4 ms·
Lots of ordinary air is bad for you, actually. Here's a good piece of underlying research: http://berkeleyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/China-Air-Qualit
by nilkn 10y ago
Lots of ordinary air is bad for you, actually. Here's a good piece of underlying research:
http://berkeleyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/China-Air-Quality-Paper-July-2015.pdf http://berkeleyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/China-Ai...
From this, various writers have attempted to make some extrapolations along the lines of "one day in Beijing is equivalent to smoking X cigarettes", where X ranges from 1/6 to 40. There are compelling arguments for both 1/6 and 40, despite those numbers seeming so different. Generally, the 1/6 figure comes from measuring the exact volume of dangerous substances inhaled, and the 40 figure comes from the premise that air pollution is significantly more damaging than tar from cigarettes and thus it takes much less of it to have the same effect as tar from 40 cigarettes. Regardless, the bottom line is that sometimes even ordinary air is not good for you.
- dragonwriter 10y agoThat's not "ordinary" air, its highly polluted air -- polluted with, among other things, smoke from burning various things.
- nilkn 10y agoOkay, then what, exactly, is "ordinary" air? Air that has no ill health effects? If so, then this has become a tautology -- obviously air that has no ill health effects has no ill health effects. If all such cases are conveniently excluded from the definition, then there's no point even talking about this. This is air that millions and millions of people breathe just by walking outside. Anyway, your observation that air in Beijing, etc., is polluted from smoke works towards my point, not against it.
- dragonwriter 10y agoThe upthread question about why inhaling smoke would be harmful if "ordinary air" was not pretty clearly used "ordinary air" to mean at least "air without smoke", since inhaling "smoke" is always inhaling "air with smoke", and it would be silly to ask the question if both alternatives meant "air with smoke".
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nilkn 10y agoThe upthread question also mentioned heat, so one could also say that "smoke" was pretty clearly used to refer to something like dense, hot cigarette smoke dragged right off a lit cigarette and inhaled directly, not the sort of "smoke" that's involved in city air.