Killer Ozone?

Tufriast writes "This will make you think twice about an H2... The BBC News has reported that the death toll in U.S. cities might have a correlation to the ozone levels in them. The article mentions several major U.S. cities, and notices the upward trend in premature deaths as pollution levels rise. The results can also be found in the Journal of the American Medical Association."

Comments

Not very scientific

[El]

Confusing correlation with cause again, I see... how is this for a theory: perhaps the same crowded conditions that create the accumulation of ozone also create stress in people's lives that makes them more prone to violence?

Re:Not very scientific

[GigsVT]

No, of course this study is valid!

In uninhabited areas where there is no pollution, there has never been a premature death! Not even one!

Irrefutable proof!

Re:Not very scientific

[benhocking]

Why I agree that using correlation to suggest causation is a very weak argument, there are several other studies that demonstrate that ozone is definitively bad for us. What I don't understand is, how is this news? I was taught this back in the early 80's, based purely off of human physiology data. It was made very clear to us that ozone near the ground was bad, ozone high up in the ozone layer is good, and there's no way (known) to move ozone from the "bad place" to the "good place".

Re:Not very scientific

[Bastian]

Although I haven't read the study, they could try and control for this. If there are cities that are more densely populated but less polluted, and those cities are still following the ozone/death curve rather than a density/death curve, the case for ozone harming peoples' health is strengthened.

Re:Not very scientific

[KDan]

Hey, don't diss the study. This is a real breakthrough. They're basically saying that if you breathe poisonous stuff all day it increases your chance of dying prematurely. Astounding!

Daniel

Re:Not very scientific

[AeiwiMaster]

I think the Illuminati is trying to do for ozone / carbon oxide as they did for sodium fluoride / calcium flouride.
They will have us mistake the effect of ozone for that of carbon oxide as they hade us mistake the effect of the poison sodium fluoride for the effect of calcium fluoride. See :
1
2
3

Re:Not very scientific

[orangesquid]

Well, a tightly-controlled experiment is much better than a real-life study, any day.

In fact, you ought to make this double-blind.

Create two big rooms with machine-regulated environments. One room is full of noxious pollutants. The other room is full of clean air filled with known-harmless (or near-harmless) chemicals that emulate the smell of pollution. Label the rooms, machines, and tanks of supply chemicals with a simple "A" or "B" so those administering the experiment can't influence the participants.

Now, abduct newborns from hospitals across the world. Do this at as many places as possible, so as to get the best random distribution of human participants. Then, put half (selected randomly) in room A, and the remaining in room B.

Observe the morbidity and mortality rates over time. When everybody has died, the experiment designers/evaluators will get the data back, match up the data for "A" and "B" with the conditions for each room, and there you go.

But, there's still a flaw. The administrators might guess which room is truly cleaner based on the health conditions in each. To correct for this, one option is to create a third room that is clean, but sneak in there during the night and randomly kill some participants. Another option is to create dozens of rooms, all with varying amounts of pollution, and give teams of ninjas assignments, distributed randomly (if you just murder the kids in the clean room, you'll end up with similar mortality rates, and no useful result; also, ninjas or something similar must be used, so that the murders can occur without anybody involved in the experiment catching on; the administrators, of course, will be told about the ninjas, but will not know who they intend to attack, nor will they haev any way of detecting them; the murders would, of course, have to be done with poisons that haev very similar effects to long term pollutant exposure).

There's still a few problems with this set-up; anybody want to take over refining the design from here?

Re:H_2 or O_3?

[hopemafia]

Actually, I think the submitter was referring to the Hummer2 not diatomic hydrogen.

But hydrogen is what I thought at first glance too...

OMG!

[JVert]

I better turn up my ionizer air filter so i can kill all these ozone pollutants!

Article is interesting because

[Sai Babu]

"Peaks in air ozone levels were linked with peaks in premature death rates in urban areas across the US"

It's well known that long term exposure to ground level ozone attacks your lungs and plastic and rubber products (tires, molding on your car, rubberized and vinyl fabrics, etc.)

This AMA report sez that short term correlation suggests further study. Well of course, you want to know what you're up against.

It's not the H2 that's the problem. One old V-8 that's exempt from emmission testing and driving around on 6 cylinders causes more of a problem than a hundred hummers.
The poor need their cars so these things stay on the road.

Re:Its not the H2s

[Smidge204]

Most of what is on the "collection grids" is actually burnt ozone

How do you "burn" oxygen? :)

A properly designed ionic air filter does not produce any detectable ozone. There ARE some types of air cleaners that are designed specifically for ozone production - ozone is a powerful antiseptic and rids the air of all sorts of airborne bacteria and the like.

=Smidge=

Re:Its not the H2s

[Smidge204]

Ozone is pure oxygen, just in tri-atomic instead of di-atomic form. It has a very distinct "electric" odor (not a burning smell) and prolonged exposure can be a problem. The occasional breif whiff isn't going to hurt you.

The black stuff is dust and dirt and other crud that used to be in the air. The devices work by ionizing particles and some gas molecules in the air and using an electric field to move them through the device. The "collection plates" are the positive electrode, and when the ionized air and dust contact with it, they lose their negative charge. Dust particles get stuck on the plate and are thus removed from the air.

Some ionized material makes it through, and this is what collects on your walls. Ever try rubbing a baloon on your shirt and sticking it to the wall? Same thing.

If properly designed, the voltages are not sufficient to generate significant ozone.
=Smidge=

Actually, the H2 is a problem

[Engineer-Poet]

The H2 is a "heavy light-duty" truck, and is allowed to emit much more of most pollutants than a passenger car. See this document.

Ironically, many California cities restrict trucks over 6500 lbs GVW to truck routes; they wouldn't have to raise mileage standards to get those Hummers and Durangoes off the roads, all they'd have to do is enforce the truck restrictions they already have.

pollution in cities is much better now

[terevos]

Uhh.. I see that people have failed to mention that pollution in cities has really gone down in the past 50 years. There was a period of time from the industrial revolution where the pollution was particularly bad. Now pollution in major cities is way down. I'm glad they've done the pollution control they've done so far, but there's no reason to get all crazy in thinking that we're totally destroying the earth by our air pollution right now. We're doing a whole lot better than we were about 50 years ago.

Some books like 'The Resourceful Earth' and 'The State of Humanity' by Julian Simon has plenty of facts and stats about how the air in cities is as clean is as it was in 1580. That's right - 1580! I'd say we're doing pretty good now.

Mod parent down

[famebait]

"Not very scientific", "Confusing correlation with cause again, I see... how is this for a theory: perhaps the same crowded conditions that create the accumulation of ozone also create stress in people's lives that makes them more prone to violence?"

If you want to be scientific, how about starting with actually reading the article you want to discredit? Your criticism is not only ill-founded, you don't even seem to know what claim it is you are trying to refute. Not exacly a shining example of scientific approach, are you?

The article only claimed that scientists suspect a link (impying it should be investigated), as any scientist would and should when such a correlation is discovered. It also says that the deaths were not violent, and that the correleated variations were on the scale of weeks, which rules out population changes. This would have taken most people less than a minute to read.

"Insightful" my ass.