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The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death
- justin66 6y agoThought for sure this would be an article about the great smog. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London
- claydavisss 6y agoMillions a year (every year) die from air pollution globally. In a sense it is also contagious - your habits and consumption can impact those near you. Air pollution kills slowly so it isn't visible enough to trigger a culture war, so CNN doesn't care.
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoI bet there loads before the passing of the clean air act in 1960 ish i think. The London smog was notorious for killing people
- ljf 6y agoNo doubt, but pollution was not listed on their death certificate.
- DoreenMichele 6y agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19826344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19826344
- stuaxo 6y agoI hope this will lead to changes in roads in London and other places. The closest school to me in London is next to a busy road with twice the legal level of no2, you can see all the buildings along that road are noticeably blacker from exhaust smoke. While electric cars may help a bit, rubber from breaking and tyres is an issue, and cares have been getting much bigger over the last 5 years.
- CraigJPerry 6y ago>> While electric cars may help a bit, rubber from breaking and tyres is an issue In what way are they an issue? Tyre emissions are around 1/20th of the PM2.5 ejected from the exhaust and the airborne proportion is even smaller. Edit: "Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants" has a fairly non-commital "needs more study" finding but they did say "Non-exhaust particulate matter (PM) emissions, ie from brake wear, tyre wear, road surface wear and re-suspended road dust currently comprise just under 10% of UK primary particulate emissions and they are expected to become proportionately more important, as vehicle exhaust PM emissions from road transport are expected to decrease over the coming years" https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/917308/COMEAP_Statement__on_the__evidence__for__health__effects__associated__with__exposure_to_non_exhaust_particulate_matter_from_road_transport_-COMEAP-Statement-non-exhaust-PM-health-effects.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- xiphias2 6y agoAlso PM2.5 is easy to filter out. Any cheap device can filter it out quite efficiently. For NO2 I tried all the most expensive devices, and none of them worked :(
- GordonS 6y agoThis might be a silly question, but how would you filter stuff "emitted" by tyres?
- xiphias2 6y agoI'm not a scientist, just an asthmatic person. All I can tell you is that I am so far not sensitive to electric cars at all. Regarding PM2 and NO2, I bought decices to measure them, that's why I have these results.
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- Raphmedia 6y agoThe "first"? What did they label all of those? https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/smog-kills-thousands-in-england https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/smog-kills-thous...
- three_seagrass 6y agoThey're not sure how many people died during that time and can only estimate impact. This little girl's death is directly attributable to the nitrites in the air and lack of prevention.
- paxys 6y agoMy guess is whatever the immediate cause was - accidents, CO poisoning, pre-existing respiratory problems, flu.
- whitten 6y agoThank you Karawebnetwork. I read comments specifically to address this issue. I think Smog=Smoke+Fog is an example of air pollution. I'm sad so many people suffered from it, and sad that this girl died as well. Forgetting something that happened in the 1950s, because it was more than 65 years ago, doesn't seem like accurate journalism to me.
- Raphmedia 6y agoThis event directly contributed to the existence of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_1956 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_1956 too.
- CraigJPerry 6y agoThere's a neat feature in the BMW X5 xDrive45e (a petrol plug-in hybrid SUV) - when you enter a low emissions zone, it automatically switches to battery power. Moving emissions away from the tailpipe in heavily populated areas seems like a great idea. There's no free lunch though. The emissions are still happening, just in different places where they're, ideally, less likely to affect people. It's a better situation but it's not yet perfect.
- lenitabinol 6y agoEven neater feature in electric vehicles!
- nether 6y agoMost forms of municipal power generation are much lower emission than a piston engine. Hydro, wind, and nuclear especially. Just having the generation take place with a near-constant RPM steam turbine is vastly more efficient than a stop-n-go motor.
- CraigJPerry 6y agoYeah and the emissions are in one place so capture should be more economically viable I’d have thought.
- andylynch 6y agoLondon taxis are supposed to do the same. Decent idea for hybrids.
- londons_explore 6y agoI'd like to see someone do analysis on what percentage of "Zero emissions capable" London taxis actually spend any reasonable proportion of time powered by electricity. I suspect the drivers, not wanting to wear out their batteries, set the vehicles to use the engine the whole time, which is a built in feature (the 'save' drive mode)... It's time we said "no taxi may run an engine inside zone 1, and if they do it's an £80 fine".
- duckfang 6y agoIt is indeed sad that a 9 year old died from purely preventable air pollution. However, through her death and the resulting judgement, we (royal) can start holding polluters and companies liable. And through that, we can start to effect strong climate based change, through a series of steep punishments of wrongful death and the like. I sincerely hope her death is not in vain, but as a loud bell to start a wave of changes.
- qlm 6y agoSorry for nitpicking on a serious comment, but wouldn't using the royal we here mean that you personally are going to hold polluters and companies liable?
- j4yav 6y agoThat's correct, the royal we is a case where you use we to mean I.
- noodlenotes 6y agoUsing the normal "we" would imply you and the readers of the comment. The royal we implies that you personally (and whatever entities you're in charge of) will hold polluters liable. The royal we seems to excuse the audience from responsibility.
- pmiller2 6y agoThat would imply they had actual power to do so. One average individual isn't going to be able to do anything to those who are polluting our air. Case in point: the US government is one of the top 10 greenhouse gas polluters in the world. You really think one individual without billions of dollars backing them can do anything against the US government?
- sjg007 6y agoYep. I do believe one person can make a difference.
- xiphias2 6y agoAsthma from air pollution completely destroyed my life, that's all my life is about at this point. The first signs are that it's harder to sleep at night, because the mucus goes into your airways. If you feel that, move away far from any street with many cars while you can.
- GordonS 6y agoI suffered from asthma as a kid, bad enough to put me in hospital. As I got older, it just kind of disappeared - by the time I was 15 or so, I was only very rarely using inhalers. As an adult, I've travelled a lot to India for work, always staying in big cities, which are filled with 2-stroke rickshaws and are always heavily polluted (e.g. Mumbai, Pune, Delhi). Often a kind of horrible, acrid, thick smog descends after dark when the temperature drops a little. Every time I travel to such places, I have to take my inhalers because I really feel the effects of it! The first time this happened, years ago now, I was really quite shocked - how many deaths must this cause? How could the government allow this, and how could people stand it?
- xiphias2 6y agoJust don't travel there. It's not worth it. Talk to your boss about your asthma, and work harder remotely if you need to. I was more lucky with investments so that I can now pay to live in places with clean air, but I don't have social life anymore, as clean places are usually the less fun places.
- JPKab 6y agoI go to London occasionally for work. Since I live in a high-altitude location, I really enjoy running when I travel, since I can go faster and farther and sight see at the same time. The amount of diesel exhaust you breathe in running through London is pretty crazy compared to other cities I've been in. And I know that they have worked very hard to reduce this, so not trying to knock the UK or London itself. Just something I noticed and felt running along the Thames.
- parenthesis 6y agoWhat is the altitude of where you live?
- JPKab 6y agoI live northwest of Denver, higher up overlooking it. I'm at 1900 meters (6200 feet). Nothing too crazy, but makes a difference for sure.
- parenthesis 6y agoSomewhat higher than the very highest point in the UK (1345 meters at the top of Ben Nevis)! Living close to sea level, I've always been fascinated by the great height of places like Denver and Mexico City.
- thomasedwards 6y agoWhen they introduced one of the efforts in April 2019 I noticed within a few weeks the difference – it has got better, but there’s a long way to go.
- pietrovismara 6y agoThis pandemic gave me so much to think about air pollution. It puzzles me how we can have, just in Europe, around 800k yearly premature deaths caused by pollution[0] and still not care at all. On the other hand, covid-19 hasn't caused yet as many deaths but we quickly intervened, as it should be. Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution? - [0]: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/40/20/1590/5372326 https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/40/20/1590/537232...
- satysin 6y agoI live in Lyon, France and we often have high air pollution warnings and you really can feel it in the air. During lockdown, back in April and May, there was a noticeable difference in the air quality. It felt different. When we went out for a walk you could also tell the difference in noise pollution from there being so few cars on the roads. It was lovely. There is a church nearby that we can sometimes hear when the bells ring on the hour at night but during lockdown we could hear them during the day. My wife commented back then how she knew when the area had "returned to normal" as she could no longer hear the church bells when she had lunch in the garden.
- CydeWeys 6y agoParis, at least, is doing an amazing job of replacing motor vehicles on the streets with friendlier alternatives, with great results in terms of reduced air and noise pollution. Try to elect a mayor of Lyons who's like Annie Hidalgo?
- satysin 6y agoThe traffic in and around Lyon is fucking terrible. They really need to do something to reduce how many cars are on the road. The thing is overall the metro is decent as is the bus service and they are always full yet there are still so many cars on the road I wonder where all the people come from tbh. There are also lots of alternative options available with Lime e-scooters and Vélo'v bikes all over the place but still what feels like a million cars! I used to live in London so a lot of traffic isn't new to me but during peak times Lyon is a nightmare so I just avoid it as much as possible.
- amingilani 6y ago> Delivering a narrative verdict, Mr Barlow said levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) near Ella's home exceeded World Health Organization and European Union guidelines. There are WHO and EU guidelines? I had no idea. Most my life, I've lived in a city where the AQI is usually >250 during the day, and it's been in IQAir's top polluted cities[0] for the past 2 years. [0]: https://www.iqair.com/ca/world-most-polluted-cities https://www.iqair.com/ca/world-most-polluted-cities
- tristor 6y agoWow, that's horrifying to look at that chart. I live in San Antonio, TX where we sometimes have air quality days which have specific restrictions. The trigger point is that we expect to rise about 10 AQI which is the WHO guideline. Our average for 2019 was 9.4. Living in a city where the average is over 100 sounds terrible to me. I'm asthmatic, and I have seasonal allergies, and there are days the air quality here bothers me.
- jariel 6y agoAir quality in London for example (similar for other UK urban areas) is better now than in hundreds of years. [1] Even the Thames is much cleaner than it has been in generations. It should be 'drinkable' but it's not as bad as used to be. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/london-air-pollution https://ourworldindata.org/london-air-pollution
- kmfrk 6y agoA lot of people are coming to terms with bad air quality, even in their homes. Air purifiers are selling like hotcakes, even where wildfires aren't a concern. One of the concerns I hope will stick after this thing is (largely) over. Something I would love for a HNer to solve is SEO for air purifiers: basically all Google results are absolute bullshit that make it harder, not easier, to make an informed choice. Much like VPNs where it just comes down to SEO, marketing, and affiliate links.
- Raphmedia 6y agoYour best bet is probably something like an independant YouTuber making tests that are easy to see, understand and replicate. This video comes to mind, I had watched it when comparing products: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXL5NoX25XM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXL5NoX25XM But even then, it's hard to get total transparency. Did they receive a product from a manufacturer for free? Are they receiving money to ignore a particular device? Etc.
- lambdadmitry 6y agoI do believe that in a lot of cases people would be better served by measuring it first. I live in central London near a small street on the first floor and measured PM2.5 for a year, it barely ever went over 2ug/m3, with 10ug/m3 being safe long term threshold set by the WHO, which makes any PM2.5 air purification useless. Now, NO2 is a bit different and I haven't measured it, but common household air purifiers do nothing for it.
- GloriousKoji 6y agoI find that this is a problem for nearly anything one might try to buy. I'm back to going to Consumer Reports for recommendations.
- cmehdy 6y agoI find the irony strong in the idea of buying electronics encased in plastic transported by ships and trucks to you in order to purify the air that is polluted majorly due to every single aspect of that chain. I understand to an extent of course, but can't help finding it painfully ironic.
- LatteLazy 6y agoI remember reading about covid death numbers and uncertainty around them. No one dies of HIV, they die of secondary infections. No one dies of obesity, they die of heart failure. Maybe its time we had immediate, short term and general causes of death?
- mikecsh 6y agoWe do. U.K. death certificates have parts 1a - what caused the death, 1b and 1c - contributing factors, and 2 - contributing comorbidities. For example: 1a Community acquired pneumonia 1b Mesothelioma 1c 2 ischaemic heart disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus
- blackcats 6y agoThe amount of dirt thatin the air is surprising. Taking it out of my ionizator weekly. I doubt it’s healthy
- donatj 6y agoCareful with the ionizator. They can generate a lot of ozone which is actually probably worse for you.
- DoingIsLearning 6y agoThe article and the people commenting seem to generalize this death to air pollution. But the article itself specifically quotes NO2 as the cause of death. High concentrations of NO2 can be directly attributed to diesel engines which is a much easier problem to tackle than the general problem of decommissioning ICE vehicles.
- olivermarks 6y agoA child with serious asthma issues should not be living near a major traffic artery, this could have been a quickly remedied social situation. 'A 2018 report found unlawful levels of pollution, which were detected at a monitoring station one mile from Ella's home, contributed to her fatal asthma attack'. The girl lived '25 metres from the South circular' in Lewisham. Listing her death with claims 'air pollution' were a factor are almost certainly true (it would be interesting to see the autopsy data) but also serve the WHO's and other agendas.
- ljf 6y agoUnfortunately those with a low income often are incredibly limited in where they are able to live. Even as a 'well paid' person in London my choices were limited by the vector of where I could afford, proximity to transport, my office, and family/friend/support connections.
- olivermarks 6y agoPainfully aware of this, nevertheless this is a massive social services failure IMO.
- ljf 6y agoAgree - sadly social services are woefully underfunded and that is unlikely to change for some time.
- nvarsj 6y agoIt’s sort of ridiculous to suggest moving house and family is “quick and easy”. Most likely her house was only affordable because it was in such a polluted area. Many areas in London are like this unfortunately - walls completely covered in soot from diesel vehicles. They simply need to ban diesel in the city.
- olivermarks 6y agoNobody said anything about 'quick and easy'. I lived close to the westway and used to cycle a lot in London, I'm pretty aware of denser urban arteries, but walls are not completely covered in soot from diesel vehicles, which are now much cleaner than ever before. There is a tremendous amount of dirt and debris from tires and road degradation around high traffic areas, you are probably confusing soot with dirt. Better road maintenance, recycling tires to incorporate into road surfaces would help enormously especially with heavier vehicles like EV's, SUVs and trucks.
- lambdadmitry 6y agoI don't like how the girl's death became a focus point for a crusade against cars in general (even though I'm a fan on public transport myself). By most measures, London's air is great as it is on average. However, some sources of pollution are local, like a big busy road, and the girl, unfortunately, lived near one (the article mentions she lived near South Circular Road). Trying to make the air clean on average is really counterproductive compared to, say, making buffer zones around roads with more greenery, tackling local pollution instead of averages.
- initaccount 6y agoWhy is this hacker news?
- d_burfoot 6y agoOne very simple thing that we can do a much better job at is preventing people from idling their cars in pedestrian areas. I walk through supposedly eco-conscious Berkeley every day, and without fail there is at least one car stopped at the curb, idling, often while the owner plays with his phone. The problem has gotten much worse now that food-order apps are more popular. I think that people have some kind of magical belief about car exhaust being harmless. It's like: okay, sure, a common form of suicide is to lock yourself in your garage and idle your car engine. But if you're outside, then magically the exhaust fumes become completely harmless... because (checks notes) air breezes or diffusion or something. Really, people? I have a strong suspicion that in decades to come we will realize that car exhaust causes many of the big neurological disorders, like Parkinson's.
- amelius 6y agoI don't think the suicide argument makes sense because what kills you is the carbon monoxide or the lack of oxygen, both of which are not a problem outside.
- Aachen 6y agoIndeed, just because you can commit suicide by depriving yourself of oxygen using water doesn't mean water is bad in nature. Now, in this case we know that car byproducts are bad for the environment but it doesn't logically follow from the former.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- DanBC 6y ago> It's like: okay, sure, a common form of suicide is to lock yourself in your garage and idle your car engine. Deaths using this method decreased dramatically when cars started having catalytic converters fitted.
- kingsloi 6y agoShameless plug, I've been working on a community air quality monitor for my little community https://millerbeach.community https://millerbeach.community I live a few miles from steel mills, oil refineries, who take advantage of Lake Michigan, constantly polluting both air and water, occasionally dumping/"releasing" more toxic chemicals than permitted and don't raise the alarm for a few days: https://www.in.gov/idem/cleanwater/2576.htm https://www.in.gov/idem/cleanwater/2576.htm, killing thousands of fish, closing water intake, parts of the National Park, etc. etc. I've lived in Gary, IN since 2016, moving from the UK. A few weeks ago, a young lad from Gary died of a really rare cancer: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/us/ben-watkins-masterchef/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/us/ben-watkins-masterchef/ind... Last week, my 3 month old daughter got diagnosed with really rare genetic disorder called Kabuki Syndrome, on top of heart disease. Who knows if either is/was caused by living so close to steel mills and/or pollution, but I'm skeptical. Did I cause/impact/increase/etc my daughter's condition by choosing to live next to a steel mill? I just have to accept that I'll never know the answer to that question.
- throwaway201103 6y agoWhy do you live there? I mean of all places, Gary Indiana is near the bottom of the list of anyplace in the USA that I would consider living. Economically destitute, dysfunctional government, high crime, terrible schools, and horrible contamination from the steel mills. I assume it was a work-related move?
- kingsloi 6y agoIn 2011, I was in college in the UK, managed to score a year internship in Chesterton, IN, a few miles from Gary. Lived in Valparaiso while I worked in Chesterton. Revisited same city in 2016, met my now wife who is from Crown Point. We got married and rented from a friend in the Miller Beach community neighbourhood of Gary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_Beach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_Beach, a block from some really wonderful beaches, dunes, nature reserves, etc. Never understood "lake life" but after having lived a "lake life" for a while, I really loved it. Walking my little old dog in the morning alone on the beach with a coffee, listening to some nice music, on a nice calm day, really was a some of the nicest, most peaceful times of my life. I knew about Gary's history, but I really put it to the back of my head, I always thought it couldn't be that bad, could it? Or, I wouldn't be affected, would I? I knew the bad schools, crime, etc, I knew my wife and I would have kids, I always thought I'd deal with it when I'd need to deal with it, just didn't think it would affect me so seriously, so soon.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- anarchop 6y agoDiesel particulate pollution is the primary problem. London black cabs are diesel. There is a good case for banning diesel in metro and even suburban areas over time and requiring at least hybrid. Electric busses actually make more sense than cars due to the high regeneration of stopping.
- AdrianB1 6y agoI think that banning Diesel propulsion for cabs is a great idea; first, cabs have high usage and big impact, second they are replaced faster than regular cars so the negative financial impact is minimal, they just buy electric for the next iteration and keep using electric.
- jsingleton 6y agoI recently finished reading Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution by Tim Smedley, which is excellent and well worth a read if you are interested in this area. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/clearing-the-air-9781472953339/ https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/clearing-the-air-9781472953339... > ...a detailed blueprint for saving our cities. Suggested measures include a ban on all petrol and diesel cars in city centres; the replacement of diesel buses and trains with electric vehicles; and an end to the use of wood-burning stoves and coal fires. It’s an achievable vision, he insists. “However, whether it happens in 10 or 100 years is down to public pressure and political will.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/31/clearing-the-air-tim-smedley-choked-age-of-air-pollution-beth-gardiner-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/31/clearing-the-a... I also built a few monitors to add to Sensor.Community (a contributors driven global sensor network that creates Open Environmental Data), which are pretty easy to make. https://sensor.community/en/ https://sensor.community/en/
- varispeed 6y agoI think this can be taken with a grain of salt, as Coroner in the UK sometimes is quirky, like that one time they recorded a person died from THC overdose ( https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/gemma-moss-marijuana-death_n_4738167 https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/gemma-moss-marijuana-... ) and that was then widely used to discredit any legalisation movement and make access to cannabis for patient impossible for a number of years. I can easily see this verdict is politically motivated and unlikely scientific.
- TheAceOfHearts 6y agoI'm regularly shocked by the air quality outside of my apartment ever since I bought a few high quality air filters. As soon as I step outside I can easily smell the difference in air quality, even when websites report that the air quality should be fine. I've been taking sulforaphane supplements to help protect myself from air pollution as well. Here's a reference [0] to support the claim that sulforaphane helps protect against air pollution: > Sulforaphane optimizes glutathione, serving as a nutritional "seatbelt" > But consumption of this non-nutrient appears to be important – even essential – for optimal health. Sulforaphane promotes the production of glutathione, a powerful antioxidant that facilitates the body's excretion of a wide range of toxic substances, including pesticides, aflatoxin, and air pollutants. Glutathione binds with many of these toxins and forms mercapturic acids, which can be excreted and measured in urine. > Robust clinical evidence has demonstrated that sulforaphane is beneficial for people who live in areas where air quality is poor due to pollution levels. An intervention study in Qidong, China, an area known for its high levels of air pollution, found that sulforaphane markedly increased the production of mercapturic acid metabolites of benzene and acrolein, known carcinogens present in air pollution. These effects manifested within 24 hours of sulforaphane administration in a dose-dependent manner. > More importantly, however, these effects were sustained – even after several months – demonstrating that sulforaphane did not exhaust the body's capacity to protect itself from environmental threats and suggesting that regular consumption of sulforaphane in foods or dietary supplements provides a kind of nutritional "seatbelt" that protects against future toxic exposures. These findings have relevance for people living in the western part of the United States, where forest fires, which are sources of many airborne pollutants, are common. [0] https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/jed-fahey-q-a https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/jed-fahey-q-a
- kylebenzle 6y agoWith Covid-19 Rates Rising Adding an Air Purifier To Your Home is the Single Most Important Thing You Can Do to Improve Your Health [0] [0] https://kylebenzle.medium.com/adding-an-air-purifier-to-your-home-is-the-single-most-important-thing-you-can-do-to-improve-your-4b9568c8056e https://kylebenzle.medium.com/adding-an-air-purifier-to-your...