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This is an obvious third-factor for poverty and marginalization. Air pollution exposure is the most classic example of unequal protection from harm in environme

This is an obvious third-factor for poverty and marginalization. Air pollution exposure is the most classic example of unequal protection from harm in environmental justice. Alameda county did a study on this that found as an isolated, direct-result of unequal exposure to air pollution, black people live 15 years less than white people on average in Alameda County alone.

olalonde 1y ago
I find this very hard to believe... Mind sharing that study?
- vallierx 1y ago
  From a quick google search I'm guessing this study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11097628/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11097628/
- Tade0 1y ago
  Same. I hail from a particularly polluted (compared to the rest of the EU) country, so PM2.5 over 80µg/m3 during the entire heating season, NOx constantly above 50µg/m3 in cities due to old diesels with anti-pollution devices turned off or removed entirely and the overall effect is said to be a 3-6 years shorter life expectancy. It checks out compared to countries without these issues, so 15 years to me sounds exaggerated, especially if we're talking about areas close to each other. Such a huge shortening normally involves heavy metal pollution of the drinking water and soil.
- dash2 1y ago
  Yeah, I mean, how do they identify the causal effect here? It's obviously not easy, because polluted areas are also poor areas, and poor people live in poor areas (and have other problems). It would be nice if the article had mentioned this issue. A metastudy of lots of bad correlational studies is just garbage in garbage out. So, did they address the issue? There are ways round it, by the way. As a recent review said: "it is unclear why federal ISAs that are the input into all regulatory analyses tend not to incorporate the emerging body of evidence on the effects of air pollution on health outcomes from the economics literature despite the additional rigor imposed by the emphasis on causal inference." https://www.annualreviews.org/docserver/fulltext/resource/15/1/annurev-resource-101722-081026.pdf https://www.annualreviews.org/docserver/fulltext/resource/15...
  - olalonde 1y ago
    It's not surprising that poverty affects life expectancy but what I find hard to believe is that poor air quality shortens life expectancy by a full 15 years.
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  That sounds incredibly obvious on the face of it though ? Having the study at hand is nice of course, but environnemental factors being alleviated through money and discriminatory policies is rampant enough I don't get the surprise. People using high quality water filters or straight buy clean water tanks in areas where tap water is bad, getting better indoor air filtering, blocking construction of pollution sources to move them further away (near poorer areas) in the county, redlining/manipulateing zoning rules to make it systematic etc. It's a old as humans.
  - Manuel_D 1y ago
    15 years disparity in life expectancy exclusively attributed to air quality is not incredibly obvious. To put this in perspective, nationwide average disparity in life expectancy is 5 years between Black and white people. Triple that amount, exclusively attributed to air quality, is a substantial claim.
    - olalonde 1y ago
      Exactly. Even smoking doesn't shorten life expectancy by that much (it's 10 years).
      - makeitdouble 1y ago
        Smoking is voluntary, partly self-adjusting (willingly or not you'll reduce smoking as you get worse), composition is regulated and that habit only starts at a later stage in life. None of that applies to PM2.5 kind of pollution.
    - makeitdouble 1y ago
      For an area that has well known air pollution issues it doesn't sound far-fetched. Comparing to the national average helps put it into perspective but doesn't make sense as sanity check. Flynt could be a better data point.
timeon 1y ago
On the other hand life expectancy of richest people in US is on par with poorest in EU. (Poverty is still factor within those regions).
- sebmellen 1y ago
  This is simply not true, at least if you consider all of Europe.
  - timeon 1y ago
    Not sure what "all of Europe" are you talking about when I was talking about EU.
    - sebmellen 1y ago
      Even if you average across the whole EU, this is not true. Western and Northern EU countries are the exception to the rule.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  ...in one single cohort-based study that only looked at around 10K deaths between the United States and 16 European countries, not the EU or all of Europe. Life expectancy in the EU varies a lot by country. Someone born in Sweden has a life expectancy over ten years longer than someone born in Latvia. That one study feels like a paper that was engineered to make headlines and social media sound bites, not to be an accurate look at the entire population.
  - timeon 1y ago
    Do you think your comment has more value than one study?
- inglor_cz 1y ago
  I don't believe this, show me your stats. The poorest region is Bulgaria, with life expectancy of 75. Just looking at the American Congress (which isn't even composed of the richest people), few people there die at mere 75 years of age. Also, here in the EU, life expectancy varies a lot. Interestingly, not-so-rich countries such as Italy and Spain win over richer Austria, Germany and Denmark by a year or so.
tomrod 1y ago
If you could see long term PM2.5 averages and how they vary, we'd approach as a national crisis. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666017222000141 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266601722... (this groups methods can be substantially improved). Having done some additional follow on work in the space -- the results definitely do not follow socioeconomic boundaries as one might expect. Roads are a huge contributor.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- phatskat 1y ago
  Roads being a huge factor also plays into socioeconomic factors though, at least in some places. Take New York City for example, where the off-ramps for highways were purposefully planned to let traffic out in larger numbers in impoverished areas to keep the noise and pollution minimal for the more affluent burrows.
  - tomrod 1y ago
    Absolutely. Though, do note that, at least in the US, road network locations change slower than gentrification changes a neighborhoods socioeconomics.
rr808 1y ago
Literally the poor people in London lived in the East End because it was downwind.
- bravesoul2 1y ago
  London has one-way wind?
  - nullnix 1y ago
    Yes. Marine environment: the wind blows largely off the Atlantic, across the whole UK.
  - nosianu 1y ago
    Prevailing wind directions are common though? Coriolis effect and earth rotation and continuously moving energy source in the sky and all that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevailing_winds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevailing_winds That's why we learned to look at on wich side of the trees the moss grows to find the compass directions.
KolibriFly 1y ago
Yeah, that tracks with a lot of the environmental justice research

olalonde 1y ago

I find this very hard to believe... Mind sharing that study?

vallierx 1y ago
From a quick google search I'm guessing this study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11097628/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11097628/
Tade0 1y ago
Same. I hail from a particularly polluted (compared to the rest of the EU) country, so PM2.5 over 80µg/m3 during the entire heating season, NOx constantly above 50µg/m3 in cities due to old diesels with anti-pollution devices turned off or removed entirely and the overall effect is said to be a 3-6 years shorter life expectancy. It checks out compared to countries without these issues, so 15 years to me sounds exaggerated, especially if we're talking about areas close to each other. Such a huge shortening normally involves heavy metal pollution of the drinking water and soil.
dash2 1y ago
Yeah, I mean, how do they identify the causal effect here? It's obviously not easy, because polluted areas are also poor areas, and poor people live in poor areas (and have other problems). It would be nice if the article had mentioned this issue. A metastudy of lots of bad correlational studies is just garbage in garbage out. So, did they address the issue? There are ways round it, by the way. As a recent review said: "it is unclear why federal ISAs that are the input into all regulatory analyses tend not to incorporate the emerging body of evidence on the effects of air pollution on health outcomes from the economics literature despite the additional rigor imposed by the emphasis on causal inference." https://www.annualreviews.org/docserver/fulltext/resource/15/1/annurev-resource-101722-081026.pdf https://www.annualreviews.org/docserver/fulltext/resource/15...
- olalonde 1y ago
  It's not surprising that poverty affects life expectancy but what I find hard to believe is that poor air quality shortens life expectancy by a full 15 years.
makeitdouble 1y ago
That sounds incredibly obvious on the face of it though ? Having the study at hand is nice of course, but environnemental factors being alleviated through money and discriminatory policies is rampant enough I don't get the surprise. People using high quality water filters or straight buy clean water tanks in areas where tap water is bad, getting better indoor air filtering, blocking construction of pollution sources to move them further away (near poorer areas) in the county, redlining/manipulateing zoning rules to make it systematic etc. It's a old as humans.
- Manuel_D 1y ago
  15 years disparity in life expectancy exclusively attributed to air quality is not incredibly obvious. To put this in perspective, nationwide average disparity in life expectancy is 5 years between Black and white people. Triple that amount, exclusively attributed to air quality, is a substantial claim.
  - olalonde 1y ago
    Exactly. Even smoking doesn't shorten life expectancy by that much (it's 10 years).
    - makeitdouble 1y ago
      Smoking is voluntary, partly self-adjusting (willingly or not you'll reduce smoking as you get worse), composition is regulated and that habit only starts at a later stage in life. None of that applies to PM2.5 kind of pollution.
  - makeitdouble 1y ago
    For an area that has well known air pollution issues it doesn't sound far-fetched. Comparing to the national average helps put it into perspective but doesn't make sense as sanity check. Flynt could be a better data point.

timeon 1y ago

On the other hand life expectancy of richest people in US is on par with poorest in EU. (Poverty is still factor within those regions).

sebmellen 1y ago
This is simply not true, at least if you consider all of Europe.
- timeon 1y ago
  Not sure what "all of Europe" are you talking about when I was talking about EU.
  - sebmellen 1y ago
    Even if you average across the whole EU, this is not true. Western and Northern EU countries are the exception to the rule.
Aurornis 1y ago
...in one single cohort-based study that only looked at around 10K deaths between the United States and 16 European countries, not the EU or all of Europe. Life expectancy in the EU varies a lot by country. Someone born in Sweden has a life expectancy over ten years longer than someone born in Latvia. That one study feels like a paper that was engineered to make headlines and social media sound bites, not to be an accurate look at the entire population.
- timeon 1y ago
  Do you think your comment has more value than one study?
inglor_cz 1y ago
I don't believe this, show me your stats. The poorest region is Bulgaria, with life expectancy of 75. Just looking at the American Congress (which isn't even composed of the richest people), few people there die at mere 75 years of age. Also, here in the EU, life expectancy varies a lot. Interestingly, not-so-rich countries such as Italy and Spain win over richer Austria, Germany and Denmark by a year or so.

tomrod 1y ago

If you could see long term PM2.5 averages and how they vary, we'd approach as a national crisis. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666017222000141 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266601722... (this groups methods can be substantially improved). Having done some additional follow on work in the space -- the results definitely do not follow socioeconomic boundaries as one might expect. Roads are a huge contributor.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
phatskat 1y ago
Roads being a huge factor also plays into socioeconomic factors though, at least in some places. Take New York City for example, where the off-ramps for highways were purposefully planned to let traffic out in larger numbers in impoverished areas to keep the noise and pollution minimal for the more affluent burrows.
- tomrod 1y ago
  Absolutely. Though, do note that, at least in the US, road network locations change slower than gentrification changes a neighborhoods socioeconomics.

rr808 1y ago

Literally the poor people in London lived in the East End because it was downwind.

bravesoul2 1y ago
London has one-way wind?
- nullnix 1y ago
  Yes. Marine environment: the wind blows largely off the Atlantic, across the whole UK.
- nosianu 1y ago
  Prevailing wind directions are common though? Coriolis effect and earth rotation and continuously moving energy source in the sky and all that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevailing_winds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevailing_winds That's why we learned to look at on wich side of the trees the moss grows to find the compass directions.

KolibriFly 1y ago

Yeah, that tracks with a lot of the environmental justice research