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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.
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...
Greenhouse gases cause long-term harm to Earth. The pollutants that cause more immediate deaths are things like nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and particulate matter.
You can remove the three pollutants above and still emit CO2 and methane, which causes long-term harm to climate which will harm humans in other ways.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
Emissions have not "naturally" gotten better.
They got better because the government passed laws saying "Meet these mileages by these dates."
Pollution did not "naturally" get better.
It got better because the government said "Reduce emission of particulates, NOx, SOx, and other crap to the following levels by the following years."
Except that manufacturing jobs in the US have been on the rise since 2010...
https://data.bls.gov/timeserie...
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
Perhaps it is because science is exposing what is. Climate change is real, however Carbon Dioxide which is considered the major factor in climate change, at current and projected levels will not effect our health directly, like with the other chemicals that are in smog, that we got good at filtering out.
Despite the fossil fuel industry paid claims, the left isn't trying to get rid of your energy, take away your car. The do see science for what it is and wants measured regulations to slow down such effect, unfortunately fossil fuel is the primary cause. As we are quickly expelling carbon, that took these plants millions/billions of years to collect. However if we slow down fossil fuel consumption and replace it with alternative energy then we can slow down globabl warming, and allow the earth to heal some of its problems.
But normal Air Pollution, is full of other chemicals that are directly bad for us, and we have little evolutionary strategies for dealing with.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There is a flaw in your argument.
You just flat out wrong.
The industrial economy in the United States has continues to be top in the world. While labor costs in the US may be higher, labor in the US is much more efficient. Many of these jobs that have been outsourced to other countries on the individual company may had been from some penny pinching, but many had found it wasn't as good of a deal as they thought. Also a lot of foreign countries will move their manufacturing in the US as well.
Now such a perception is because manufacturing is very closely tied to the state of the economy + hiring a lot of low-mid skilled workers (that creates lower turnover cost) means these industries will often be first to take a hit during an economic hit, thus getting all the stories of layoffs.
Raised in a blue collar family, I understand the tension that happens, and why my parents pushed me to go to college and get a degree. So now I am a few levels up. Where recessions will need to last a big longer until I am affected. However this had always been the case. However after WWII where the rest of the world was rebuilding, the US had a near monopoly, so such cuts in manufacturing didn't happen.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
Statistics and data. For example, if you have elevated lung cancer rates in a conical plume downwind from a coal generating station, decreasing with distance and spread / concentration.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Mission accomplished! We can roll back all the regulations now!
Yeah, it's kind of like the anti-vaxxer thing. Now that a whole generation has grown up without the threat of debilitating diseases because the majority of people got vaccinated and avoided those diseases they don't see them as a threat anymore. Maybe they'll learn better when their unvaccinated kids come down with the diseases but they'll probably mostly be lucky and avoid them since the vaccination rate is still over 90%.
Or the voting rights act. John Roberts apparently thinks that, because Barack Obama got elected twice, there's no racial discrimination in voting any more - or none requiring Federal oversight. And then the next day, North Carolina enacted a voting law that was 'surgically targeted' to suppress the black vote. And this year, well the ostrich court thinks phony 'voter fraud' fears are a perfectly good reason to throw eligible voters off the rolls, etc, etc, etc...
Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in a catchy turn of phrase, likened Roberts' stand to "throwing away an umbrella in a rainstorm, because you're not getting wet". But unfortunately, such logic does little to trump the naked political concerns of the SCOTUS majority that thinks, all things being equal, that "money == speech" is a more important value than "one person, one vote".
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Us. Human civilisation is harmed. So are a lot of animal and plant species. If you want a full list of the main ways in which things on the Earth are harmed (and occasionally benefited) by greenhouse gases, see here.
Nitric oxide is present in human blood at concentrations of around 2 ppm - but exposure above 25 ppm is considered dangerous, and above 100 ppm will harm you in minutes. Also undesirable is how contact with water forms nitric acid, i.e. acid rain. And particulates are just as bad. Air pollution in general is still responsible for nearly a third of lung cancers and other respiratory diseases - we have a lot more improving to do.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?