Drivers who keep their windows down are exposed to 80 percent more air pollution
surrey.ac.uk
surrey.ac.uk
In 5-10 years one of the things that will be recognized as a marker of privilege will be breathing clean air. We're going to see a diaspora out of the city and into the countryside... for the people who can afford to do that (and where the countryside offers clean air)
Air pollution is arguably the biggest health crisis in the world, and it has been a problem for decades. We're only just realising it, and it's still taking too long. It's taken decades to get climate change into people's minds, but right now today air pollution is having much bigger effects.
I think that instead we will see cleaner air in cities since the economics of electric/hybrid cars will win, especially in city traffic. This trend can already be seen in SF where zero-emission hybrids and electrics make up a decent percentage of the traffic.
Personal automobiles are part of the problem. Perhaps not the biggest problem but a big one in cities.
Citation needed. The whole economic and environment footprint of electric vehicles in relation to their efficieny is rather bad. The future would the CNG but something is holding it back.
Emphasis added. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaust_gas
https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-vehic...
This gives actual figures for PM2.5 emissions from exhaust, brake wear, and tire wear per mile for both gasoline and diesel vehicles.
There is an argument about how much EV's would reduce PM2.5. The above shows things were a lot worse 20 years ago. And current gasoline cars produce 0.008gm/mile PM2.5 from exhaust and 0.003 and 0.001 from brakes and tire wear.
That says to me that EV would still reduce emissions a lot. One can assume that brake wear is half that of a gasoline powered car. So you go from 0.011gm/mile for gas. To probably 0.003 for EV's.
Electrifying diesel trucks is a huge win.
It's hard to compare an environmental risk factor with actual diseases, but I don't think you can really argue that it's the biggest "health crisis" by any metric. Anxiety for example is still the most debilitating disease worldwide. It's still pretty bad though, which I didn't realize before looking into it, but the usual suspects are still worse in terms of health.
At least in the city you have constraints on how much traffic can fit and alternatives to driving.
I think if you go to just about any moderately popular walking spot in the uk with steep stony parts, you will see just about every rocky step is covered in the scratch marks from the feet of the poles. One wonders if they are really effective if they can’t get a good grip on the more difficult terrain people presumably get them for help with.
I’ve never seen “diaspora” used this way, and dictionaries at hand don’t support it.
Did you mean “migration” or “exodus”?
I believe "dispersion" would better denote a natural consequence and "exodus" would put more emphasis on intent.
You can see it has an effect as Delhi's pollution drastically differs between different times of year, which generally correlate with the time of crop burning.
There's obviously no economic incentive to do this, but I'd love to see a travel-agency-alike business offer a sort of "atmosphere simulator" that sets up the same composition of air pressure, heat, humditiy, and VOCs that the destination is going to have. It'd be great as a pre-test for people with lung conditions, to see if they would truly be okay with spending a vacation there (without needing to buy a plane ticket and waste days going there just to find out and immediately turn around.)
> We're going to see a diaspora out of the city and into the countryside... for the people who can afford to do that
Or we'll see the development of new coastal cities, and the redevelopment of existing coastal cities, to favor clean air over industry or (non-EV) cars; with the expectation that the city will be able to make it up in taxes (incl. estate taxes) from a large residential tax base of people who still want to live in cities, but also want clean air.
Coastal cities that already have such policies (and so little pollution) are clearly seeing hypergrowth in residential real-estate speculation, above-and-beyond what you'd expect from current global market forces. Vancouver BC, for example, is getting its real-estate markets pumped way beyond those of neighbouring Seattle WA.
(I say coastal cities here, because being near an ocean means having access to trade winds to sweep some amount of produced pollution away. An inland city has to work a lot harder—i.e. to strangle its industrial capacity much more thoroughly—to achieve the same effect.)
My friends don't have this problem and fail to understand why I feel a strong urge to wash my hands as I get inside. At first I thought it might be because they're adjusted to it, but as I type this I realise it might also be because my hands produce slightly more sweat than the average hand (not excessive amounts, just a tiny, but noticeable bit more) which maybe gets absorbed by this particulate and that's why I can feel it? No idea if the science checks out.
So maybe the ability to feel pollution in your airways is also something that might differ from person to person? I sure have never felt it, but then again, I live in a relatively unpolluted city.
try centuries. Cities used to be population sinks sustained by migration because people kept dying so fast. During the heyday of early industrialisation the life expectancy in Liverpool[1] fell to 25 years. London periodically experienced infamous smogs, the one in 1950 killed about 12000 people.[2] No matter how bad it is today, it was even worse in the past. Electrical vehicles and better public transport and much more awareness and historical trajectory if anything though suggest that things are getting better, not worse. There's not going to be anyone fleeing from the cities, economics opportunities are going to outweigh pollution, as it did in the past.
[1]https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/13/did-livin...
When I left, my health also improved.
Clean air truly is an underrated privilege.
there used to be no catalytic converters on cars. gas used to be leaded. factories woyld burn stuff and dump it into the air without a filter. diesel autos had no soot filter and ran lower temp for extra unburnt gas. we used to clean things with cfcs.
right now, today, in the western world, is the cleanest it has ever been.
in chicago, a hundred years ago, meat factories across the river where the irish lived simply burned leftover animal parts. it would rain ash, 24/7. when those living there crossed the river to the office area without the ash, they would throw up from the cleaner air.
i have a feeling you are a millenial, and are just discovering a world of huge problems. what you don't realize is they are tiny, very ild problemq, that were huge and have been greatly and continually improving. you want to make changes to feel important, when the reality is, people have been working in this for a hundred years before you were old enough to notice, and what we have been doing is working quite well on improving things.
right now, today's air pollution where you live is having the smallest effect in over a hundred years.
this is like new adults screaming how bad trump is. because they don't remember bush, or clinton, or reagan, or nixon. and when they read about it, they think it's a story and can't imagine living through it.
"we're literal nazis now!" yeah, cops used to kill people in a union on behalf of corporations. we locked americans in camos for having squinty eyes. we made weed illegal to stop white women from screwing black men. we had drafts for overseas wars where no one attacked us, forcing kids to go die for nothing. we had bush and mueller - the honest superstar trump-punisher lie to congress on tv saying he found weapons of mass destruction in iraq and start an insane war. billions of cash shipped there and not arriving. and that air problem in india? that used to be where you live now. it got better.
the premium market for clean air you talk about? it didn't come when things were 10x worse. it's not going to come now, or in a decade when things get even better, as they have been.
the cheap non-premium market with cleaner air is the suburbs. your problem was solved ages ago.
This is approximately half the deaths we would expect worldwide if no country was to do anything and we’d let COVID-19 rage through our societies.
Why is our response to air pollution so drastically different then? We don’t even implement a single day lockdown to reduce pollution for a single day. I’m sure air pollution also disproportionately affects young children and damages their lungs as opposed to Coronavirus.
This world is so weird.
The solutions for Covid are quite simple in principle but our lack of discipline in minor things is killing us.
[1]: https://www.who.int/airpollution/data/AAP_BoD_results_March2...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto
I think a famous newspaper article at the time said something like: "Ford decided your life was worth $500". And it was after a cost benefit analysis.
Covid has a fatality rate of, at best, 0.3%. At worst, higher than 3%.
Nobody sane is going to sit still and let, say, 1% out of 8 billion people (80 million people!) die.
We can work on other issues in parallel, but prioritizing emergencies.
The current fatality rate is 1% despite it is only measured by testing the most severe cases which end up in hospital. How did you come up with 3%?
> “ Nobody sane is going to sit still and let, say, 1% out of 8 billion people (80 million people!) die.”
Latest science claims that we need 42% of a population to be infected to create herd immunity. Only this week we learned that slums in India (e.g in Mumbai) have reached herd immunity and are now the least affected in India where the rest of the country is struggling. 0.5-1% of 42% of 8 billion people (the expected number of deaths) is only twice as much as the yearly deaths from pollution.
Additionally pollution kills 7 million every year. A novel virus is novel only once, so after 2-3 years COVID cannot even reach the deaths caused by pollution even if we tried hard.
So overall it’s completely illogical why we respond to coronavirus with such draconian measures and at the same time are so blasé about pollution which is evidently more damaging overall.
If you are asking why humans as a species are not smarter than they are to see through short/long term effects, well, beats me :) But I still don't want my close ones to contract coronavirus, so I am still largely social-distancing. But I only hope to get an electric car in a couple of years.
Coal plants? Gone today. Electricity production reduced by 30-50% in most countries.
No ICE vehicles? I don't even know how many there are, but I'd imagine we're talking about 1 billion or more. Now that you're at it, goodbye trucking, taxis, 80% of public transportation, food delivery, ambulances, fire trucks, ...
No planes or helicopters? Goodbye emergency search and rescue, weather services, crop spraying, etc.
You haven't thought this through with your comparison ;-)
Perhaps it's because these things can disrupt anyone's daily life seemingly at random. Pollution on the other hand is just part of our daily lives. There are other things which fall into that category as well such as smoking, fast food, alcohol, etc.
Perhaps we as a species, rightly or wrongly, fear the unexpected more than we fear the status quo, even if the latter is more harmful than the former. So we allocate resources to fix the former but not the latter.
Covid is purely negative.
Preventing pollution is expensive, and upsets the status quo. And many companies stand to lose their entire livelihood if it were to succeed.
Hypothetically speaking if we were visited by aliens... yea, I dont blame them for not making contact.
[1]: https://hysz.nju.edu.cn/_upload/article/files/79/b2/159a6762...
We need to stop using ICE vehicles. All the other people on the street are even worse off. The people driving the cars are also causing the very pollution this mentions.
(I have an EV, a gasoline powered sports car, and a diesel SUV (with particulate filter and urea injection))
https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/pollution-tyre-wear-...
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/14/world/microplastic-pollut...
"Using a popular family hatchback running on brand new, correctly inflated tyres, we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles."
Most tires seem to be around 7kg, which means according to their data a car would have all 4 tires reduced to nothing after 4828km. With most tires going bald after ~50,000km (not fully vaporized mind you), there's clearly something wrong here.
My guess is they tested brand new tires which may shed particulate quickly at the start, similar to how a new carpet sheds exponentially more at the start.
https://www.ukimediaevents.com/publication/955cc42f/30
They said that all four tires combined lost 1.8kg, which implies they only drove 340km? Also, this is literally based on measuring the weight of the tires apparently, so how much of that became PM2.5 class particles is a mystery.
The article also mentions "track testing", which if used for the test, would easily explain the enormous material lost after a short time. Track racing is very different than highway driving...
I also find it humorous that the busybodies who insist that stop signs be installed every block of their neighborhood arterial have to suffer from the resulting air and noise pollution.
I drive 'spiritedly', but I suppose the tire wear due to hard cornering is not nearly offset by the saved brake pad and exhaust emissions!
I think there's more than one problem here.
A stop sign that serves no purpose than to slow people down will piss off drivers more than anything, and lead to people speeding between signs or running them. It will make your street noisier as impatient people aggressively obey the signs.
A typical neighborhood would be much better off if traffic was calmed by adding kerb extensions or narrowing the lanes.
I think the above commenter might share my frustration that local politics is often full of people unknowingly demanding the wrong solution to their problem.
Almost everyone elects to drive on one of the nearby "thoroughfares" rather than stop and start all the way through the neighborhood. So I see stop signs as the perfect solution.
I'd agree this wouldn't probably work on a road that sees heavy traffic already though.
Interruptions reset focus (unless you're so distracted that you don't notice the sign).
A number of 4-way stops existed on the route to the office complex for no valid reason whatsoever. The arterial traffic was the vast majority of traffic. I watched over the course of 10 years as more 4-way stops were installed to calm traffic, which is specifically contra-indicated by proper traffic engineering. In fact, I remember reporting on one community meeting, where the community hired a traffic engineer who specifically told them not to use stop signs for traffic calming; they did anyway.
The stop signs actually took away from the attention folks paid to cross streets. Eyes down, stare at stop line, come to a stop, go.. it was much easier to not notice cross traffic or pedestrians!
They all should have been roundabouts, frankly.
Anyway, my point is, 4 way stops are an environmental nightmare in every possible way, and rarely the correct solution.
I've often wondered how much harm to health has been done by the increased emissions at excess of stop signs (at least in the parts of the US I've visited). Does it outweigh whatever reduction in accidents you get by forcing a stop at junctions which (to my untrained eye) could safely be controlled with a yield?
And then to confuse matters further “traffic circles” are common as traffic calming devices on the west coast. These are also round, but are very small and do not have a splitter island preceding. They usually sit in the middle of small residential intersections.
Also, sometimes rotaries (the largest, fastest, and most dangerous of the trifecta of round traffic things) are sometimes called traffic circles, which are otherwise the smallest / slowest traffic device.
If all that is confusing, well, you’re not alone. My feeling is that roundabouts and traffic circles are good, but rotaries are just highway interchange supercolliders. Removing them from the northeast was very good.
please don't
My recommendation is to consider getting into motorcycles (seriously!). People who push things in their car are largely externalizing risk to other people. Motorcycles largely internalize their risk.
You can get an inexpensive motorcycle that will likely thrash any car you’re likely to afford. Plus, the skill required to operate a motorcycle makes it a lot more engaging to ride. Lastly, motorcycling is just far more exhilarating than driving.
I don’t want to shame you for wanting to drive hard, but you can satisfy your desires more fully while reducing the chances of killing or disabling someone who doesn’t have your appetite for risk.
EDIT: I am a motorcyclist, but not a very spirited rider. It turns out riding safely is plenty of excitement for me. I have friends who love to push it however, and I only challenge them to wear better gear and learn more skills.
I no longer feel the need/desire to "go for a spirited drive" on the weekends, or whatever. Part of that is age, part of it experience, I suppose. But I very much enjoy a good run at an on-ramp or particularly nice section of open road from time to time.
Drivers of manual petrol cars can already reduce their brake dust by using engine braking. If one drives very carefully it is possible to not use brakes at all. Indeed it should never be necessary. Any time you hit the brakes means you were going too fast. But how many people drive like this? Barely any. Instead people speed right until the last minute then slam on the brakes. Then as soon as the opportunity arises it's heavy acceleration until the next slam of brakes. Driving EVs like this will produce just as much brake dust.
Eventually I had to brake on purpose a few times to keep my brake discs shiny, because the rusty discs looked awful
Out in the country, and for me that often means the hills and mountains, then engine breaking is a much bigger part of my driving style, esp down hills!
Engine breaking also doesn't cause your break lights to come on, and they provide a quicker signal that a car is slowing, than relying on people to detect the change in speed.
I've been driving hybrids for the past five years and in my experience even in heavy traffic friction brakes aren't used nearly as much as in regular ICEs.
There's a constant, thin layer of rust on my rotors that I just can't scratch off in any way short of braking on an off-ramp on a highway.
I imagine EVs, having overall better regenerative braking, rely even less on their rotors.
I've always owned at least one manual transmission vehicle, but the EV does an order of magnitude more regenerative braking than any passenger car internal combustion engine does.
That crap ruins clothes too. I cycle and the stuff that comes off the road is crazy sticky, oily, black and horrible. It doesn’t wash out and is even hard to get off clear coated bike.
Does that change things?
Sounds like because that poster has options they don't have to drive the ice vehicles very often
FWIW, my wife and I carpooled in the EV to and from work, every work day, until covid hit; now I work from home and she drives solo to the hospital.
But again, it probably doesn't matter. The EV is too heavy and the rare earth materials were mined in unfriendly ways, and the weight of the car means it sheds lots of tire material, and not all of our electricity comes from the solar panels on the roof, and we should live closer to work and walk everywhere anyway, and the alcohol I consume has a negative impact on the water supply in a drought state, and....
(don't let anyone find out that sometimes I drive to the racetrack just to go around in circles and end up back where I started!)
Everything that you said is true, and it should be evident by now that baby steps like a couple of people carpooling in an EV when it's convenient to do so will not cut it. For every couple like you there are 10 couples who don't have the means to purchase an EV and their situation won't change by 2050, when cheap energy (read petrol) will be on the way out.
While it's an honourable thing that you are using your excess hard-earned money to buy EVs and solar panels instead of SUVs and fracking stocks, please understand that you're living above the living standards of most people and not everyone can afford this, and for them, reducing footprint = self-restraint.
Specifically, PM10, hard particles below 10 micrometers. CO2, Nox, etc from a car are hot gasses which expand relatively quickly, so dumping kilograms and kilograms of them is required to raise ambient air measurements above unsafe zones (measured in ppbs usually, see [0] for the EPA standards for NOx, PM, lead, etc).
Particulate matter, being solid, doesn’t spread as quickly as gasses. Small enough particulate emissions can be ingested into the lungs, and from there into the bloodstream. Once there, they can scrape blood vessels, eventually leading to plague and various heart conditions. Very trace amounts of PM10, and specifically smaller PM2.5 that can slip through the lungs easier, can have terrible health outcomes. In the EPA standards I linked, ug/m^3 is roughly equal to ppb, so the standard for PM2.5 is about 1/5 the level of NO2.
ICE engines generally only develop PM10 particles from insufficiently high temp combustion. For modern cars it isn’t absurd to suspect that brakes and tires produce more PM10. Here’s a summary of research done on the matter [1].
If you live in Europe, the US, or Canada, indoor and outdoor PM2.5 emissions will shave a few months off lifespans. China’s lifespans may be cut by as much as 5 years from particulate matter. [2] (not a scholarly source but links to them)
[0] https://www.epa.gov/criteria-air-pollutants/naaqs-table [1] https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J... [2) https://qz.com/1071421/this-is-how-much-of-your-life-air-pol...
Yes, but that's the "spin", the gaslighting. "Hey, don't look at the huge amount of other pollution our gas vehicles produce, instead look at this small portion where we are not the main villain. Repeat after me: Baaaad break pads, baaad!!" Fossil fuel industry is fighting for their survival. Even if I agree with the numbers and the research, I can't agree that we should focus on this. The greenhouse gases pollution is a much bigger problem, EVs solve that, so if their break pads still produce the same amount of particulates, what does it matter? Don't let them get away with "see those EVs are not as good as you were told".
PM studies are able to tie pollution directly to lives and thus dollars (through statistical lives). So, if reducing coal use costs $2.7B a year, but we extend enough lives, prevent asthma, etc., to equal at least $2.7B then as a country we should enact the regulation. The US starting doing exactly this from 1996-2003 and it reduced CO2 emissions by making coal plants, steel mills, etc., more expensive to operate. As a result, PM studies like the Harvard Six Cities study were highly controversial and fossil fuel companies lobbied hard against them. It is a lot harder to tie climate change to direct costs because the impacts are somewhat fuzzy and on a long timeframe.
In this case, discovering brake pads and tires cause PM2.5 means we can invest in less-emitting brake pads. But this isn’t likely to produce tires/brakes that dramatically reduce emissions. A more likely approach is investing in mass transit, which would reduce CO2 output.
I wouldn’t say greenhouse gasses are a larger problem but a rather a harder to coordinate long-term global problem. PM pollution caused 4.2 million premature deaths in 2016 [0]. It is hard to directly state how many deaths climate change caused in 2016 but conservative estimates [1] are for about 500,000 deaths a year by 2050. Most PM deaths stem from terrible industrial air in poorer countries which if combated would also dramatically cut CO2.
[0] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(ou...
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/health/climate-change-health-...
(And at least cycling -- for any amount of time -- is a net positive in terms of health everywhere but the few most polluted cities. But even in the most polluted city, brief cycling is a net positive.)
I don’t understand your point here. If everyone makes the effort to walk/bike more there will be a reduction in pollution.
I believe it's worse here in Europe than in the US as we have a large proportion of diesel cars (though where I live now, most pollution comes from the harbour) and during bad pollution events you don't just smell it but you feel the particle-polluted air aggressing your respiratory system.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297712056_Can_air_p...
The reality for most people in a city is that to exercise they inevitably first need to escape 5 miles worth if clogged up car arteries.
* It makes the streets dangerous for everyone else
* It occupies a vast amount of physical and visual space
* It facilitates the construction of centralized shopping spaces that are at awkward distances for anyone not also driving
The rest of the circa US$10,000/capita should be garnished by taxation and spent on comprehensive electric bus, light electric rail and long distance train infrastructure.
Neighborhoods need to be quiet, safe, green and relaxing. This cannot happen with personal automobile use.
Not only is this not possible without probably half a century of building high density housing (and realistically, never, because it would require lots of eminent domain seizures and tons of lawsuits), but it’s also... not really desirable? Half the point of not living in a city is cleaner air, less light and sound pollution, and less people.
Why would a programmer, artist, schoolteacher, hairdresser, restaurant owner need to travel any great distance from their village or town?
Most people in the world already live in cities... and they like them. They like looking at other people, smelling them, ranking and comparing them, copying them. They like the convenience of being able to get around easily, have other people cook food for them or play music for them.
The inevitable and obviously viewable consequence of people moving out of cities is that they create noisy, polluting, long-distance commuting sprawl: exactly the opposite of cleaner air and less light and sound pollution.
In order to move back away from the existing situation of an earth riven by roads the incursion of humans into ever smaller fragments of natural ecosystems we need to reduce the population and concentrate it in cities.
This¹ is mostly concentrating on tropical rainforest destruction but the same is true nearly everywhere: more and more roads are built in order to service human desires (cheap wood, grazing or (in EU and NA) solitude and privacy.
It can't go on.
1. https://e360.yale.edu/features/as_roads_spread_in_tropical_r...
Oh wait! Cities should be sub-terran! Can be built very deep and dense, outside temp is fixed so no heating cost, electricity can be produced by compact nuclear reactors, air/water fully recycled. Only essential/important people will be allowed to go outside, to not pollute the environment. Right?
Absolutely, this is another excellent argument against mindless sprawl.
unfinished concrete Concrete is not an ideal construction material if you are worried about reducing CO2 emissions.
It also follows that intercity travel should be restricted, for the same reasons. Yes, if you want to have a pleasant earth to live on then feckless, wasteful travel should be restricted. This does not have to be done by rules -- simply charging people the full cost of their trip would place it out of their ability.
outside temp is fixed so no heating cost, No, the outside temperature is rising, thanks to the freedom-loving, brave self-expression of car drivers crawling like ants to and from their places of consumption to their places of production.
In case you missed the memo: the party bosses are now the ones selling you the polluted suburban lifestyle while they cycle bicycles around clean, gated, low-traffic, tree-lined communities. So, keep living in the past... after all the future won't hold much for you.
>All the commuters set off at the same time, and the cyclists were by far the fastest, arriving in 11 minutes, half the time of bus and car travellers.
Buses and cars still do better when you're measuring pollution per minute
But perhaps it doesn't seem worth it to me because the smog here isn't as bad as where GP is? I've never really seen a haze in cities like Aachen or Eindhoven the way TV shows it is abroad (particularly China comes to mind, but probably car-oriented USA also?).
I would say that initially I felt that I couldn't cycle as far with a mask. But as I did it more it became easier, effectively like exercise for your lungs.
And would say that if you have trouble with a mask walking then strenuous activity with one is probably not a good idea unless you work up to it.
In terms of the effect, I live in London which is so-so when it comes to pollution. But you really notice the difference, especially going behind the exhausts of diesel vehicles.
Cycling behind a large lorry is less unpleasant. But of course it's not gonna block everything.
They might not look pretty but for anyone looking for a cheap and reliable mask, just get a regular N95 mask from a hardware store, it's used by carpenters etc. all the time to block particles and it works well for most car/truck pollutants. Of course it won't filter gases or whatever else cars emit that may damage your health.
[1]: https://respro.info/images/v3_product_background/_ProductBac... [2]: http://wasip.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/W795110-P
[0] Busy roads, factories, plants or places with conspicuously high local AQI.
If you still don't get the parallel, let's move one step up: all greenhouse gasses produced from your energy use in your apartment have to stay in (including those from coal power plants, grocery production and delivery...). Sorry, no opening windows for you to get your own CO2 out to other people.
My point is that air is a shared resource, and thus a shared responsibility. But someone turning the narrative extreme does not help drive any solution forward (I am reminded of Stan's dad Randy getting a Prius in Southpark).
Here, enjoy your new couch! And let us get the air from the back of our truck into your apartment.
I don't know how the numbers stack up though, maybe you could make the filter really big, like a meter wide or something and the airflow would be good enough? The filter would need replacing/cleaning quite often as well, probably every 10,000km or so.
It's also not just other drivers or the poor environment: a huge number of people (I'd speculate that it's the majority) live near busy roads. Adverse health effects from breathing near a busy road are common knowledge.
Replacing the filter is an incredibly easy job on most cars. You don't need any tools or even to open the hood. You just pull out your glove box, and then the filter slides in and out.
I honestly think that in terms of health, this might be the action that has the highest ROI. (Amount of health improvement per amount of time / money invested.)
Doesn't that mean they have 5 times more exposure, not 80% more?
> Compared with recirculation, PM2.5 and PM10 were higher by up to 589% (Blantyre) and 1020% (São Paulo), during windows-open and higher by up to 385% (São Paulo) and 390% (São Paulo) during fan-on, respectively.
The headline should read 400% more to reflect the 80% reduction. This is a massive failure of the university press office and I think your comment should be at the top.
Recirculated A/C! Fresh A/C! Windows closed! Windows open! Aggggghhh!
The pressure differential messes with my ears. I can't understand people who cruise around with the windows down.
At least in the EU/US there are emission standards that have to be met for cars to be legally allowed on the road. I wonder how that affects things.
Then again, Dieselgate has shown that almost all car manufacturers make their engines to barely pass the imperfect test, but that real life driving is way worse than the pollution figures on paper.
Just look at the curve of the WLTP test on Wikipedia : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Harmonised_Light_V...
Who drives like this? 1 minute to reach the high speed on the high speed test for example. The speed is never maintained, it's either accelerating or slowing down.
Today you see hybrids cars with tiny batteries that are close to useless just to meet regulations. In practice these hybrid cars smoke a lot, because it's cold and the battery is cold, because it's warm and you want AC, because you need to not drive too slow in the traffic, because the battery is already empty.
When the diesel gate happened, the French minister of the environment decided to test many cars on a track. They never published the results.
Change them at regular intervals, or, in extra heavy traffic, put the recirculator on.
It'll make the air stuffy, but will keep it cleaner than it would have been otherwise. Don't keep it on for too long though, as the CO2 levels will start to rise and you might begin to lose concentration.
...and yet, the majority of cars (IME) default to recirc off.
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1127424_study-particula...
This is a rapidly increasing problem as more EVs, which are very heavy on tire wear, generate more pollution. Good idea to stay on top of alignment: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/unusual-tire-wear.10...
Also, EV's are heavier so will break up the road surface much faster - various studies have shown doubling the weight on a wheel far more than doubles road wear.
This number seems incredibly suspect. It's far too high. That rate of loss cannot be sustained. Either their research is wrong or loss levels off dramatically and quickly. At that rate of loss the tires, across 4 tires at 27 lbs each, would evaporate in 8500km and realistically be unusable after under a thousand.
Parts of the road surface are also broken up into fine dust and sent airborne. Tar from asphalt doesn't sound great to have in lungs, nor does sillica dust from aggregate/concrete.
Looking how quickly potholes form, I could totally imagine 5 grams of loss of road surface per kilometre.
> 5.8 grams of particulate matter per kilometer
Red flag. What kind of contrived conditions did they conspire to create that number?
And with regard to Tesla vehicles being heavy, that’s obviously fixed by using wider tyres or harder tyres, in order to get the requisite traction.
[In all honesty, my auto's cabin air filter is always far dirtier than the engine's air filter.]
Guess it's a matter of picking my poison.
Driving a beater with no AC in the summer? All windows down.