Imterstingly there’s a pretty much 1:1 correlation between air quality and longetivity, much stronger than just wealth disparity. The longest lived areas in the US are Hawaii (constant supply of clean air via tradewinds, total lack of heavy industry) and the high mountain valleys of Colorado/Montana.
"A lot of what makes Summit County so healthy is also what makes the other four Colorado counties in the top-10 ranking for life expectancy so healthy: an over-representation of higher-income, young, white residents relative to national averages."
Does this mean 95% breathing unhealthy air today? Or breathed unhealthy air in the past year? Sometimes the air here is healthy, sometimes there's too much ozone. Am I in the 95%?
I may have missed it but I didn't see anything explicitly spelling out what components of pollution in the air that were so deadly. You'd think they'd define what form of air pollution we're talking about, not just pollution in the generic.
>> Deepening the concerns, this month researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada reported in The Lancet that among 6.6 million people in the province of Ontario, those living within 50 meters of a major road—where levels of fine pollutants are often 10 times higher than just 150 meters away—were 12% more likely to develop dementia than people living more than 200 meters away.
>> Just how the fine airborne particles might travel from a rodent’s nasal cavity to its brain is a mystery. But a research team led by Günter Oberdörster at the University of Rochester in New York has used traceable, radioactive specks of elemental carbon to demonstrate that inhaled particles smaller than 200 nanometers can get through the delicate tissues lining a rodent’s nasal cavities, travel along neurons, and spread as far as the cerebellum, at the back of the brain, triggering an inflammatory reaction.
>>"In 1403 elderly women, the total volume of white matter—the insulated nerve fibers that connect different brain regions—decreased by about 6 cubic centimeters for every 3.5-µg/m3 increase in estimated PM2.5 exposure, based on air monitoring data from participants’ residences for 6 to 7 years before the brain scans were taken. Chen’s white matter findings are consistent with studies of cultured neurons, which show that exposure to PM2.5 can cause myelin—the fatty insulation that wraps around neuronal axons—to “peel up at the ends, like a Band-Aid,” Block says"
I mean, hell, even trees do increase the amount of certain types of "pollutants" in the air (pollen for one). They make the air less pure for one thing.
This really affects me. I have asthma throughout my life and it shows. I think it has made me more sedentary throughout my life.
I have actually breathed really well once when I was doing work halfway inside a server farm at Alcatel Lucent (it was one of the monitor rooms so it wasn't noisy).
I can notice the air in my house is not fit to breathe and I buy hepa filters for my house.
I have thought about using an oxygen tank or some respirator and seeing if that had any measurable affect .
I just had an asthma attack today because someone spilled toner on the ground.
Where do you live? A city, or a small town, or a village?
The difference seems like it would make a big difference in traffic pollution.
I know of http://airqualitynow.eu/comparing_home.php for some EU settlements, and the difference between places can be massive. (Storrington at the bottom has a population of 4000. I don't know the criteria for appearing on that list.)
I started suffering from exercise induced asthma last year. It sucks, but I've found that with good nutrition, using the correct medications and trying to stay in a clean air environment (air cleanser, HEPA mask, etc), it's very manageable. There is a lot of good recent research out there on how to manage it, but I've noticed that most asthma sufferers and doctors are not even aware of it.
Not OP, but anecdotally— I grew up in a small town (Pop ~5000, now ~6000) in rural Ontario, Canada. I live in the city now.
Whenever I visit home I can taste how much sweeter the air is. The difference is palpable— especially in areas where there is limited medium/heavy industrial production and more agriculture and wilderness.
The man who self-immolated in Brooklyn on Saturday cited this among many other concerns:
> In retrospect, Mr. Morales said he knew Mr. Buckel had been upset as recently as February when he began discussing articles about the environment, for instance one about how 96 percent of human beings breathe polluted air and another about the Arctic Circle experiencing record breaking temperatures.
Among the 84 risk factors included in its comprehensive analysis, the GBD project reported that ambient air pollution from PM2.5
ranked 6th globally in its contribution to mortality in 2016, accounting for 4.1 million deaths. Household air pollution was ranked 8th globally, responsible for 2.6 million deaths. Air pollution from ambient PM2.5, ozone, and household burning of solid fuels combined was the 4th-highest global risk factor, accounting for 6.1 million deaths — 11% of the global total.
I've always thought the "accounting for X" deaths metric was silly of things that kill you over time. Wish they reported life expectancy changes. Perhaps it has a negligible impact.
What if we made HEPA filters in cars mandatory in such a way that every car ‘clears out’ the smog it creates plus some extra (won’t help for all the coal burning). We could then throw out/recycle the filters once in a while and at least compensate for traffic related smog.
33 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 87.5 ms ] threadhttp://www.businessinsider.com/summit-county-is-the-healthie...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-healthiest-state-in...
https://www.aspentimes.com/news/regional/study-summit-county...
https://www.summitdaily.com/news/2017-year-in-review-great-h...
Even the worst locations for air quality have many good days, and some locations with normally good air have terrible inversions.
If you're in an ozone non-attainment zone, I'm guessing you might be in the Front Range. Yes, we need to get it fixed.
> According to the report, China and India were found to be jointly responsible for over 50% of global deaths attributable to pollution.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06478pz
https://www.stateofglobalair.org/sites/default/files/soga-20...
>> Deepening the concerns, this month researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada reported in The Lancet that among 6.6 million people in the province of Ontario, those living within 50 meters of a major road—where levels of fine pollutants are often 10 times higher than just 150 meters away—were 12% more likely to develop dementia than people living more than 200 meters away.
>> Just how the fine airborne particles might travel from a rodent’s nasal cavity to its brain is a mystery. But a research team led by Günter Oberdörster at the University of Rochester in New York has used traceable, radioactive specks of elemental carbon to demonstrate that inhaled particles smaller than 200 nanometers can get through the delicate tissues lining a rodent’s nasal cavities, travel along neurons, and spread as far as the cerebellum, at the back of the brain, triggering an inflammatory reaction.
>>"In 1403 elderly women, the total volume of white matter—the insulated nerve fibers that connect different brain regions—decreased by about 6 cubic centimeters for every 3.5-µg/m3 increase in estimated PM2.5 exposure, based on air monitoring data from participants’ residences for 6 to 7 years before the brain scans were taken. Chen’s white matter findings are consistent with studies of cultured neurons, which show that exposure to PM2.5 can cause myelin—the fatty insulation that wraps around neuronal axons—to “peel up at the ends, like a Band-Aid,” Block says"
I mean, hell, even trees do increase the amount of certain types of "pollutants" in the air (pollen for one). They make the air less pure for one thing.
https://samharris.org/the-fireplace-delusion/
I have actually breathed really well once when I was doing work halfway inside a server farm at Alcatel Lucent (it was one of the monitor rooms so it wasn't noisy).
I can notice the air in my house is not fit to breathe and I buy hepa filters for my house.
I have thought about using an oxygen tank or some respirator and seeing if that had any measurable affect .
I just had an asthma attack today because someone spilled toner on the ground.
The difference seems like it would make a big difference in traffic pollution.
I know of http://airqualitynow.eu/comparing_home.php for some EU settlements, and the difference between places can be massive. (Storrington at the bottom has a population of 4000. I don't know the criteria for appearing on that list.)
Whenever I visit home I can taste how much sweeter the air is. The difference is palpable— especially in areas where there is limited medium/heavy industrial production and more agriculture and wilderness.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Close-Your-Mouth-Buteyko-Breathing/...
Conincidentally, I also used to work for Alcatel Lucent and spent much time in their server farms.
> In retrospect, Mr. Morales said he knew Mr. Buckel had been upset as recently as February when he began discussing articles about the environment, for instance one about how 96 percent of human beings breathe polluted air and another about the Arctic Circle experiencing record breaking temperatures.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/nyregion/david-buckel-bro...
Among the 84 risk factors included in its comprehensive analysis, the GBD project reported that ambient air pollution from PM2.5 ranked 6th globally in its contribution to mortality in 2016, accounting for 4.1 million deaths. Household air pollution was ranked 8th globally, responsible for 2.6 million deaths. Air pollution from ambient PM2.5, ozone, and household burning of solid fuels combined was the 4th-highest global risk factor, accounting for 6.1 million deaths — 11% of the global total.
page 18, https://www.stateofglobalair.org/sites/default/files/soga-20...