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Lower Air Pollution Means Longer Life
thefickler writes "A new study by the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has found a strong link between air quality and life expectancy. The researchers looked at air pollution, deaths and census data for 51 metropolitan areas between 1978 and 2001, and what they found was a direct correlation between improving air quality and extending life expectancy. People lived about 2.72 years longer over that time span and at least 15 percent of that increased life expectancy was from a decrease in air pollution."
Yes, pollution concentration and contents changes over times and you need a methodology to keep track of these things. If common sense was a viable guide to life than we wouldn't need science.
I can't tell if the post I'm responding to was meant to be a trolling or flamebait comment but it certainly seemed that way. Pollution is the textbook example where even a libertarian needs to compromise to some extent. Pollution is an externality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality. That is, the harm created by it is highly diffuse and applies to people not involved with the original transactions that created it. Free markets solve for pretty much everything but externalities. This is because transaction costs (the cost of making deals) easily outweighs the benefit to not having the negative externality from any given single pollution source. So it isn't in anyone's incentive to make individual deals with each polluter to reduce pollution even if it is in everyone's best interest to reduce the pollution level. In such circumstances, the only solution is central regulation of some form.
Furthermore, there is a philosophical reason that pollution doesn't apply in the standard libertarian framework. The central philosophical idea behind most forms of libertarianism is that if I'm not harming anyone then I should have a right to do whatever I please. This is a strong argument. Unfortunately, pollution does harm other people. It isn't as direct or as obvious as murder or theft but it is harming people. It is again, just more diffuse and harder to pin down exactly who is harmed by which bit of pollution. For both economic and philosophical reasons even a hard-core libertarian should be ok with regulation of pollution.
"And you hate and despise us Libertarians why? All we want is FREEDOM." ... to kill the environment and abuse your employees, load down nations with debts they can never pay back, and gain exclusive monopoly control over land, air and water - and then watch those die who can't pay. Or shoot them with your own hand if they try to 'steal' 'your' 'hard-earned' resources.
At least that's the kind of 'freedom' most anarcho-capitalists I've seen dream about. And unrestricted, unregulated, corporate iron fist and death to the teeming masses.
The absolute freedom to take everything you want and give nothing back.
If you're not into that kind of 'freedom', we have something in common.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
I really hate this phrase. The more I see it used, the more I'm convinced it's just people trying to sound smart.
If correlation never implies causation, then every study ever done is invalidated.
Sure you can take something and twist facts any way you want to make something correlate to something else, and in that case, sure correlation does not imply causation. And perhaps an initial correlation does not imply causation, but typically warrants further investigation and studies. But when you have a studies that take years of data, good, large, samples, and some generally smart people doing it, saying "correlation is not causation", especially without any argument or justification, is just silly.
Parent is either +1 Funny or -1 Troll.
True, but how does causation ever get proven? Every day life doesn't exist in a lab and not all (or even most) variables can be controlled for. It's very much impossible to concretely prove causation within our populations for things that don't cause instantaneous death... Often times, the best we can hope for are very strong correlations and make a *reasonably* educated assumption.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
Pollution is bad for you. Well Duh...
Science is sometimes about proving (or occasionally disproving) the obvious.
However, in this case it has a lot to do with the fact that certain elements - those who earned big money on pollution being allowed to happen - for many decades did everything they could to stop the government from taking appropriate action. Just like for climate change now, there were "pollution sceptics" and people advocating "common sense" and "freedom".
Another thing is that the harm caused by pollution has been hard to quantify, and therefore it has been hard to come out and say "This industry produces this amount of pollution, which causes this amount of extra death and disease, which costs society this amount of money" - if we can put a clear cost on pollution, we can justify things like pollution taxes or economic sanctions.
Well, the point about the people earning money by using the atmosphere as a cesspool is valid, but that's not why this is science.
Science often proves the obvious because the "obvious" has to be tested from time to time to keep it honest. Yes, it's obvious that pollution is bad. It's also obvious that radiation is "bad". You do not want to sleep on top of an unshielded nuclear reactor core, for example, even if you could avoid getting cooked. But at some point the effects of radiation aren't worth bothering about.
The same goes for pollution. It's a valid question to say, at what point does reducing air pollution become irrational? This study shows we haven't passed that point yet.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.