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I got a reality check recently about air pollution being worse than I thought, when I was cleaning the dust/dirt off my patio railing. I noticed the dust was p
by amatecha 6y ago
I got a reality check recently about air pollution being worse than I thought, when I was cleaning the dust/dirt off my patio railing. I noticed the dust was particularly black, and the whole time I was cleaning it, a familiar smell was in the air. I finally realized: it's brake dust!!
While I live on a street with many cars driving by all day, I thought being a few storeys up would reduce the amount of pollution from vehicles... apparently not at all!
- abledon 6y agothe people who live by our roads pay for our travel luxury with their health
- randycupertino 6y agoI wouldn't even say the US has travel luxury. imo "luxury" is being able to travel via an interconnected train system and not having to drive! More like US has system of inconvenience and pollution.
- kunai 6y agoWhile I would love HSR in the US (and there is definitely a pitch to be made for it in the Eastern US where population density is similar to Western Europe) there are negative externalities incurred with high speed rail as well. Metal-on-metal friction caused by going around bends releases particulates as well, and air currents can be disturbed by trains traveling at speeds in excess of 250km/h. It is preferable to having to drive in back-to-back traffic though, I agree.
- BossingAround 6y agoI think we all pay for it. Unless you live in a very remote area, the air will be polluted nevertheless (though to a lesser degree, sure).
- jandrese 6y agoAren't you glad we finally phased out asbestos in brake pads...uh, real soon now?
- ip26 6y agoYet another benefit to regenerative braking!
- beaner 6y agoCan anyone elaborate on this? Do electric cars really cause less break dust for this reason?
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y agoYup. Brakes on an EV can last a crazy long time as long as there isn't too much hard braking.
- ip26 6y agoI've generally heard from hybrid & EV early adopters that they have found their brake pads are replaced either "once" or "never", in the life of their vehicle. For this reason. If you're driving gently (to maximize regeneration), a hybrid or EV pretty much only uses the brake pads to hold the car at a stop. Deceleration is done entirely with regeneration, for maximum energy recovery.
- WillPostForFood 6y agoYou don't have to use the brake pedal at all if you drive carefully. Just lift off the accelerator and the wheels drive the motor generating electricity and slowing the car.
- superhuzza 6y ago>You don't have to use the brake pedal at all if you drive carefully. Until you drive down a hill, another driver does something unexpected, you have to take a poorly marked turn, there's a stop sign around the bend etc...
- NotSammyHagar 6y agoI don't think they mean you never actually use the brakes. That person is probably referring to the Tesla feature where when you don't use the gas pedal, the system is slightly recharging the batteries all the times (via magnets). You can turn this off if you don't like it. Then you get used to a driving style where you take your foot off the 'gas pedal' before you need to stop and the car slows down on it own (through regen braking), and so the 'UX' is you just selectively apply the gas pedal or not to go fast or slow down. If you need to stop suddenly you use the brake. It's an automatic thing after a while, you don't need to think about it. I sometimes have to get used to a 'regular gas car' that doesn't have this when I drive something else.
- nemacol 6y agoI live in the Ohio Valley. When I was growing up everyone that worked in town had the paint on the roof, hood, and trunk of their car peeling off because of the particulates that settled on them. This does not seem to be happening now because nearly everything is shut down and what is still running is operating at less than max capacity.
- Valgrim 6y agoIs there any salt mine or saltwater body nearby? The only places I've seen that kind of erosion is in places near the sea.
- nitrogen 6y agoThere could be corrosive chemicals in factory exhausts that behave similarly.
- dredmorbius 6y agoAcid rain. Industrial pollution largely from coal combustion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain
- nemacol 6y agoNo salt. It is/was from coke plant and steel mill.
- Aerroon 6y agoWhen I was a kid I was told not to eat food grown near roads or in the city. If you can notice the pollution by what has settled on surfaces then how bad is it in the food that's grown in a city?
- crispyporkbites 6y agoIs there evidence that eating brake dust in tiny quantities is bad for you?
- roywiggins 6y agoAll things being equal, I'd pick the food without it, wouldn't you?
- jacquesm 6y agoShall I send you some to use as seasoning on food that doesn't have it yet? No? Then I think you have your answer.
- samatman 6y agoThere are an endless number of gross and harmless things which I don't want to sprinkle on my food. It's actually a good question, and I'm disappointed to read middlebrow dismissal of it. As long as we want to go fast, there will be some brake dust in the air. Brake pads can be made out of a variety of materials, and we want to use the ones which are least harmful to our lungs and other organs. That takes research, not emotional appeals to disgust (from the Latin, meaning "bad to eat").
- jacquesm 6y agoSomeone actually at a classic Mini. I wouldn't advise that either. The point is that if you have the choice to eat food with or without such contamination you'd always choose the uncontaminated food because you can reason out for yourself that it is probably unhealthy. If you want to run the experiment feel free, being disgusted by it has nothing to do with it, this is about food safety, not about taste.
- nitrogen 6y agoIt can actually get worse higher up. I used to live in an apartment tower near a busy freeway, and the black dust was pervasive. I had to move because I literally lost the ability to breathe.
- BossingAround 6y agoI too live close to a busy freeway. The dust doesn't bother me as much as the sound. The noise is constant, and though closed windows isolate a lot of the sound, for some reason, when I go to sleep, I feel like I can hear everything 3x better than when I'm awake. It took like 2.5 years, but now, I'm starting to have difficulties sleeping. I thought I'd get used to it, but as the time passed, I got more and more sensitive to it. Strange.
- jacquesm 6y ago> for some reason, when I go to sleep, I feel like I can hear everything 3x better than when I'm awake. That's because you stopped making noise yourself. That masks a lot of environmental noise. Ditto of course for a chunk of your neighbors. So then your hearing adapts: it becomes more sensitive so you're more alert in case predators come and visit your cave. That kept you safe in the stone age, today it will keep you awake at night from traffic.
- porknubbins 6y agoConstant noise like road noise gives me anxiety but thats a new theory I’d never heard, so its not the noise thats a primary problem, its the fear of missing hearing something else important.
- jacquesm 6y agoI have the same problem. I can sleep easily during the day. But at night it can be super hard to fall asleep. Even the slightest unexpected sound will get me. You could try a masking sound, white noise or ocean sounds should mask traffic quite well. Not very loud, just loud enough to even out the variation. Good luck! Loss of sleep is terrible. I wrote about it recently: https://jacquesmattheij.com/dealing-with-insomnia/ https://jacquesmattheij.com/dealing-with-insomnia/
- bullebak 6y agoDead vehicle skin flakes, delicious!
- swiley 6y agoThe sooner we heavily tax the externalities from cars the happier everyone is going to be.
- bezmenov 6y agoExcept for the untold millions who are barely scraping by after the pandemic who have no leeway in their budget for an auto tax increase.
- acdha 6y agoAnyone in that boat will see much greater benefit from alternatives which don't cost a significant fraction of their annual income. Investing in transit and bike infrastructure saves many thousands of dollars a year and improves health outcomes for everyone.
- bezmenov 6y agoHow do rural folk benefit from either? Distances are too great for biking and the lack of density precludes mass-transit.
- jeffbee 6y ago"Rural folk" are going to need to come to grips with their exorbitantly subsidized lifestyle choices sooner or later. Probably sooner, since their guy is sabotaging one of their most important subsidies (near-free rural mail service) as we speak.
- NotSammyHagar 6y agoMy understanding of a common rural view is that 'city people' restrict them unnecessarily with a lot of environmental restrictions (which may be partly true). But they don't believe they are subsidized. In Washington state they have a report from the legislature that has spending in each county compared to tax revenues. This is very sensitive because of course Seattle money goes out to the whole state. There's a second version of that report that tries to compute the economic benefit of the rural areas, separately from the actual tax revenues, I'm sure this was created to lessen the sting. I want to keep our economy and the people in it living. But we need to have a shared reality.
- taf2 6y agoOne benefit of electric vehicles is you break far less because typically unless it’s very cold out the car will use the regenerative engine charging feature to slow the car. You might notice this on Tesla’s with metallic rims they are rarely dirty with break dust.