Slashdot Mirror
Air Pollution Harm To Unborn Babies May Be Global Health Catastrophe, Warn Doctors (theguardian.com)
Air pollution significantly increases the risk of low birth weight in babies, leading to lifelong damage to health, according to a large new study. From a report: The research was conducted in London, UK, but its implications for many millions of women in cities around the world with far worse air pollution are "something approaching a public health catastrophe," the doctors involved said. Globally, two billion children -- 90% of all children -- are exposed to air pollution above World Health Organization guidelines. A Unicef study also published on Wednesday found that 17 million babies suffer air six times more toxic than the guidelines. The team said that there are no reliable ways for women in cities to avoid chronic exposure to air pollution during pregnancy and called for urgent action from governments to cut pollution from vehicles and other sources.
If it wasn't this it would be something else. The realities that we've over procreated and are in the process of wrecking our planet like a runaway viral infection will catch up with us one way or another. People should have fewer babies, period. And if they don't, then this is what happens, and I have no fucking sympathy that they cannot overcome their biological imperative.
I think this is just Mother Nature helping clean the pool a bit
We'll see if you feel the same when it's your child that is born with defects.
If it were truly a catastrophe, there should be many large cities where whole generations should have perished. In the US, prior to EPA reforms, many cities had far worse air pollution, yet the maternity wards in their hospitals weren't empty.
I don't believe a blastocyst or unformed fetus is a child. It's a triviality to me: personhood laws are ludicrous, insurance should cover birth control, and HSAs and FSAs should cover condoms (to control the spread of STDs).
What's a travesty is that so many children face neglect and abuse in our over-populated foster home system, and in families who didn't want and can't support a child. We treat children like chickens: fight to have them birthed whenever we get a hint that some breeder hen might have found a rooster, and then roll them through the factory farm with no real care toward their emotional needs. A piece of skin scraping which happens to have DNA distinct from those in the human population isn't a person, nor is it a concern; it takes a good while before it starts to change into something more.
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While I commend your use of satire, and sarcasm. Sadly enough, I fear there are groups who believe this type of things. I often fear that I may had caused the Flat Earther movements myself, from a few Sarcastic comments I had made 20 years ago online, making fun of climate deniers, by making up some stupid scientific sounding explanation on why the world was flat. After Trump became president and the rise of the Flat Earther. I fear ever using Satire and Sarcasm publicly without a disclaimer would cause a new sense of horrors on the earth.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." - from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
These were very cold words from a very cold character that has come to epitomize callousness and indifference in the popular mind. Ebenezer Scrooge the money-lending, usury-gouging skinflint stands for everything that is wrong with your kind of comment, but there it is modded up to +3. Shame, Slashdot, shame. If endorsing the villian of a Dickens book doesn't grab you as shameful, rest assured that the "decrease the surplus population" comment is today most frequently applied to Republicans.
"Are there no prisons? Are there no work farms?"
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
We just offshored all the manufacturing industries to China and closed them down in the USA and Europe. Problem solved, once and for all.
But we all share the same pl-
ONCE AND FOR ALL!
#DeleteFacebook
Air pollution in 1st world cities is much, much, much less of a problem than it used to be 20, 50 or even 100 years ago. The main reason is the switch from wood and coal to electricity and gas for cooking and heating (something that hasn't happened in many 3rd world cities, and still a major contributor to pollution there). The decline in power generation from coal has also helped.
As for cars, modern vehicles emit a lot less particulates than old ones. Despite an increase in car ownership and usage, cars aren't even the number one contributor to particulates anymore in many places. If you want to improve air quality, in most cases it isn't cars that should be addressed first. The problem is not flat earthers denying the impact their vehicles have, but environmentalists tilting at the same old windmills instead of tackling actual major sources of air pollution. Though to be fair, in certain cities, older cars and especially 2 stroke mopeds certainly are part of the problem. And I'm speaking of particulate and carcinogenic emissions only of course, not greenhouse gases.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...