Slashdot Mirror
Household Products Now Rival Cars As a Source of Air Pollution, Say Scientists (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Household cleaners, paints and perfumes have become substantial sources of urban air pollution as strict controls on vehicles have reduced road traffic emissions, scientists say. Researchers in the US looked at levels of synthetic "volatile organic compounds", or VOCs, in roadside air in Los Angeles and found that as much came from industrial and household products refined from petroleum as from vehicle exhaust pipes. The compounds are an important contributor to air pollution because when they waft into the atmosphere, they react with other chemicals to produce harmful ozone or fine particulate matter known as PM2.5. Ground level ozone can trigger breathing problems by making the airways constrict, while fine airborne particles drive heart and lung disease. Writing in the journal Science, De Gouw and others report that the amount of VOCs emitted from household and industrial products is two to three times higher than official US estimates suggest. The result is surprising since only about 5% of raw oil is turned into chemicals for consumer products, with 95% ending up as fuel.
Livestock pollutes far more. We can take direct action against it by not buying products made from animals and their secretions.
Who wrote this rubbish? Household = Industrial????? Fucking liar. Bait and switch is NOT the way this site will thrive.
Since I stopped using anything with scents or dyes in it, I've become really aware of anything with perfumes. I started with dish soap, then laundry detergent, the shower soap.
My laundry detergent still has fluorescent dye in it for colors and whites, but no perfume or other dyes. My dish soap is Seventh Generation, and my shower soap is Dr. Bronner's. (I love those bottles! Reading material in the shower!)
It doesn't save me any money? Stuff without all the added crap is around 30% more expensive. But I've also become far more aware of my own body odors, and act accordingly.
The downside is when I visit friends or co-workers who use "air freshener", it's like having to endure a teargas attack. And going anywhere near the soap aisle in the grocery store is a total non-starter. X.X
[End Of Line]
I hear where they don't want me to use hairspray. They want me to use the pump!
Because the other one – which I really like better than going "bing, bing, bing," and then it comes out in big globs, right?
And it's stuck in your hair and you say, "Oh my God, I gotta take a shower again! My hair's all screwed up!" Right?'
I wanna use hairspray!
aaaaaaa
There is no way, No Way you do more pollution in your house then with your car!
This is one of this articles where you pick the best case scenario for cars. Then you remove data from car type that make the most pollution (like old cars, industrial cars, commercial cars...) And you compare it to the worse case scenario of a house pollution, in that day of the year when that house is polluting the most.
Then you release this crap and go get your paycheck from oil companies...
From the article, not in the summary:
It’s hard to say how much pollution is down to VOCs, but a rough estimate is that between one quarter and a third of all particles are made up of organic compounds that originate as VOCs,
So it's a significant, but not the main source of particulate pollution (in Western cities where the air is usually pretty clean). It doesn't have anything to do with CO2 emissions and global warming/climate change.
. . . that car exhausts have gotten so clean, that outgassing from household and industrial products is now noticeable, instead of being noise in the metrics. . .
Alternative headline:
Automobile emissions drop to the levels of household products.
...
They've remained where they were or gotten worse with no oversight while the cars have improved their position.
Next you clean up the home products and then something else will take over the top spot as the source of pollution problems. no matter how you clean up each industry there will always be one that is not as clean as the rest. the question becomes once you get down to the absolute major source of green house gas or pollution being a natural process do you try to then regulate that. I know already that in humanity's hubris, they would try to regulate a natural process. We're insane.
No, the household products have been improving. If you live in California you have been seeing products being reformulated and many solvent being taken off the shelves for years, and the same thing is happening to a lesser extent in other areas, so your initial claim is false.
Yes, as you clean one source up others move to the top of the list. That is a natural result of regulatory success. It is not a problem.
The clean-up process is being driven by actual scientifically derived standards for safe air - air pollution levels that are not causing measurable harm to part of the population. In many urban areas of the country due to topography and weather conditions and settlement density they already meet these standards and so are not being subjected to the ever tightening regulations that South California faces. About 60% of the U.S. population does not face any air pollution problems, a fraction that is growing, and also the severity of the problem of those who still face some is diminishing. So we are hardly done with the issue yet. In some parts of the problem stationary sources (home heating, etc.) is still significant, and interestingly enough many of the solutions are actually cheaper (e.g replacing oil with gas) which is driving replacement even without regulation.
In the 40% of the country that still has issues we are no where close to the point where natural pollution sources dominate. So you are declaring "we're insane" based on something you are imagining.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age