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Comment by imtringued | Hacker News Reader

If this is related to local air pollution then what is the biggest producer of that pollution? I mean are there any coal plants or blast furnaces near her home? Was there a construction site pouring concrete or demolishing a building and creating toxic dust? Is the traffic especially bad? It is far simpler to move pollution away from locations than it is to reduce them in the first place. Therefore knowing what the source of the pollution is far more important than the pollution itself. If this death really was caused by global air pollution then good luck, nobody can help you when China and India are ramping up their pollution, certain industries might never stop emitting CO2 and capturing CO2 in the air will never be economical without a huge carbon tax.

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There's very little coal in the UK now. There are fewer than 10 coal power stations left, and the nearest is over 100 miles from London.

The specific London problem is traffic, and maybe added to by the current fashion for log stoves. You get the constant thick taste of the fumes about 10 miles outside the centre, and it's there permanently.

Just about everywhere inside the north and south circular, which is more like 4 or 5 miles outside the centre, is badly polluted, but the south circular exceptionally so - it's almost constantly gridlocked and wasn't built for the volume of traffic it has. South Circular makes it sound like a major road or city motorway - it's used as one, and was probably intended to one day be rebuilt as one. Except it's just a regular one lane each way street for most of it, with lights and junctions, and lined with houses and shops.

So dirt and grit if you leave windows open, or washing out, black gunk in the nostrils and the constant taste.

Locals get used to it to some extent. It strikes us every single time we visit the relatives down there.

I find the idea that log stoves are part of the problem interesting. Here in America wood burning stoves have pretty strict emissions requirements, to the point where a portion of wood burning stoves sold today actually have a catalytic converters in them to ensure complete combustion of any particulate!

Does the U.K. not have similar rules, or are all of these just grandfathered in?

I knew it was a bit of an issue, so I looked it up[1]. Turns out it's far worse than vehicles, and far worse than I thought:

"...the burning of solid fuels (such as house coal and wood) in our homes is the largest contributor of harmful particulate-matter (PM) emissions."

"This makes up 38% of our national PM emissions while, in comparison, industrial combustion is 16% and road transport 12%."

Wood stoves appear to have side-stepped much of our clean air legislation which is woefully out of date anyway. Coal fires have become fairly rare over the same period, so that's mostly down to wood stoves. Haven't heard of any requirements for catalytic converters, which seems a sensible idea.

In my lifetime we've gone from almost nowhere selling wood except wood yards, to everywhere does - mainly in the last 10 years - garages, corner shops, supermarkets. In neat little single use plastic bags. This government has lost 3 court cases on air pollution, and their current targets kick out real action well into the long grass: 2030.

It's ridiculous.

[1] https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/wood-burning-stoves/article/...

At least wood fuel is carbon neutral.

Can you find any references to the actual particulate emissions that’ll be allowed after 2030? I’m curious if wood burning stoves are inherently problematic, or if the EPA really is that much more strict than the U.K. equivalent.

There are smoke control zones - https://www.gov.uk/smoke-control-area-rules - first put in place after the Great Smog of 1956 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_1956. Generally only in built-up areas, so not sure whether it applies to this particular situation, and certainly no controls in the countryside.

Actually, to clarify, I believe this type of pollution is very easily stoppable at the source. There are basic "particulate filters" that could catch almost all of this pollution, and I don't believe there is any reason that they couldn't be standardized on all busses, cars, coal-power plants.

CO2 is something entirely different.

I think lung problems are actually more strongly linked to Nitrogen Dioxide pollution, although particulate pollution is still an issue.

Particulate filters I think are required to be fitted for the last 10 years or so, the problem is they require frequent high speed travel to function properly, and people have routinely removed them.

The South Circular Road is a major arterial road across Inner London which was not really "designed" as such (for a lot of its' length it is made up of a bunch of minor roads lined by terraced houses glued together).

Diesel cars.

Seems like you haven’t been to the UK or Europe. The London busses and cabs are really bad. Plus all the other diesel cars with NOx emissions way past the legal limits.

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