Visualizing Toxic Air
propublica.org
propublica.org
And why didn’t the government pay for an interface and analysis that the public could easily use?
I think people believe their tax money could be spent more wisely and competently.
I don't think it's necessary to point out why this is not very convincing
> And why didn’t the government pay for an interface and analysis that the public could easily use?
Because "the government" -specifically, the executive branch- has its upper leadership torn out and replaced with a completely new bunch of people with hugely different ideology if not an explicit political interest in dismantling the work of their forebears every 4 or 8 years. This is most obvious with the recent Trump admin, but applies in degree to every single administration.
There used to be an internal, cross-disciplinary office that did API and visualization work for accountability reasons (unfortunately I forget the name). They did great work. It was dismantled and 90% of it was not replaced. The 10% that was replaced consists of (1) internal work (EIA being a good example, DOT being a bad one) that is driven entirely by the good will of employees who are fighting tooth and nail for any amount of budget to expose any amount of the work they do. And (2) external work by any number of massively wasteful contracting programs, like SBIR, where I used to work.
Reagan's SBIR program mandates a certain amount of money to be spent on tiny (100k-1m) contracts which are either useless or unused, because there's no way to actually convert anything to a long-term status. Most of that money goes to defense, but make no mistake that the work there is also completely useless. The whole program should be lit on fire.
> I think people believe their tax money could be spent more wisely and competently.
It can, if people stop voting for republicans who intentionally destroy the only functional programs and then divert the money to completely worthless contractors in the name of "free markets".
And what's worse is that one political party has been running a decades-long campaign to literally make government worse in order to get people on board with dismantling big sections of it. It's not even a conspiracy theory, it's an actual part of their public campaign platforms that people deliberately vote for.
If we really wanted to do large-scale infrastructure projects that were successful, like nationwide high-speed-rail, maybe we should study how China does it.
> We reached out to each of the top 200 facilities (ranked by the level of nearby cancer risk) to ask them if their emissions reporting was accurate — and if not, whether they would resubmit 2014-18 data to the EPA. Of the 109 companies that responded to us, 71% confirmed that their reported emissions were correct, and 29% noted errors, which we asked them to correct.
If anything it shows the government is not providing enough oversight on the data provided.
The entire east side of Houston metropolitan area has only 3 air quality monitors which test for these kinds of chemicals. During huge major events like the ITC fire, they often show no increased pollution at all. I lived next to leaks every day and because I worked in the plants I knew the smells - one day acrylates, next day thiols, next day hydrocarbons, etc. But the 3 monitoring sites over 10 miles from me showed nothing at all.
Here is the one "correct" monitoring station near the chemical plants of Houston: https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id... but several of its analyzers are often offline/broken/pending maintenance. Here's a map of all the other ones: https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id... Generally single/dual color dots mark "not-useful" monitoring sites which might measure only PM2.5 or Ozone, for example. The 4+ color dots are generally useful.
The data used by ProPublica is far worse than the data here -- because what ProPublica used was "self-reported" data from the chemical plants. But living next to them and working in them, I know that many leaks are never reported and many leaks are never even known internally! Our government's data collection is a travesty. ProPublica couldn't use the real air quality measurements because having 2-3 points across 1000 mi^2 is completely useless for the wind models they wanted to apply to the problem.
We don't actually have any data. The government is failing us. They need to spend about $1 million per air monitoring station and build them along the perimeters of each plant so that leaks can be assigned to the offending companies, and they need to be built near housing so that we know how families are being affected.
ITC fire which blanketed houston's sky in smoke: https://abc13.com/deer-park-fire-2019-itc-houston-air-qualit...
But some things can't really be built by private enterprise. The government can compel data reporting. You can pay credit card companies to sell you their data, but only the government should have the power tell every employer "you must tell us the names and salaries of all your employees". (Credit agencies essentially do this too, but that means they're big enough to require government regulation.)
It can be onerous, though, and sometimes unnecessarily so. When I was at a charter school, every here I had to compile a data set on the demographics of our students to ensure we weren't mistreating people based on race or something. It's a very important thing for the government to be checking on, but given that we already had to send all our student's demographics, attendance, and discipline accounts to the state government, it felt redundant.
I feel like the government has been moderately good at making these data sets more accessible, I'd love to see more resources put into that, as well as making their collection smoother. Building effective, efficient systems is incredibly difficult, and requires constant investment to respond to changes.
I harp on "infrastructure" a lot, and I'm coming to realize that what I mean is less "roads, bridges, and trains" and more "efficient, effective systems of all types".
Pretty sure an HOA could fairly easily collect this data (I have a setup for various chemicals in my back yard). I have shared said data with my HOA to change the treatment plan for common areas. If an HOA did that they can sue a plant for any issues and alter emissions.
Government (big g) is nothing but an organized group of citizens agreeing to certain rules. There’s no reason any random organization can’t gather information, sue, etc. exactly the same as government.
We’re raised to think government is necessary, but I’m apart of many organizations that effectively function as self-governance and collective bargaining. At the same time they don’t need forced taxes paying for bombs in other countries either…
All it takes is a minor amount of organization. A great example of this is the HAM radio community, farming co-ops, churches, etc.
Could you share any more information about this?
I agree, but on a large scale this would mean that every HOA needs to have access to someone who can/is willing to do this. If you expand this to other environmental factors (e.g. noise pollution, waterway health, etc) I could see that becoming a large burden on the few people in each community that care enough to collect environmental data. Seems more efficient to pay someone to do it full-time for a larger group.
> I could see that becoming a large burden on the few people in each community that care enough to collect environmental data.
What you’re saying is not enough people care. So the people that do care are taking money from people who don’t care to get what they want. That’s called stealing when the government isn’t doing it…
That’s my point from above, we’re taught to need government. We don’t. Never did.
That's an uncharitable way to cast GP's comment, and not really true. We do understand by now that the state is just a better solution than private entities relying on "market forces" for certain desired outcomes.
Back to the original point: the problem is scalability. If everyone goes through the same process, running into the same roadblocks and suffering the same pitfalls, independently and disconnectedly, that is by definition wasted effort, ie, unproductive for the economy. If we want such things to succeed, ie, be productive and contribute to the commonwealth, we need to share knowledge, which requires some level of centralization at this time (decentralized knowledge management techniques are still in their infancy and IMO require architectural changes in our telecommunications infrastructure to properly support).
I’d say the opposite is true actually. I don’t understand how any mandated entity is better. I’ve formed plenty of organizations, governments aren’t necessary. It’s supposed to help mediate force. Instead people use the governments monopoly on force to get what they want.
In terms of scale, we have planned parenthood, Churches, habitat for humanity, and so many others that work at scale. If pollution was an issue as described people would care. HOAs would hire organizations to monitor pollution and then HOAs would sue for damages. Almost exactly what the EPA does btw. Except the government gets the money and people in the country fund pollution research like this.
Have you run a country? Do you know how that goes? No? Ok then.
> In terms of scale, we have planned parenthood, Churches, habitat for humanity, and so many others that work at scale.
Would you like to know how much each of these groups get in tax writeoffs, subsidies, and aid from the government?
> Almost exactly what the EPA does btw.
A comment about how we don't need government, and the argument is that government is already doing the job. Amazing.
My faith in the government is restored.
My personal bias here would be to say, "lowering the cost of technology, civic organization (whatever form that might take), empowering the individual, and removing barriers to entry wins again."
[monroe school pcbs]: https://www.propublica.org/article/school-district-where-tox...
Would like to see these pictures myself though, hope OP can find them.
"electron microscope pollen pollution" showed a few similar papers. I did not read them, and microplastics seems a little... unexpected, but the general idea seems to be accurate. Kind of crazy.
If at some point AR becomes commonplace I expect visualizing the hotspots directly would cause outrage.
Not sure how best to visualize it in AR though.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0647/0254/6158/files/TPB_B...
Like Google Glasses, just significantly more advanced basically.
> That’s when some colleagues told us about Google BigQuery, which is a Google Cloud services product that allows you to do SQL-style queries on very large data sets. Using BigQuery, code that once took a week to run finished in minutes.
I use BigQuery at work for all my SQL processing, but I'm usually working with data in the 100K to 1M range that take 1 to 10 seconds to process and don't have to think of costs. Does anyone have an idea of what minutes-long queries involving billions of rows would typically cost?
It sounds like the results are really dependent on whether or not these companies are lying. I would prefer to see them based on diagnosed cancer rates, but that data set probably doesn't exist.
Definitely not, especially in the US. Cancer is very highly correlated with age and body weight. Maine has one of the highest rates of cancer in the US, because the population average is the oldest in the US. Texas, despite a huge amount of air pollution, has relatively low rates of cancer because it's the second-youngest by average population age.
Map of cancer rates per state: https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/#/AtAGlance/
Ie. nothing may have a chimney, exhaust pipe, pressure release valve, or anything similar.
All gases must be stored in a tank and reprocessed at gas recycling facilities, which can separate out and sell the gases.
Even in your house, when you 'ventilate' the house, you are taking the stinky stuffy polluted indoor air and putting it into the environment. The volatile organics, farts, Nox from your cooker, CO2 from breath, and cooking smells aren't 'natural'. Instead, your house should purify its own gases with filters.
Will it be expensive? Yes. But looking after the environment is expensive. But it's worth it.
No outdoor barbecues, no campfires. What's next? No farting in the park?
No thanks.
I'm all for regulating industries, automobiles, etc. and to some extent what kinds of chemicals and materials can be used in the home but don't come telling me that I can't open a window to ventilate my house.
I was mostly talking about humans farting in the park though. In any case, I guess the solution is to install catalytic converter in all human and animal exhausts, like we do for cars, I guess. Right? :D
[0] https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/biogenic-carbon-cycle-a... [1] https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/why-methane-cattle-warm...
Filtered ventilation and heat recovery and good insulation are a powerful combination though.
This is some different level of ecological concern. People over here straight out burn furniture, rubber, and plastic in their heating units, burn outdoors their green garden waste during autumn, remove faulty catalytic converters and adblue-bulshit from their cars. With adblue removed one can literally smell the brilliance of German automotive engineering. If we're into tightening the regulations, we should start with controlling the home heating units and measuring car exhaust gasses.
Like banning plastic straws while the cups are still plastic, it enrages even many with a moderate amount of goodwill.
I agree we need to treat this seriously and invest a lot of time and effort, but if we don't address first the biggest issues (factories, automobiles), why force me to recycle the exhaust from my cigarette lighter?
This is a false equivalency when compared with the top comment. The equivalent statement would be "only car exhausts must be captured but we don't care about the rest of the gasses."
The commenter said all gasses and exhausts must be contained, and I tend to agree that this is a good goal to move towards.
Most of the population, quite frankly, is wrong about a lot of things like this. We see that from the hate for regulation partially driven by propaganda from businesses.
As a side note, cigarette smoke is also considered exhausting waste to the atmosphere.
> Most of the population, quite frankly, is wrong about a lot of things like this. We see that from the hate for regulation partially driven by propaganda from businesses.
Yet we do not live in that world and it is in fact not a goal to achieve. It's over the top and nonsensical. Like the commentor stated above you its extremist views like this one which will make the common folks squash any movement towards "green new deals." Just watch what happens when the climate nuts like Extinction Rebellion try to interfere in the normal people's day.
They ER types get crushed because real people do not have time or money for horseshit.
Climate change will merely be adapted too. But not in the expensive fart counting way some in this thread suggest.
Humanity will continue to expand and use technology to solve our biggest problems.
The world is in fact not ending. It is changing just as it always has. Humanity will do the same.
I don't think there is a single person upset at the plastic straw ban because they didn't ban even more single use plastic.
I'm not even sure that's logically possible, because that's not being upset at the straws being banned, it's being upset at the other things not being banned.
A restriction is fair for instance if it draws a cost/benefit line, and just bans all things on the wrong side of that line. Even if I don't agree, the conversation is at least around where to draw the line, and not on absurdities.
Banning plastic straws without banning plastic cups is mostly useless and inconvenient.
Talk me through your thinking here, because it's not obvious to me and seems like a very poor post-hoc rationalization.
It you'd want to limit alcohol consumption (just an example), you don't want to ban tequila but allow gin for instance. You can say ban anything with more than 15% alcohol by volume -- that would feel harsh but more fair.
I'm really not rationalizing, for me and some others there needs to be a perceived fairness in the restrictions.