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US Air Pollution Deaths Nearly Halved Between 1990 and 2010 (eurekalert.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from EurekAlert: Air pollution in the U.S. has decreased since about 1990, and a new study conducted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill now shows that this air quality improvement has brought substantial public health benefits. The study, published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, found that deaths related to air pollution were nearly halved between 1990 and 2010. The team's analyses showed that deaths related to air pollution exposure in the U.S. decreased by about 47 percent, dropping from about 135,000 deaths in 1990 to 71,000 in 2010.
These improvements in air quality and public health in the U.S. coincided with increased federal air quality regulations, and have taken place despite increases in population, energy and electricity use, and vehicle miles traveled between 1990 and 2010. [...] Still, despite clear improvements, air pollution remains an important public health issue in the U.S. The estimated 71,000 deaths in 2010 translates to 1 of every 35 deaths in the U.S. -- that's as many deaths as we see from all traffic accidents and all gun shootings combined.
These improvements in air quality and public health in the U.S. coincided with increased federal air quality regulations, and have taken place despite increases in population, energy and electricity use, and vehicle miles traveled between 1990 and 2010. [...] Still, despite clear improvements, air pollution remains an important public health issue in the U.S. The estimated 71,000 deaths in 2010 translates to 1 of every 35 deaths in the U.S. -- that's as many deaths as we see from all traffic accidents and all gun shootings combined.
Mission accomplished! We can roll back all the regulations now!
Incredible!
This news isn't radical climate scaremongering! How dare you not spread the word that we're on the ragged edge of total clipocalypse at all times?! Gaia is angered! Our glorious Prophet Gore came down from the mountainside where his 4th enormous mansion was built, to tell us the many ways we have sinned. Lo! The transferring of our wealth to the poor and humble, for the world is indeed theirs, that is the only way into grace! The Church is going to need its cut, of course. Have to spread the word; denounce heretics, travel to important gatherings. Which happen to be held at 5 star vacation resort villages, obviously so we can see first hand just how threatened these majestic paradises are.
It's a labor-intensive, dirty way of extracting energy from Mother Earth. It wasn't killed by regulations, either. It was killed by labor costs, and the final death knell was cheap natural gas from fracking.
Also, many coal jobs were utterly shitty. Imagine being the poor schmoe who drove a steam engine or shoveled coal into the boiler. Sounds romantic? Now imagine standing in a cab when it's 100F outside and 120F in the cab. Turn some valves while watching for signals and danger ahead, or shovel enough coal per minute to power a freight train in these conditions...
No more work in the USA so no more industrial exposure to investigate.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
With all the other progress being rolled back by this government, we may as well start indirectly killing people in order to prop up an industry well into death spasms already. But hey, you'll win the electoral votes from West Virginia and Kentucky!
Oh wait, you would have anyway.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The war against CO2 is sadly overwhelming the real war we should be fighting, the war against emissions and real pollution.
Luckily as we can see emissions have naturally gotten a lot better, and with the inevitable switch to more electric cars along with improved ICE emission control tech in the next decade we should see even greater improvement...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When I was a kid, we had a coal fire, and you'd shovel coal onto it hourly to keep the house warm. It was a PITA to light in the morning. When you went out, and came back to the house, the house was cold. You'd try to revive the embers and the house would take an hour or two to warm up.
Diesel trains had already replaced coal fired steam engines. There were still some coal fired power stations, and quite a few blackened buildings/lungs around those.
That was the age of coal. Long gone.
You can see Murray *Energy* trying to revive it with PAC bribes and revolving door EPA officials and marketing MEMES, but even old man Murray calls his company Murray *Energy* and not Murray *Coal*. Even his own company name shows, he's ashamed of coal.
Trump can pretend coal is "clean coal", but there's no way he'd let a coal fire power plant near his hotels or golf courses.
How can one tell that a death is due to air pollution?
Surviving due to regulations is not likely to be noticed by the survivor. Like not dying due to a prevented accident thanks to technology. So, Americans can keep going blasting big government and regulations, their favorite pastime, and lament on the price of medical insurance while spending their money on churches that never cured anyone instead. Growing trend: ignore experts as your personal opinion trumps their expertise. ....
Dead Americans are the only certain result.
Republican Party Death Cult
Why is Snark Required?
Wow, that's a pretty bad NPC repeating dialog glitch there at the end. Can someone get a programmer in to fix entity 57515590?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You talk as if CO2 reduction is antagonistic to airborne pollutant reduction. As if you can have one not both.
But if you're lowering atmospheric mercury, for example, swapping coal for solar tackles BOTH AT THE SAME TIME.
And swapping gas for electric vehicles reduces both NOx and CO2 pollution at the same time, as long as the car is recharged with solar or renewables, and not a coal fired power station.
I'm struggling to think of an instance where CO2 pollution isn't from the same source as the other airborne pollutants.... Asbestos maybe? That is an airborne pollutant not directly connected to CO2 that was eliminated.
People spend more time indoors than ever before.
The number of people heating homes by burning wood in cities is increasing rapidly. That is going to reverse the trend soon enough.
You talk as if CO2 reduction is antagonistic to airborne pollutant reduction. As if you can have one not both.
Although theoretically you can do both, think of all of the money spent on warning about CO2 that could have been spent of pollution eradication measures and education.
Just as a for-instance, you could take any anti-CO2 ad campaign and pay thousands of people to walk roadsides picking up long discarded trash, including a huge number of plastic bottles and bags. That would have a huge real impact on the environment, and possibly the ocean in the future as that stuff filters down the coast.
But instead, some big NYC ad firms get fat and probably produce a metric ton of plastic waste from all the things they buy with "green (Ha, first typed as "greed")" ad dollars.
But if you're lowering atmospheric mercury, for example, swapping coal for solar tackles BOTH AT THE SAME TIME.
Yes, that is true, and why I am a huge proponent of solar energy.
I'm struggling to think of an instance where CO2 pollution isn't from the same source as the other airborne pollutants
Again, it's more about where a huge amount of money is being diverted to try and convince people CO2 is a problem, while they ignore other real physical pollution which could be addressed to a greater degree.
However, you are way too limited thinking of airborne pollutants when we have so many problems, yet another problematic vector of the CO2 hysteria. As we can see here airborne pollutants are actually getting better anyway so it would be way better to really focus on the other stuff which is maybe even worse than it used to be, even with plastic bag bans and a push away from bottled water.
I clean up a lot of roadside and trail side trash throughout the year, and to me it seems like trash wandering around the environment is maybe worse than it ever has been in the past. That is not getting better on its own and we need to focus there much more than we are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How many of those people would have fallen out of a window and broken their necks, or gotten run over by a bus if they didn't get sick from their bad diet and sedentary lifestyle?
Next they'll tell us that 3000 people died from Hurricane Michael
Under Trump, the death count is bound to go up, depending on how the Trump Administration counts cause of death.
Solar long surpassed coal for jobs. By 2017 its more than 3 times the number of jobs:
http://fortune.com/2017/02/07/us-solar-jobs-2016/
I wonder how much old man Murray made dollar for dollar for all the investment he made in getting Trump elected. He did a real dodgy deal, Trump announced a rescue plan for coal, on the back of it Murray swapped debts for equity. Then Trump's plan disappears with the equity holders screwed for the money:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-04/murray-energy-swaps-debt-on-heels-of-trump-plan-to-boost-coal
"U.S. Energy Department makes plans to exercise emergency authority to force grid operators to buy electricity from struggling coal and nuclear power plants."
Ha ha, as if you can force grid operators to subsidize coal. Of course it was fake, enough to let Murray cash out a little, but at 78 he doesn't have long to spend it.
SERIOUSLY, it is time to deal with these disinformation superfaggots in our midst. MURDER KEN DOLL.
Thanks to the programmers for the quick fix for the NPC dialogue repetition bug I mentioned above, you can close that ticket now.
I would like to see a little more variety in the dilig offered, but I guess there are only so many reaction trees you can program that get across the core Democratic Party values so clearly.
Keep up the good work!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've never met a person who is PRO a gas before. Usually they're just paid for mouthpieces trying to push coal or oil or whoever the sponsor is pushing.
But you seem genuinely enthusiastic about CO2 as a gas.
And you seem to have a hatred of people who don't like CO2 the gas.
I've always been quite fond of Oxygen myself. All those advertising agencies pushing their "Anti-Oxidant" creams. Why can't we have good old American oxidants anymore!
I too wander the streets digging in trash cans throughout the year. They should focus on keeping those trash cans topped up and not let Soros and his anti-oxidant agenda be on my TV all the time.
If we are lucky, the warming we see from CO2 would stave off the next ice age a while longer - but that does not mean Iâ(TM)m eager for greater CO2 emissions, I just find it itrelevant and like I said, a huge waste of resources that could be used to fight real pollution like ocean plastics and lots of bad land based pollution.
The money going to fight CO2 today is having virtually no impact - countries are doing what they would be doing anyway in general. Letâ(TM)s fight a battle against pollution where we can make a real impact in making the Earth a cleaner place.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
so you telling me this won't matter? Some one or thing slipped me soy. This is not good and I don't care what some study says. I'm dying here.
Air pollution deaths have declined massively. Hooray.
These are in no way related to the marked increase in deaths from asthma, black lung, TB and other respiratory related diseases.
Fortunately, those mostly impacted are the poor and they aren't considered people for governmental census purposes.
We recently had a similar study conducted in my country as well, with (of course) a much more alarmist summary: we must reduce pollution NOW or else... And while a further reduction of pollution is good, the urgency with which we do so and the expense and disruption incurred by that urgency must be weighed against the benefits. So... what kind of deaths are these? Normal people with healthy lives tragically cut short, as is the case in traffic accidents and shootings? Or people with respiratory ailments that are exacerbated rather than caused by pollution ? Not that we shouldn't care about the latter, but in terms of public health these are not comparable.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Can we start with the Antivaxers, Gluten-Free, and anti-GMO crowd.
Just another day in Paradise
I was curious how they determined the number of pollution related deaths...
Zhang, West and colleagues analyzed concentrations of two pollutants, known as PM2.5 and ozone, from a 21-year computer simulation of air pollution across the U.S. PM2.5 are very small particles suspended in the air that come from power plants, motor vehicles, industries, and some commercial and residential sources
They then related the declining concentrations of PM2.5 and ozone to the geographical areas in which people live and the causes of death in those areas, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to estimate deaths from air pollution during the period. They estimated deaths from ischemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and stroke related to PM2.5, and from respiratory disease for ozone. .
Interesting, but I'd be looking for some validation of this before pointing to it a fact. I've seen too many simulations, and estimations (both used above) that ended up being garbage in, garbage out.
Just another day in Paradise
Why did it fall so rapidly? Reason: the phase-out of leaded gasoline and the disappearance of automobiles that don't meet today's emission standards (EPA Tier 2 Bin5/CARB ULEV-II). Indeed, Los Angeles has experienced a lot less serious "smog days" since the late 1990's.
I mean....global warming, the planet is getting hotter, less deaths from air pollution. ;-P
Just think how much dirtier the air would have been if we didn't have nuclear power. Just think how much more coal we'd have burned then and how much we will have to burn in the future if we abandon nuclear power.
Here's a question, why is it always solar will save us and nuclear was something. What evidence do we have that solar will do anything than continue to be a money pit? Nuclear power has done very well, why not assume it will continue to do so? People bring up the tiny fraction of nuclear power plants having accidents as evidence against nuclear power, but ignore that solar power has killed far more people per energy produced. These global warming alarmists keep screaming "SCIENCE!!" and can't be bothered to do the simple science of comparing deaths from solar power to that of nuclear power and realizing that nuclear provides far more energy per the number of people killed.
These solar power advocates will compare future technology that is not yet on the market to busted down and known flawed Chernobyl and Fukushima. Well, if you compare the ideal imagine of what solar will be to the worst of nuclear power then of course solar looks good. How about we compare apples to apples? Compare the future of solar to the future of nuclear? Or the past of nuclear to the past of solar? Or, most of all, the present of solar to the present of nuclear? We live in the present after all.
Right now nuclear provide 20% of our electricity with as little pollution and CO2 as solar wishes it could. You want clean air RIGHT NOW? Then get some nuclear power. You want clean air in the future? Then build more nuclear power today for clean air tomorrow. Do your solar power research in the mean time, that's fine, just don't abandon all the progress we made in keeping the air clean from nuclear power. We can do two things at once, we can build nuclear power plants while we build solar collectors. Building both will clean the air far faster than abandoning one or the other.
Octane does nothing for fuel efficiency by itself. It is merely a rating of resistance to pre-detonation under compression, e.g. "pinging"
What gets you the better MPG with cars that require octane 91 is the turbocharger that creates the higher cylinder pressure.
Also my Model 3 disagrees that it's not ready for a road trip. Seems that the supercharger network has me covered, for cheaper than filling my BMW.
That technology came along because of regulation. When California says "raise your mpg or don't sell cars here" the mpg magically goes up, and smog goes down.
Funny, that.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
at the horizon in the 70s and 80s. I also remember coming home from Manhattan I had to clean my nostrils. The air is now cleaner but can still be a lot cleaner. On occasions I take the IRT subway and I can still see soot coming out from some of the apartment buildings. It looks like some of them are still burning oil especially #6 oil. NYC has a plentiful supply of natural gas which is also cheaper. The landlords won't change out the furnaces because of the one time cost. The government needs to provide them with financial help.
What gets you the better MPG with cars that require octane 91 is the turbocharger that creates the higher cylinder pressure.
It's not just turbocharging, though. Higher-compression engines have higher output, too. I drove a 1.6 liter Nissan Almera with a slush box in Panama and it was an absolute knockout, but it did take high-octane. I was stunned at just how good it was. Later in the same trip we had to rent a Toyota Echo, and I was equally stunned... but in a different way :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm just wondering how they come to these conclusions that "1 out of 35 deaths" has a cause of air pollution?
Seems pretty suspect to me, since it's not extremely common you hear of a coroner's report stating "air pollution" as the cause of death.
I mean, is this total counting every single time somebody stupidly runs a fossil fuel burning space heater indoors with no ventilation? Is this making an assumption that COPD sufferers who damaged their lungs by decades of cigarette smoking and now require oxygen are dying from air pollution? What determines these stats? I have a feeling the totals aren't really showing a reality where otherwise healthy individuals die prematurely because of the pollution in the air they're breathing in the city they live in ....
Well, you had a good run America.
I will claim ignorance here, but could someone explain to me how you KNOW a single death, little lone a concrete number of them was caused by air pollution?
Contributed too? maybe. Even then , seem REALLY hard to prove unless you are using blatant coloration = cause type thinking.
so how do a say a number, that can't be reliably estimated went down? I read the abstracts and whatnot, but don't see anything publicly available that describes how they measured this. Did I miss it?
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Some cars have had knock detectors for at least 30 years now. Use low-octane gasoline, the detector senses pre-ignition, and the timing is retarded to stop the pre-ignition. Both power and efficiency suffer when timing is retarded.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Where does the fracking fluid go then, Einstein? Does the fracking process cause the formation of hermetically sealed storage tanks underground while it does its drilling magic? The drillers certainly don't recover and recycle it. A driller couldn't recycle it if they wanted to because it's leaking all over the goddamned place. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Not even enough to properly lie about it.
Except that's ignoring the economic crash that started in 2008 and got worse in 2009. Your own link shows that manufacturing jobs are down in 2018 by over a million from where they were ten years ago. And when you take population increases into account, manufacturing jobs have kept shrinking as a sector of the economy, even as new jobs are "added".