The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death | Hacker News Reader

The first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death

bbc.com

276 pointsumaar157 comments

This 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/40/20/1590/537232...

I live in [redacted], [redacted] 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.

Paris, 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?

The 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.

> I wonder where all the people come from tbh

Public transportation, bikes, scooters are all good for people living in Lyon. I suppose the cars are people living or working outside Lyon.

> Try to elect a mayor of Lyons who's like Annie Hidalgo?

New mayor of Lyon is a member of the Green party.

There were a lot of ecologist mayors (a "green wave" according to the media) at the last municipal elections in France. It's a dividing issue. More and more people are concerned about environmental issues. But at the same time, there is a universal hate for ecologists.

> But at the same time, there is a universal hate for ecologists.

This doesn't seem to be true? Annie Hidalgo won re-election and has pretty decent popularity ratings. Maybe they're hated out in the countryside or whatever, but the actual citizens of the cities run by these "ecologist" mayors do seem to be generally happy with them.

I really wish we had one here in NYC. Only 22% of households in Manhattan where I live even own cars, yet an ungodly amount of the total public space is given over to cars, including two whole lanes of free parking on most blocks. Meanwhile the sidewalks are narrow and often full of trash bags because we can't even put in dumpsters lest some sacred parking spots be removed, and delivery vehicles are constantly double-parked or blocking bike lanes since there's no delivery-only spots.

I think the majority of people here would be in favor of a mayor that de-emphasized cars and got a lot of this traffic off our streets, thus making it more pleasant for people on foot.

I am not trying to undervalue your problems, but I suggest looking at some third world countries for some perspective. I live in one such place. In winter (which lasts for about 8-9 months each year) the air pollution is _horrifyingly_ bad: 250-300 µg/m³ of PM2.5 at day time, and 900-1500 µg/m³ each night. I am not bullshitting you, this is how we live. You can feel the taste of coal on tour tongue in a completely sealed room.

And almost nobody gives a fuck — when you try to discuss it with someone, you either get a blank stare, or "stop exaggerating, it's no so bad" (by which they mean "you don't drop dead right away (unless you're asthmatic)".)

The air pollution is at such a high level that people are dying from it.

I do count myself lucky that I'm not contending with levels in places like Delhi but personally, I don't want people to put it in perspective and conclude that comparatively it's not so bad.

I don't think that is what he is saying. He is saying, no matter how bad things get, people will get used to it.

I have visited Mumbai and now have co workers in New Delhi. I had to leave Mumbai after two days because I couldn't stand the air anymore. When I blew my nose it was just black stuff coming out and buy throat was constantly scratchy. And from what I hear it's even worse in New Delhi. I only hope that people will wake up soon and change.

> and buy throat was constantly scratchy

When you're so congested that you even sound congested when you type. (sorry...)

I was living in China for the last 2.5 years and within that time span the quality of air in Beijing went from absolutely unbearable crossing over the 500 to blue skies almost every day. Probably one too many politician's kids died from lung problems. The other interesting thing in the bad days was how they could turn on a dime. When there was an important political event or international visits the air pollution would magically get better for a few days (coinciding with the international internet and VPN connectivity getting dramatically worse...). They would just shut down all of the factories in the area.

When there's a political will there is definitely a way.

Only minority of cars are responsible for majority of pollution.

A single badly maintained diesel car produces as much pollution as thousands of legal new cars.

Same goes for trucks -- the low in air pollution you felt was likely not due to less cars but less trucks (and possibly busses, depending on where in Europe you live)

While this is true, diesel alone is terrible. The UK should make diesel more expensive.

I don't know why this correct comment got downvoted.

A car without a catalytic converter generates as much toxic pollution as 100 new cars with catalytic converters. A car whose catalytic converter has broken and which has engine trouble produces even more. And diesel produces more than gas. (Though new vehicles of both types are about equal.)

Thus a single badly maintained diesel car can produce as much pollution as thousands of legal new cars. Smog truly is a situation where a tiny majority of vehicles produce the vast majority of the problem.

I got used to downvotes. There is no rhyme and reason on HN or anywhere else for that matter. Sometimes I think people just downvote to avoid facing the reality.

I understand it is not politically correct to say most cars are not the problem (or at least not the most of it).

In ideal world we would not be driving petrol guzzlers but instead have cars that run on electricity from our own home solar panels.

But the reality is that a well maintained car emits thousands times less harmful stuff than cars from couple decades ago. The new norms that automakers are facing are really crazy restrictive and sometimes hit the very limits of physics and thermodynamics.

The problem is when people get around these rules, drive unmaintained cars, drive cars that are way larger and more powerful than is needed or cheat by removing converters and installing them only for inspection.

Especially the last one. Here in Poland this is practically the norm and people treat this as part of life and feel proud they "saved". Then they complain we have bad air.

The problem is that such a comment doesn't help. It's just a pessimistic viewpoint where you have to read the fine print to see that things are better in reality.

"Catalytic converters generate 100 times less toxic pollution. Installing catalytic converters into millions of cars prevented millions of tons of toxic pollution" gets turned into "A single badly maintained diesel car produces as much pollution as thousands of legal new cars."

Why turn a success into a failure? It only serves to make people feel powerless. Being "technically correct" was just a way to masquerade the real message "Don't try, you will fail and when you fail it will undo [0] your success".

[0] only a small part of (this is the fine print)

I strongly disagree.

What the comment points to is that reducing car pollution isn't so much a question of saying we all need to pitch in as one of saying that we need to identify the serious problems and promptly deal with them. It is the kind of thing that is absolutely essential to understand before you have any chance of proposing an effective solution.

This is, for example, why it is common to have regular smog certifications required. And why those certifications do more to reduce smog than, say, telling everyone to drive 20% less would.

The decision-making class can avoid the worst impacts of air pollution, such as by living in nice low density areas, but they can’t buy their way out of danger of Covid infection, so it’s a lot more scary.

You want the real reason? Fixing air pollution quickly would disrupt the global economy on a long term scale. Capitalism doesn't like that.

Edit: Y'all so predictable.

The pandemic proved that disrupting the global economy to save lives wasn't an issue at all.

The issue is the right people feeling threatened for their lives. As soon as you can convince rich people that their survival is at risk, and they can't just fly off to another planet or live in their own biosphere somewhere in the Alps, something will be done.

Exactly, and truly getting serious about it would basically destroy the global economy in the short term. That's why rich people (and capitalism) don't like it, so they don't do anything about it. There's a big difference between a ~1-2 year disruption and a 5-10 year disruption, which is what I think it would take to make any serious difference vis a vis air pollution.

you (and the other commenters) are ignoring the time component, which is quite important here. when quarantine started, most people thought it would only be for a few weeks or a couple months at the most. obviously some people are resisting, but most are willing to make a short-term sacrifice to help slow the spread. telling people they need to permanently reduce their level of consumption to combat climate change is a much bigger ask.

Maybe if instead of a pandemic a catastrophic climate event happened to occur in a sudden period of time, people might get the same impression that it's at most a thing that would last a few weeks or years because "there's no way this would happen to us now." But when more data comes in and it turns out the damage is permanent or long lasting, maybe those people forced to make changes won't end up going back to their original equilibrium. We could not in general forsee the sheer calamity the pandemic has caused in its short timeframe near the beginning. Large and drastic changes would probably have a greater effect on short-term memory than if we're essentially frogs in boiling water, even if the degree of environmental consequences ends up the same.

Because the changes the pandemic caused were drastic by its nature, so much behavior was regulated and put into law (large gatherings illegal, etc.) in such a short time. If it's inevitable that climate change will never occur drastically, how can those restrictions on growth and consumption not continually get pushed back because of lobbyists who see no short-term consequences?

Or given how humans can act, maybe they'd go back to their normal levels of consumption out of spite anyways. It's hard to tell.

The real reason is that people are too poor to care about pollution or those dead people, same as anywhere else in the world. Actually, the poorer the country the less people care about the environment or infections.

It's the same with covid too, it's the government which had to force close the economy.

What makes you think "people" have anything to do with deciding whether to do anything about air pollution? As I mentioned in another comment, no individual without billions of dollars behind them can do anything whatsoever about air pollution. Do you really think even, say, middle class Americans could take on the US government, one of the top 10 greenhouse gas polluters in the world?

Maybe I'm just amplifying your point, but you seem to be blaming people for being poor here, when, in fact, people are being kept poor intentionally by capitalism. It's much easier to control people who have no other options, after all.

When people are poor they don't care about the environment, it's a first world problem.

Without capitalism, the government is very unlikely to create wealth (look at China's PRC which had to embrace state capitalism to make money).

China, the largest polluter in the world, is an interesting example: despite their economic success, people's living conditions didn't improve as much and caring about the environment lagged behind the rest of the world.

Until ~2010 China's pollution was a state secret, now that there is a bit more wealth and citizens are more aware we can expect the PRC to do something about it.

Africa is another example of a poor, polluted country.

Ultimately, pollution can be a phase in a growing economy, but if you let technology to run its course, people will eventually move to non polluting tech - because they want to live in a nice world.

If you stop or regulate the economy, or try to come up with a solution, things will take much longer. Nuclear energy is a solution that, without political backslash, could have become our source of clean energy long ago.

Just curious, who does like disrupting the global economy on a long term scale?

People who want a sustainable world for their grandchildren to grow up in.

I would say that our brain is wired to react to direct threats and not long terms ones because the main cause of death was direct threats until not so long ago. And by natural selection, the ones reacting to direct threats survived. This is an hypothesis, I would be interested if there is research done on the subject.

The EU has limits for suspended particulate matter, and at least in Germany all the major cities are battling to stay within the thresholds. A few cities ban diesel vehicles in the city, others put expensive air purifiers next to the measuring stations.

People seem to love their cars more than their health, and other measures like modernizing heating don't seem to have much traction.

> others put expensive air purifiers next to the measuring stations.

well ain't that some shit. How is that crap legal??

What I observed in my area is that people are not loving cars more than their health, but they cannot make a difference at a personal level, many don't want to change anything and then people who care stop believing anything can be done and give up. Air pollution is not a fire you can extinguish in 15 minute and move on, it is mass phenomenon with millions of tiny participants, it is the death of the thousand cuts and no individual can change it alone.

If only we had some form of organization which represented the interest of the People, with the authority to decree and enforce statute.

Maybe something where everyone can choose a person with similar values as themselves, and the person that's chosen by the most people will deal with all the details and day-to-day stuff. And it would be good if we had such a thing both for nationwide problems and for local issues, so we can solve problems both locally and on a larger scale.

> Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution?

In the UK at least, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) is a powerful lobby group. Car sales are used as a key economic indicator. Cars have long been seen as aspirational and a measure of personal success. Cars support other sectors of the economy such as civil engineering (roads, bridges), petroleum sales and car accessories, parts and repairs..

Cycling and walking on the other hand? Not so much, despite the many benefits. Just recently, there has been a move in some areas to introduce low-traffic neighbourhoods and create more cycle-ways. The hoo-ha has been deafening. It causes congestion, it blocks emergency vehicles, it increases air pollution because cars are at a standstill. (According to critics.) Newspapers have been running stories about how evil and undemocratic this is, and dear old Nigel Farage seems to have re-invented himself as an anti-cycling campaigner.

I don't think there's an actual conspiracy - there usually isn't. But the status quo serves the interests of some powerful and wealthy groups, and it takes a strong-willed government to overrule them. They'd rather hand-wave about meeting 'green' targets by 2060, and meantime hope that electric vehicles arrive in sufficient numbers to eliminate or ameliorate the problem. The alternatives cause so much political friction that they seem impossible to implement, at least without more courage than our politicians are used to showing.

Indeed. What's really crazy is how the "anti" side has managed to claim to be the side of the working class, fighting against a "green liberal elite". This trope is incredibly harmful; the poor don't even own cars in London, yet breathe the most polluted air.

And immediately anyone mentions restricting traffic, they're all about the disabled, older people, ambulances and essential deliveries, when really all they seem to want is to drive their cars as often and far as they like, without restrictions. It really is infuriating.

Infuriating is right

My partner cannot legally drive DUE to disabilities, improved public transport, walking, cycling etc

Would be massively helpful for us but no car hell on our door step forever

I see the anti-side as more arguing that they're middle class. People wealthy enough to afford to not bicycle or take the bus, but of modest enough means that taxes can mean putting car ownership out of reach. The "Liberal elite" is putting a very manageable burden on the rich, actively promoting means of transit that help the poor, and is expecting the middle class to just suffer through the requisite sacrifices. It's a compelling narrative so long as you don't expect to live another 50 years in which case it's a rather dense one becuase you will actually have to pay the interest on your choices today.

What truly baffles me is people who are anti-immigrarion, anti-migrant, and anti-refugee but also against any form of regulation on carbon emissions. As if they don't quite grasp that if your goal is to reduce migration than environmental policy matters more than even immigration policy.

I don’t follow. No new taxes have been imposed on car owners in London.

> Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution?

The Covid frenzy reminds me something that happened in my friend's village.

Four small apartment rooms burned down affecting four people.

The village went into a frenzy of help and concern. They had multiple fundraisers to raise money for the affected. Local news would go to local businesses to film them putting together care packages. People on the street would be interviewed about the disaster where the interviewee would quickly sneak in what they're doing to help the cause. The local news cycle was deep-diving on the history of each affected person to show what a good person they were, and they were filmed receiving all sorts of gifts and comically large charity checks. Facebook feeds are constantly lit up about the disaster and how everyone can pitch in a hand.

Two months later some living quarters burn down killing one and putting twenty people out of a home. But it barely even makes the news and nobody really utters a word over it. The village has already blown its concern load.

We humans have this weird laserbeam of attention, and what it will focus on is a true lottery, and when it focuses on something it ignites it and it burns to a crisp and it gives us our fill for a while, and we ignore everything else.

That is such a fantastic metaphor for our limited 'supply' of care/empathy.

Sometimes it feels as though we have only so much for others' plights before we run out and only have enough to focus on our own. I'm not sure.

this is exactly why permanent, tax-funded, institutional safety nets are necessary. you can't rely on sporadic charity.

You also have to take into consideration feedback effects though. COVID-19 would be much worse if people didn’t react to it. There’s also an automatic reaction to it by people which is too slow though as could be seen in Wuhan, Milano and New York.

Having a limited supply of empathy is one way to think about this, but another (less immediately appealing) way is as fast moving moral fashions. In your example it seems like the empathy got ‘used up’, because of the order of those two events, but I think that sort of thing often happens the other way round too, in which cases it’s harder to tell ourselves stories about why. Maybe the best explanation is it’s mostly arbitrary. That’s the problem with relying on public charity and the feel-good factor as a mechanism for helping the worst off. Moral fashions are like weather – somewhat predictable, but not definitely not reliable or consistent.

I think it's because if we had unhinged covid, the death toll would have been approx %2 or %3 of the population, which could've been 9 to 10 million people in europe.

Sweden has had a lower per-capita COVID deathtoll than European states with heavy lockdowns.

Lockdown South American nations have had about the same COVID toll as non-lockdown nations.

Same when you look at individual US states.

Doesn't seem to be much of a link between lockdowns and COVID - but a heavy link between lockdown and economic and social devastation.

The virus will follow its own seasonal trends, impacted by herd immunity, as every respiratory virus has.

> Sweden has had a lower per-capita COVID deathtoll than European states with heavy lockdowns.

But 5-12 times that of comparable neighboring countries like Norway, Finland and Denmark

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

And by own admission the strategy failed

https://www.thelocal.se/20201215/what-does-the-first-report-...

And Norway's Prime Minister says they acted too harshly: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/30/coronavirus-norw...

You can find news articles that spin anything positively or negatively.

The corona commission has not yet made any conclusions regarding whether lockdown or not lockdown was the right decision, that will (maybe) come later. So I don't really know how your article is relevant to that. The government and the independent agencies don't seem to believe that a harsh lockdown is the correct thing to do.

Why do you think the other Nordic countries are the most comparable? Languages are pretty similar, including some cultural similarities. But I would not be confident in saying that those factors are the most relevant to the spread of viruses. In 2018, there was something like 5x more deaths per capita from the flu in Denmark compared to Sweden (~2800 in Denmark and ~1000 in Sweden).

I just feel like you are making your job far too easy by just comparing 4 countries with each other, and claiming that they are all identical except for the different strategy. Especially since differences can have a very non-linear effects.

Quoting from the article

> The report states that the main factor in the problems in residential homes for the elderly was simply the fact the virus spread so widely in society.

With regards to the difference in strategy, there has been analysis like this

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7227592/

Finally, and this is just a common sense argument, I believe it is clear that avoiding social interaction will slow transmission of airborne diseases. And lockdowns decrease social interactions (to a much higher degree than simple recommendations)

Oh, I forgot, when looking at percentage of population over 65 both Sweden and Denmark clock in at ~20%, whereas the population density of Sweden is ~25 people/km^2 and Denmark has one of ~135 people/km^2.

In other words I will argue, that one would expect Denmark to have been hit harder, but there is one fifth the deaths per capita.

And I’m sorry that I am ranting, but this disease has caused so much dead and suffering, when it could have been stopped if we took it seriously - this upsets me. I was talking with a friend living in Taiwan and they’ve had ~750 cases in total with aggressive tracing and isolation tactics, so we know it is possible.

Nobody lives in the vast forests in Sweden. The population density of Denmark would only be 2 people/km^2 if Greenland was included. The urbanization is, however, pretty similar, but Stockholm is still much larger than Copenhagen.

I'm not saying that there are not more similarities between the countries. Both drive on the right side of the road, and have flags with crosses, for example. But you still can't just make a list of similarities and then say that they are identical except for the strategy, since the difference could be something not on your list, including just simple random chance.

The report states that there is a correlation between population spread and the spread in the elderly care. They have not made any comment on how the strategy impacted the population spread. I saw the press conference, I know what they said. They refused to answer any question from journalists regarding the over-all strategy. You should understand articles before posting them.

Here is comparison between Sweden and Norway. 'The observed temporary excess mortality likely arises because people in vulnerable groups die weeks or months earlier than they would otherwise, due to the timing and severity of the unusual external event.' https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.11.20229708v...

It's much much worse in India. >2M deaths [1] per year, and no one cares. Yet many applauded the stringent lock downs that caused widespread poverty.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/19/india-suffers-...

One of the surprising things from working at home, was how noticeable the pollution was when venturing back into the city for in-office days. Just one poorly maintained diesel 4x4 or an older bus and you can taste the particulates/VOCs in the air.

On the other hand the neighbour's lawnmower would often send clouds of burnt oil through the yard requiring a frantic closing of all windows.

There's a lot of answers to those questions

> 800k yearly premature deaths caused by pollution[0] and still not care at all

The deaths are diffuse and happen all over so there's not a huge panic about it because it's hard to spot. Also 'air pollution' isn't the listed cause of death so people have to make the extra step to link the huge number of knock on effects back to the cause. Even when you do there's a lot of push back from well paid lawyers to argue that there's no direct link between the pollution of their clients and the fact that communities near their factories die 5 years sooner than anyone else.

> covid-19 hasn't caused yet as many deaths but we quickly intervened ... Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution?

COVID is acute and new which means we haven't grown systematically numb to it's effects yet so there's the chance for a very pointed response. Even now though there's people arguing the same line as polluting industries, that the numbers are skewed and people with other conditions didn't die because of COVID but should be listed as dying because of their heart disease/respiratory problems/etc.

It also helps that no one is in the business of COVID and in theory once the vaccine is widely available and COVID is just another occasional background illness things will largely go back to normal. To address pollution on the other hand you have to permanently make whole swaths of industry either vastly more expensive (and therefor less profitable) or practically eliminate them. Those get a lot of push back of course.

Shameless plug, I've been working on a community air quality monitor for my little 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, 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/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.

Why 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?

In 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, 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.

Well there go my theories about 76 trombones or Freddie Gibbs

I actually discovered Freddie when I lived here in 2011. Big fan! I fly TinyWhoop to Freddie's songs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xCpyVrdt3c

This makes me so happy and I can’t even put my finger on why

@selimthegrim

I actually discovered Freddie when I lived here in 2011. Big fan! I fly TinyWhoop to Freddie's songs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xCpyVrdt3c

Also from Valparaiso here, great to see others on HN from the area. If you're looking for a local meetup, we have a group that meets regularly -> https://valpohacks.com/. Would love to learn more about your air quality site!

That's awesome! I'll join the Slack channel

Where can we find the technical details of your monitor? Is there a GHE project or similar somewhere? The data from such a project will almost certainly be invaluable, and if it can be replicated elsewhere (hopefully cheaply) imagine the data that could be generated and used to stop bad actors.

My heart goes out to your daughter, you, and your family.

Hey, so the air quality sensor is a Purple Air PAII https://www2.purpleair.com, after you mount & register it, the sensor communicates to a 3rd party (wunderground I believe), processes it, and updates the map & API, which I consume. It only tracks particles in the air, and not gases. I've been trying to secure an air quality sensor that does PM2.5/PM10 + gases, but they're all very scientific, and come with a very high price tag.

The boat/ship tracking is provided by Fleet Mon, I host one of their AIS trackers. Air traffic is provided by Aviation Edge.

There are other monitors in the region, but not in my community: https://aqicn.org/city/usa/indiana/gary-iitri, but I have no information about them, their data, or anything. If it was open source, I probably would trust it more than I do now.

Thank you, I'm still coming to terms with it, but life goes on I guess, just gotta take the lows with the highs.

edit, just realised I never answered your question, the source code is on github: https://github.com/kingsloi/community-airmonitor

> I've been working on a community air quality monitor for my little community

Some people lament how little impact they can have on government policy on these problems, so I'm heartened to see such initiatives from the bottom up. Imagine if even .1% of the global population were monitoring air quality? Such data could have real value to lawyers, journalists, policy makers, city planners, etc.

I agree! I always liked the phrase "be the change you want to see" or whatever, every little helps in my opinion. If bringing awareness to a few strangers on the internet about the air pollution in my poor city helps, then I'll take it.

FYI, there are quite a few sensors throughout the world, maybe consider hosting your own: https://www.purpleair.com/map

Thanks for the link! I forgot this was a thing. I remember seeing this map on HN when the California wildfires were at their peak.

There's 4 active people using this in the city I'm in - between a million people. I really wish the device was cheap and reliable enough you could just pick it up at your local electronics store for 50 bucks. Having one with an onboard e-ink display seems very Kickstart-able. Or hopefully air quality measurement on smart watches will become a thing in the not too distant future.

Is your tech stack complicated for this? Id love to set this up with a raspberry pi out the window and broadcast the data like a local website..

No, not a complicated tech stack at all

Hardware: - PurpleAir PA-II (wifi) - FleetMon AIS (Ethernet) APIs: - Avaiation Edge API (Flights) - MapQuest API (Traffic) - forecast.io API (Weather) - etaspot.net (Trains) App: - node/express/vuejs app, pretty much all happens in this https://github.com/kingsloi/community-airmonitor/blob/master...

It 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.

Sorry 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?

That's correct, the royal we is a case where you use we to mean I.

Using 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.

That 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?

Yep. I do believe one person can make a difference.

That's very naive. There are only two hopeful scenarios here: action from the top, and collective action from the bottom.

Action from the top means that we will have capitalists willingly going against their own short term interests. This is unlikely to happen; capitalists don't even look past the next quarterly earnings projections if they can help it.

Action from the bottom is also unlikely, since people at the bottom of the economic ladder can't take time off work to protest.

I don't see any other scenario that even comes close to saving us. At this point, I would say only God could help us, if I believed.

The "first"? What did they label all of those?

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/smog-kills-thous...

They'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.

My guess is whatever the immediate cause was - accidents, CO poisoning, pre-existing respiratory problems, flu.

Thank 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.

This event directly contributed to the existence of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_1956 too.

One 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.

I 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.

Indeed, 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.

> 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.

Asthma 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.

I 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?

Just 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.

A 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.

Your 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

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.

I 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.

I find that this is a problem for nearly anything one might try to buy. I'm back to going to Consumer Reports for recommendations.

I 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.

It's like a garbage dump, but for your air. As long as you can ship the garbage (air) off to a landfill (outside your house) where you can't physically see it, who cares.

Air purifiers aren't going to take NO2 out of the air, they will, however, happily take out dust and particulate matter out of the air.

Even if industrial society stopped tomorrow, my apartment would still be full of particulate matter - dust, lint, etc.

https://which.co.uk has reviews of air purifiers

I 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.

>> 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/...

Also 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 :(

This might be a silly question, but how would you filter stuff "emitted" by tyres?

I'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.

As it happens, an article related to this came up just a couple of weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25246857

New research is also showing that type particles are a far bigger source of pollution in waterways than anyone seems to have expected, both in particulates and dissolved chemicals.

That is super interesting, I had no idea. Never even heard the word combo "tyre emissions" before. Thanks for sharing!

Electric cars still have a significant environmental impact due to the space they take in a city, the production and recycling of the cars, and road maintenance.

The efficiency of combined use of trains, electric buses and bicycles dwarfs electric cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport

I don't know about anyone else, I'm pretty far from being a germaphobe in everyday life, but the idea of returning to packed trains and busses turns my stomach.

I'm sure this will pass in a surprisingly short amount of time but for the moment I'm glad that I can work from home and doing so has the lowest environmental impact I can muster.

Covid did wonders for the environment in the societies that choose to encourage remote working.

Yet, doing short trips by feet or bike is equally sustainable - and healthier than sitting all day.

Bicycles can even be considered carbon negative if someone combines their daily exercise with their commute.

There's no way you will get rid of cars. Maybe it is easier to contain the externalities of electric cars than others.

Is the road or the school itself over the legal level of NO2? It does dissipate quite quickly, so it's important.

Dust and particular matter scares are definitely overblown. I live in zone 1, first floor with windows overlooking a small road, and I hardly ever saw PM25 level going over 2ug/m3 in a year I've measured it. Compare that to the safe long term exposure level of 10ug/m3 set by the WHO.

In electric cars particulates from braking are also hugely reduced, as most braking is done by engine / recuperation.

Tire and road surface degradation are a very major source of air pollution and an important focus to reduce particulates https://www.tiretechnologyinternational.com/news/regulations...

Thought for sure this would be an article about the great smog.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London

I 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.

What is the altitude of where you live?

I live northwest of Denver, higher up overlooking it. I'm at 1900 meters (6200 feet).

Nothing too crazy, but makes a difference for sure.

Somewhat 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.

When 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.

I bet there loads before the passing of the clean air act in 1960 ish i think. The London smog was notorious for killing people

No doubt, but pollution was not listed on their death certificate.

> 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

Wow, 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.

I 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...

> ...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-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/

There'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.

Even neater feature in electric vehicles!

Most 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.

Yeah and the emissions are in one place so capture should be more economically viable I’d have thought.

London taxis are supposed to do the same. Decent idea for hybrids.

I'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".

I’m sure is varies. The ones I’ve talked to really like the electric mode, but more importantly like spending less money on gas and time at petrol stations.

I 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-... ) 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.

I 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.

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19826344

The 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.

I'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

With 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...

Air 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

Diesel 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.

I 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.

I 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?

We 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

The amount of dirt thatin the air is surprising. Taking it out of my ionizator weekly. I doubt it’s healthy

Careful with the ionizator. They can generate a lot of ozone which is actually probably worse for you.

A 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.

Unfortunately 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.

Painfully aware of this, nevertheless this is a massive social services failure IMO.

Agree - sadly social services are woefully underfunded and that is unlikely to change for some time.

It’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.

Nobody 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.

True, I'm not sure what the black dirt is from, it might not be from the diesel as you suggest. However most of the air pollution on high traffic roads is from diesel - they are not really clean at all. That is a complete myth propagated by companies like VW - the whole notion of "clean diesel" is completely bogus, like "clean coal". Even Euro 6 tests are completely unrealistic and don't reflect urban driving - hence the newer 6d test, but I am highly doubtful at this point after many years of outright lies. DPFs for instance are used to pass these tests, but all they do is save the pollutants, which they then periodically burp out in high concentrations into the local area. For urban driving diesel is by far the worst possible type of car and should simply be banned, the evidence is overwhelming that this is the main cause of urban pollution in most EU cities right now.

Nonsense. If a residential area has illegal levels of toxic air pollution then the solution is to limit the amount of motor traffic allowed into that area. The government must provide alternative travel options (walking, cycling, electric buses, trains, etc).

We are not talking about a manufacturer hub here, but zones 2-3 of an deindustrialized city in one of the richest nations on Earth. How we can't find the means to solve this is beyond me.

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