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America’s Air Quality Worsens, Ending Years of Gains, Study Says
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.is/aJ9xm http://archive.is/aJ9xm
- ryannevius 7y agoAirVisual's global air quality map provides some perspective: https://www.airvisual.com/earth?nav https://www.airvisual.com/earth?nav Much of Southeast Asia and Africa are about to enter "burning season," so AQI will soon spike in these regions.
- smcleod 7y agoWow check out how bad Sydney is, likely worsened by the terrible fires burning in NSW
- obituary_latte 7y agoLooks like India has the worst as far as I saw. Some areas above 400(!). For reference, Sydney is mid to upper 100’s which is still not good and likely as you mentioned fire related.
- tomlockwood 7y agoI just got home and its raining burnt leaves. And I'm not even that close to the fires.
- smcleod 7y agoGeez, doesn’t sound at all pleasant. Out of interest is the air noticeable different to smell and does it cause hay fever / asthma like symptoms?
- quickthrower2 7y agoIt smells! Gets into clothes etc. so they smell to. Smells like something is on fire nearby even though the fire might be 50km or 100km away. Been a while since I’ve seen the sun shining properly. Welcome to 21st century, this shit just getting started.
- femto 7y agoLast night's moon was a fully saturated red colour in the suburbs at the Northern edge of Sydney, whilst high in the sky, just like the colour red you would get on a computer monitor. More spectacular than a lunar eclipse, as there was no shadow, and weird in that it was a crescent rather than being full. Of a night you can see the flames shining over the distant horizon. 5th day of summer, 85 to go. "Fun" times ahead.
- tomlockwood 7y agoIt smells like I'm near a campfire! Also, I luckily don't get those.
- hnick 7y agoIt actually smells nice, IMO. A nice woodfire smokey smell. Not at all like the polluted mega-cities in China and the rest of Asia which has a chemical tinge to it. Of course, that doesn't mean it's healthy. And it is getting a bit old after around 3 weeks of this.
- polytely 7y agoKind of unrelated to the topic, but does anyone know what the big spot of bad air quality near Houston is?
- obituary_latte 7y agoSaw that too and am curious as well. Uneducated guess is either fires or refineries.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoThe dark red blob in Texas is basically San Antonio.
- bencollier49 7y agoWhy is San Antonio (and Seattle?!) so bad? Also central Africa.
- jhayward 7y agoIt's 5 hours later, so the data may be different but the largest red blob I see right now is in the region of the Gulf Coast near Corpus Christi. Since it's showing PM 2.5 readings, I suppose it could be a strong offshore wind picking up dust/sand from the long barrier island there.
- beerandt 7y agoThere was a condenser explosion at a refinery outside Beaumont this week (edit: TPC group refinery in Port Neches, Wed thru Thanksgiving morning. Primarily 1,3-butadiene). Probably related, either directly or because of surplus burn off. https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/nation/2019/11/28/texas-chemical-plant-explosions-50-000-out-homes-thanksgiving/4328023002/ https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/nation/2019/11/28... Worth checking it out just for the video. Edit: Yep- they reinstated the evacuation order yesterday and canceled school for the week, after attempting to resume classes on Tuesday. https://m.chron.com/news/article/Shelter-in-place-order-issued-for-Port-Neches-14882721.php https://m.chron.com/news/article/Shelter-in-place-order-issu... "The first explosion around 1 a.m. Wednesday sent three workers to hospitals – they were treated and released that day – and blew out windows and doors in homes and businesses for miles. At least five residents were injured, mostly by shattered glass."
- ptah 7y agoJohannesburg appears twice here https://www.airvisual.com/world-air-quality-ranking https://www.airvisual.com/world-air-quality-ranking
- swebs 7y agoJesus, what's going on in India and China?
- aitchnyu 7y agoIn the wheat growing parts of India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stubble_burning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stubble_burning
- reissbaker 7y agoThey've been like that for years. China has been steadily getting better, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_in_China#Air_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_in_China#Air_polluti... Whereas unfortunately it seems like India isn't improving: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/06/india/india-air-pollution-not-political-issue-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/06/india/india-air-pollution-not...
- markosaric 7y agoAirVisual is great. I'm checking it regularly. Considering to get one of the air quality monitors myself to get even more reliable data. We do need to move to more green energy soon as it's not looking good.
- ghthor 7y agoA more barebones earth map that can show PM2.5m as well. https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/l...
- bamboozled 7y agoIt’s Donald Trump’s ass.
- modeless 7y agoI found all the existing sites for looking up air quality to be slow, so I made a faster alternative. I just finished the MVP and I'm interested to hear if people find it useful: https://aqi.today https://aqi.today
- codespin 7y agoClean and simple. I will use this.
- axaxs 7y agoThis is really nice. Without changing the default look/behavior, I'd be really interested also in a chart of say, top 50 metro areas for the day/month/year avg.
- TomWhitwell 7y agoThat’s great, thank you
- emilburzo 7y agoThere's no sensor within 200km of me on purpleair.com, but it still shows a value (a scary one). Looking at the purpleair map, it seems to be choosing the closest one? Which for me is really far / in another country.
- modeless 7y agoYou're right, I put in a distance threshold but it's far too large. I'll make it much smaller. Thanks for the report!
- emilburzo 7y agoAwesome, thanks! Maybe it helps: there's also http://waqi.info/ http://waqi.info/ which has a decent API, but more importantly a lot more coverage (at least in Europe).
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- bencollier49 7y agoIs this Donald Trump succeeding at bringing industry back to America? Because the West had been outsourcing its pollution for quite some time...
- stretchwithme 7y agoWe've not been as successful at outsourcing the pollution as you might think. https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/environmental-issues/about-29-of-san-franciscos-pollution-comes-from-china-42334/ https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/environmental-issues/abou...
- kortilla 7y agoAir quality restrictions on new industries are too strict to have a meaningful impact on this wide of a scale. Forrest fires or just increased driving due to lower fuel prices would have a much larger impact.
- stretchwithme 7y agoIt's probably a lot due to the California fires. Last November we had the worst air quality I've seen since I moved here in 93.
- archgoon 7y agoThis would seem to be consistent with the presented data; the bulk of the increase is in the West and Midwest (which I believe picked up a fair amount of the smoke from the fires). The Northeast and South are mostly the same. The article suggests increases in driving as a contributing factor; but does not explain why that would be concentrated in the West and Midwest, and not the South or Northeast. Likewise with EPA regulation changes: why would they dominate in the West and Midwest? There may be reasons, it's unfortunate the article doesn't explore them.
- huffmsa 7y agoMidwest here, we got some weird cold grey, but not cloudy weather during the 2018 California fires. It was noticable, both visually and in the air quality.
- frankharv 7y agoYes I agree and feel the whole article is skewed by averaging. West Coast and Midwest rose by ~10 percent while East Coast and the South is still falling by almost 1 percent. I wonder how much particulate matter is coming across the Pacific from Asia in addition to the fires causing a raise. I also question how we could have dropped to Zero particulate matter. That seems wrong to me.
- CraigJPerry 7y agoDropping air pollution so significantly seems like something to celebrate- yet the first mention is when, presumably forest fires, have caused regression. People are surviving longer and it’s not news worthy?
- tapland 7y agoThe last few years I think it gets overshadowed by dropping life expectancy, and when life expectancy increases it probably gets bundled with dozens of other causes when it's reported on.
- DarthGhandi 7y ago> People are surviving longer Like expectancy in the US is dropping. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/09/us-life-expectancy-has-been-declining-heres-why.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/09/us-life-expectancy-has-been-...
- CraigJPerry 7y agoThe overall trend is down but less of that is attributable to air pollution than in years past. In the context of the story, People are living longer.
- DanCarvajal 7y agoStill though as explained in that article it's more a factor of a increase in younger people dying young vs. the elderly not living as long.
- jonstewart 7y agoIt’s certainly newsworthy when a good trend is replaced with a bad trend.
- lurker2823 7y agothanks Trump
- Vaskerville 7y agoI recently moved to Kathmandu, Nepal (I'm a US citizen). The air quality is debilitating. All the gyms I've looked at (except the American Club which costs $100/month) have open windows, so you are more or less unable to exercise unless you have a gym at home and an air purifier. We have an AP but when the wind blows the right direction our sensor reports sometimes as high as 200 - it comes in under the door (we are searching for a solution). Let's hope it never gets this bad in the US.
- Vaskerville 7y agoA friend visited recently, within three days with very little time outside, their throat was burning.
- throwawayhhakdl 7y agoDo locals suffer from symptoms like that?
- Vaskerville 7y agoYes.
- randycupertino 7y agoHere in California, insanely high levels of mercury have been found in cougars and mountain lions in the mountains between Santa Cruz and the Bay Area. Current research shows the fog has been picking up mercury from the ocean and delivery to our doorstep. I liked the infographic in this article: https://www.sfchronicle.com/environment/article/Fog-brings-poison-mercury-to-Santa-Cruz-Mountains-14862445.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/environment/article/Fog-brings-p... I think one of the problems is even with tough regulation that we have here in California, it's hard to control the actions of all individuals. We have "spare the air days" and half my neighbors houses still have smoke coming out of their chimneys on those days because they use wood to heat their homes. You can narc them out and report them however the current workaround is for them to claim it's backyard pizza ovens as there is a loophole for cooking food. When I leave for work in the morning or come home at night and see all the smoke rising laugh to myself that everyone we live nearby is having a massive backyard pizza party and we are not invited! :( There's also this ridiculously persistent anti electric vehicle roll coal trend happening right now on Tik Tok and platforms where the current fox tag objective a lot of people play on CB radios is to bag a Tesla - benchmark used to be to bag a Prius. I only know about this mainly because my old coworker commuted from Placerville to San Mateo and was obsessed with playing fox tag on his commutes (which would make sense if you're a mega commuter trying to stay awake so making up dumb nicknames with your friends and all keeping each other awake on your CB radios and talking as you drive sounds fun to you). Anyways... I've just sort of internalized the fact that more and more nonsmokers here are all going to die of lung cancer and hopefully the research and cell therapy trials will get there first before I and my family go out. :(
- brownbat 7y agoThere was a great podcast interview with Dr. Karen Clay about this finding and area of research back on November 7th.[0] She discusses how they evaluate the effect from wildfires. Also, how they trace sources by analyzing PM2.5 composition--but how that's becoming much harder as the mix of these particles is becoming much more ambiguous than it used to be. Good wonky discussion of the science. Not in the interview, but another of the surprising things I read about local pollution from transportation over the last year is that tailpipe emissions are now a minority of PM2.5 contributions from most cars. Tailpipes have become cleaner over the last few decades, so braking and tire wear now contribute as much. The biggest contributor is something called "resuspension." Vehicles slowly grind up debris or roadway surfaces into finer and finer dust, then kick it into the air where it just hangs. The implication is that average vehicle weight, prevalence of regenerative braking, and frequency of street cleaning can all have much more significant impacts on local pollution than other measurers you might expect, like fuel efficiency, emissions check programs, or even electrification.[1][2] [0] https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/neolibpodcast/Karen_Clay_final.mp3?dest-id=765425 https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/neolibpodcast/Karen_Clay_f... Don't be thrown by the podcast name, the discussion of the underlying science is very apolitical. [1] Local pollution is obviously not the same as CO2, which requires a different analysis and is more from tailpipes. But the scientific consensus is that PM2.5 leads to 200,000 early US deaths a year, and as the above podcast mentions, we're not just talking about the elderly or infirm. These are independently important issues. [2] EVs have many advantages, but, counterintuitively, removing the tailpipe only marginally reduces PM2.5 from roadways: https://www.ridef2.com/blog-del-direttore-ridef/will-electric-vehicles-contribute-less-particulate-matter-pm10-and-pm25-to-our-air-recent-analysis-and-meta-analysis-conclude-negligibly-and-policies-to-reduce-number-and-weight-of-vehicles-are-needed4720595 https://www.ridef2.com/blog-del-direttore-ridef/will-electri... I don't take from that that EVs are bad-- just that we need to combine it with other efforts and technologies to reduce local pollution.
- wasdfff 7y agoThis is why I hate the street sweepers in LA. In any other city, street sweepers leave a wet trail like a slug. In LA, they are basically a dry broom that kicks up dust. They are designed to pick up trash from the gutter, not clean the road of particulates and oils like in other cities.
- gshubert17 7y agoThe Denver-Boulder area used to have "brown cloud" pollution caused by temperature inversions trapping auto exhaust, back in the 70s and 80s. These went away with better national auto emissions standards and with state regulations testing car emissions. Recently, however, I've noticed more ozone and particulate pollution, but it's coming from the northeast, not Denver. This appears to be caused by fracking operations. Colorado now produces more oil than California or Alaska: https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/production/ https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/production/
- bproven 7y agoYeah living in the area I have noticed that as well. Pollution coming from the east / northeast (Weld County) probably due to the fracking. But if not, it would be interesting to find out where. However, this is not to say Den/Boulder doesnt still have pollution issues that need solving. I am hoping they will curtail diesel usage on the Front Range and we see better adoption of EVs here to help battle it. Y ou would be amazed at the amt of people with diesel trucks rolling coal and modding to emit plumes of smoke here :(
- BurningFrog 7y agoHow does fracking produce ozone and particulate pollution?
- tstegart 7y agoSometimes the oil is collected but the gas is burned off because it is not economically feasible to collect it. Kind of like in this picture: https://www.alamy.com/an-oil-well-pump-jack-natural-gas-flare-tower-image278802428.html https://www.alamy.com/an-oil-well-pump-jack-natural-gas-flar...
- DanCarvajal 7y agoIf only there was some sort of pipe that could be used to divert this gas over long distances to more economic processing facilities.
- throwawaymanbot 7y agoThank you GOP. This is the Air America deserves.
- dmix 7y agoAnyone recommend a good air quality detector for use in an apartment? I live close to a highway and would be interested to compare it to the city average. Amazon is showing most of the decent ones are in the $150-200 range...
- kevstev 7y agoA coworker gave me an Awair as a housewarming gift, I actually tried to return it, but had no idea where it was purchased- I finally gave up and just set it up, its somewhat helpful- it made me aware of how much cooking and cleaning affect my air quality more than anything.
- PeterStuer 7y agoOpen Source if you do not mind some DIY. While this is part of a public outdoor air quality monitoring project, the device is perfectly usable for indoor measurement as well. https://luftdaten.info/en/construction-manual/ https://luftdaten.info/en/construction-manual/
- mrfusion 7y agoAs bad as this is, keep in mind it’s small potatoes compared to co2.
- bitchTitties 7y agoMercury is quite heavy and isn't soluble in water, so the idea that the fog somehow wafts it in strikes me as bullshit. Check out this guy. You can tell he really knows how to science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning Mercury poisoning can result from exposure to water-soluble forms of mercury, by inhalation of mercury vapor, or by ingesting any form of mercury. And, wow, I bet he knows how to history too! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease All in, 30 seconds of Google, 5 minutes of reading.