street with lots of motorcycle traffic (e.g. Nha Trang), air pollution might be through the roof, but 100m away on the beach it might be clean(ish) air. Similar for 'leafy' cities (e.g. Singapore), where 100m can make a huge difference in air quality e.g. near a park vs beside a busy road.
Curious to know if the science backs up my suspicion that ostensibly 'polluted' cities sometimes have unpolluted alcoves (and 'clean' cities have spaces with bad air), so your micro environment really matters (more than the 'average' reading for that city, anyway).
It is easy to be 'green' and 'net-zero' when all you do is exporting your polluting production elsewhere and importing the goods while leaving the dirt on the manufacturer's books, and trade away your own pollution with nifty 'carbon credit' scams.
Top marks for never curbing your consumption while claiming the superior virtue position.
Extra credits for wagging a damning finger at those 'polluters' that actually make and ship your stuff.
Tangentially: Belgium's interregional environment agency (irceline) publishes very detailed information on our (awful) air quality: https://irceline.be/en
The surprising 2 aspect to me are: first, how the healthcare community mute down the causes of diseases such as hypertension. A former colleague told me how his doctor whispered to him that his stay in that big city is not long enough to have cause
hypertension, which can be caused or exacerbated by air pollution. Studies have demonstrated a link between exposure to air pollutants and elevated blood pressure, which is a key risk factor for hypertension. Long-term exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) was associated with increased blood pressure and a higher prevalence of hypertension. For every 1 μg/m³ increase in these pollutants, the odds of hypertension rose significantly, with NO2 showing the strongest association.
Second,the big role of tires in air pollution. Tyres shed particles as they wear down during braking, acceleration, and cornering, contributing approximately 6.1 million metric tons of tire dust annually to the atmosphere and waterways
It's interesting to see the number of deaths caused by pollution. But everyone will die of something. Could it be that many of those people whose death was caused by pollution may have been frail and close to death anyway? I wonder if it would be more useful to talk about quality-life-years (QUALYs) lost as a result of pollution. Probably much harder to get that data though.
I, along with other asthmatics, did notice a marked improvement in symptoms during the Covid 19 lockdowns as there was less traffic on the roads - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8011425/
This is the problem with "Well, these people are frail, and you have to die of something" assertions. See also, Covid 19 and "most people who died weren't healthy, they had other conditions!".
But from my understanding most deaths attributed to pollution, specially indoors, relate to fireplaces, cooking, oil lighting or other "I'm making smoke indoors" activities which will cause lung issues later on. Even having candles on all the time isn't good for you.
The rest as far as I understand is all estimated by putting a finger in the air and subdividing lung cancer deaths into what they feel like the causes were.
Pollutions impacts people across all age groups, including children and otherwise healthy adults. Many pollution deaths aren't inevitable near-term deaths.
Health effects include:
- Respiratory diseases developing in otherwise healthy people
- Cardiovascular damage at an early age affecting long-term health
- Developmental impacts on children with lifelong consequences
- Cancer and other conditions with substantial life-shortening effects
Exposure to air pollutants increases our risk of developing a range of diseases. These diseases fall into three major categories: cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, and cancers.
It makes sense to think of these estimates as ‘avoidable deaths’ – they are the number of deaths that would be avoided if air pollution was reduced to levels that would not increase the risk of developing these lethal diseases.
You're right, "everyone dies of something" is technically true, but the key issue with pollution isn’t just that it shortens life, it's how it does it. Chronic exposure doesn’t just tip over the already frail, it increases the burden of disease across the board
I think pollution is better thought of like starvation, as something that makes you frailer so that you end up dying over something that a healthier person would have survived. Pretty much the opposite of the perspective you take.
You don't see a lot of people arguing that starvation doesn't mean much because the deaths of starving people are more directly caused by disease or injury.
As you said, everyone will die of something and those who die are close to death. Therefore you can now justify abandoning any treatment that increases lifespans. The new baseline lifespan is shorter, therefore everyone is closer to death, let's abandon the next treatment.
Try going to a heavy polluted city, something like Delhi in the Winter.
You would honestly have no doubt about how bad it is for you health. Because you will feel it within the first 24 hours.
What's scary is that all significant sources of pollution are going down, except the ones related to agriculture (ammonia and methane) which are showing no signs of slowing down.
I feel like you can bend the heavy industry because it's just "a few" people to convince, but you can't change 7B people's eating habits :/
I wish articles like this would give some attention to how much we've already improved. We used to drive leaded gasoline, for example. The amount of damage that caused puts NOx to shame.
It’s true that we’ve stopped some especially bad things - the anti-CFC campaign should get more attention – but part of the problem is that we haven’t improved in aggregate. If Californians drive cars which get 50+ mpg with low emissions, but a hundred million people in India start driving new cars with less strict emissions controls, the planet is in aggregate worse off. Something over half of the CO2 in the atmosphere was emitted after 1990, which is a general proxy for the rest of the world industrializing.
As mankind? Think how many cars were there in South America, Africa or Asia 50-70 years ago. Its what now, 100x more?
Even in Europe its at least 10x but probably more compared to my childhood where I lived (east & west). My parents used to play as kids on the roads next to their places, those few cars per hour were slow and easy to spot and hear. Now its a car every few seconds at least.
We also found plenty more way to pollute and more types of materials to burn. Also all is now permeated with micro and nano plastics.
Perhaps the most surprising sources of particular matter is... sea spray. As water crashes around, stuff in the water (e.g. salt) often ends up suspended in the air. This apparently contributes a non-negligible percentage of PM2.5 matter in coastal areas, though exact percentages are hard to come by.
While I’m quite concerned about particulates generally (I use a few HEPA air purifiers around the house etc.), with this kind of thing it does feel like that kind of matter can’t be as bad for you as other types of PM2.5. I haven’t yet seen any research quantifying it (most studies just look at all PM2.5 as a single category) but surely there must be a difference about how bad different types of particulates are depending on what they’re made of - like those from combustion, tyre wear etc. it would seem are very obviously going to be toxic, but I also measure raised PM2.5 from cooking with my electric oven or induction stove (but not burning the food), surely that can’t be quite as bad? And sea spray you would think would be even less harmful…
Does anyone have advice for how to balance air purification with CO2 levels? My apartment will sit at around 1200 PPM if the windows are closed, but if they are open I would think running a purifier does nothing.
[+] [-] alexmccain6|1 year ago|reply
Regarding the reduction in SO₂ emissions from shipping fuel, I’d love to see more discussion on how international regulatory pressure (e.g., IMO 2020) managed to enforce compliance in an industry notorious for cost-cutting. Was it simply a case of the alternatives being feasible enough, or did global coordination and monitoring play a stronger role than usual?
[+] [-] xlii|1 year ago|reply
My problem with pollution is that… you need to measure it, and those who pollute don’t do it consciously. Anecdotally I often drive through a small town. You can smell pollution, a plastic smell. In winter you can see column of smoke coming out of chimney. Sometimes it’s milky white, sometimes it thick black. There are many like that. I asked shop keeper is it happening often, she confirmed and said that no one is interested in doing otherwise, installing sensors was directly opposed by town council.
The town is not on a pollution map. Nearby cities are with medium-high pollution but that particular region is supposedly clean as reported by a single sensor positioned somewhere on a hill.
It’s not like there is one town like that in the world. There are nations that pollute heavily and don’t care and don’t meter the impact. I would be curious if all the effort, regulations etc. are worth it when applied to average Joe versus huge polluters.
[+] [-] rsynnott|1 year ago|reply
One way to address this sort of localism (where there's a significant risk that the owners of the factory are slipping the town councillors the odd brown envelope) is a national regulator. The Irish EPA, which was created to take this sort of thing out of the hands of the local authorities, has been very effective in reducing nuisance pollution; the local authorities used to be mostly pretty useless. Any industrial facility of this sort would be required to self-monitor, and would be subject to inspection; it would have to respond to any complaints, and if the regulator wasn't satisfied it could demand improvements, on pain of withdrawing its operating license.
[+] [-] matsemann|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pjsousa79|1 year ago|reply
These numbers highlight how air pollution isn't just an urban problem — it's a public health crisis in low-income countries where children are the most vulnerable.
Source: Baselight analysis using data from Our World in Data, originally supplied by the World Health Organization (WHO). https://baselight.app/u/pjsousa/query/top-10-countries-with-...
[+] [-] Aeolun|1 year ago|reply
Not trying to say we shouldn’t consider this, but it seems like there’s bigger fish to fry first (assuming we can’t fry them all at the same time).
[+] [-] sebastiennight|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kmoser|1 year ago|reply
https://www.amazon.com/Dust-Story-Modern-Trillion-Particles/...
[+] [-] TimByte|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] carlosjobim|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cassepipe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] passwordoops|1 year ago|reply
https://cleanaircrew.org/box-fan-filters/
[+] [-] mfro|1 year ago|reply
[1] https://lasko.com/products/lasko-air-flex-2-in-1-20-inch-box...
[2] https://youtu.be/daayXtlpg_o
[+] [-] xnx|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] phtrivier|1 year ago|reply
How did the shipping industry accept / manage / afford to switch fuels (presumably, to more expensive ones) in order to follow the regulation ; as opposed to delay / deny / deflect, or plain old lobbying the hell against the changes ?
Are we in a "Montreal protocol" situation, where the alternative was existing and acceptable and in the same price range ?
Or did one actor implement coercion differently ? Was a standard change made, that enabled drop-in replacement ?
(If we were living under Discworld-like physics where narrativium existed, I would understand _why_ the change happened : it's making climate change worst, so of course there is all the power of narrative irony.
Are we in a world governed by narrative irony ? That would explain so many things...)
[+] [-] dyauspitr|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] weinzierl|1 year ago|reply
It is remarkable how fast the wheels of progress turn when old money faces the prospect of their assets being washed away.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TimByte|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] OsrsNeedsf2P|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nomilk|1 year ago|reply
I suspect readings are quite dependent on the specific location of the reading device. E.g. if the air quality monitor is located in a claustrophobic city street with lots of motorcycle traffic (e.g. Nha Trang), air pollution might be through the roof, but 100m away on the beach it might be clean(ish) air. Similar for 'leafy' cities (e.g. Singapore), where 100m can make a huge difference in air quality e.g. near a park vs beside a busy road.
Curious to know if the science backs up my suspicion that ostensibly 'polluted' cities sometimes have unpolluted alcoves (and 'clean' cities have spaces with bad air), so your micro environment really matters (more than the 'average' reading for that city, anyway).
[+] [-] PeterStuer|1 year ago|reply
Top marks for never curbing your consumption while claiming the superior virtue position.
Extra credits for wagging a damning finger at those 'polluters' that actually make and ship your stuff.
[+] [-] elric|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Sam6late|1 year ago|reply
Second,the big role of tires in air pollution. Tyres shed particles as they wear down during braking, acceleration, and cornering, contributing approximately 6.1 million metric tons of tire dust annually to the atmosphere and waterways
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] johnthesecure|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] philjohn|1 year ago|reply
Most asthmatics can live a long, healthy life - certainly not die at the age of 9 https://apnews.com/article/asthma-europe-london-air-pollutio...
I, along with other asthmatics, did notice a marked improvement in symptoms during the Covid 19 lockdowns as there was less traffic on the roads - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8011425/
This is the problem with "Well, these people are frail, and you have to die of something" assertions. See also, Covid 19 and "most people who died weren't healthy, they had other conditions!".
[+] [-] vasco|1 year ago|reply
But from my understanding most deaths attributed to pollution, specially indoors, relate to fireplaces, cooking, oil lighting or other "I'm making smoke indoors" activities which will cause lung issues later on. Even having candles on all the time isn't good for you.
The rest as far as I understand is all estimated by putting a finger in the air and subdividing lung cancer deaths into what they feel like the causes were.
[+] [-] julianeon|1 year ago|reply
Health effects include:
- Respiratory diseases developing in otherwise healthy people
- Cardiovascular damage at an early age affecting long-term health
- Developmental impacts on children with lifelong consequences
- Cancer and other conditions with substantial life-shortening effects
[+] [-] hmottestad|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] motorest|1 year ago|reply
What point are you trying to make? I mean, you don't seem to dispute that pollution can and does kill people.
[+] [-] TimByte|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|1 year ago|reply
You don't see a lot of people arguing that starvation doesn't mean much because the deaths of starving people are more directly caused by disease or injury.
[+] [-] imtringued|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kasperni|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] fedeb95|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] DeathArrow|1 year ago|reply
People can die because they don't have access to energy or agricultural products.
I wonder what would be the word population now had we not used fire, coal oil, haf we not grew rice and cereals, had we not raised cows and sheep.
[+] [-] h1fra|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] worldsayshi|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] csomar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] spwa4|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] acdha|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jajko|1 year ago|reply
Even in Europe its at least 10x but probably more compared to my childhood where I lived (east & west). My parents used to play as kids on the roads next to their places, those few cars per hour were slow and easy to spot and hear. Now its a car every few seconds at least.
We also found plenty more way to pollute and more types of materials to burn. Also all is now permeated with micro and nano plastics.
[+] [-] criddell|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] krunck|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dynm|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] stephen_g|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] fvrghl|1 year ago|reply