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Comment by kethinov | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this just an argument to avoid living in cities?

Basically any large concentration of people is going to result in businesses existing that produce air pollution.

Everything in life is trade-offs. It sure would be nice to live in pristine untouched nature but also somehow have all modern conveniences and also somehow have a high income that is most commonly found in cities...

Like yeah I'm sure some people can square that circle, but most people need to live in places with more pollution than the countryside so they can make a living.

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This is not an argument against living in cities. This is only an argument that you shouldn't live next to sites with significant industrial operation if you care about your risk of cancer. Look at the map I posted. There are plenty of places in plenty of cities that don't have elevated cancer rates.

As wtallis noted though, that scary map you linked is an incomplete dataset. Not only does it not include chip fabs, but it also doesn't appear to account for other sources of air pollution. If it was a more general map of air pollution levels in the US, I think you'd see a strong correlation between population density and air pollution levels which makes the trade-off analysis a lot more complicated than just avoid living near a chip fab if your goal is to avoid bad air making you sick.

You’re basically asking for perfect data to answer this one very specific question. You’re unlikely to get it. I’m just presenting what we currently know. PM2.5 (a measure of air pollution) exposure is highly correlated with all cause mortality. You can see additional evidence of this by looking at cancer rates near industrial centers. Chip fabs also emit similar types of air pollution and are regulated by the EPA, similar to other industries.

You’re free to look at this data and say: “well, it doesn’t conclusively prove that living next to a chip fab is bad, so I’m fine with it.” That’s your right. You can live where ever you want. But the data suggests living near industrial sources of pollution is bad for your health. Without any data suggesting that living near a chip fab is neutral to our health, I think applying Occam’s razor is warranted.

I'm not saying living near a chip fab doesn't present the risks you outlined. What I'm saying is it's very likely there are comparable risks living basically anywhere that isn't very sparsely populated, so I think your original post places undue emphasis on one risk among many that should all be weighed in an apples to apples way when making these kinds of decisions.

> I'm not saying living near a chip fab doesn't present the risks you outlined. What I'm saying is it's very likely there are comparable risks living basically anywhere that isn't very sparsely populated

Doesn't this directly contradict the incidence of cancer vs. distance to industrial pollution maps? Like you're literally many times more likely to get cancer if you live near a source of industrial pollution compared to other people who live in your same city but don't live right next to a source of industrial pollution.

Think about it like this: the volume of a sphere increases proportional to the radius cubed. That means the further you get from a source of pollution, the density of that pollution falls off by a cubic of the distance. That's quite a sharp drop off. So small sources of pollution may pose some risk, but due to the small amount of particulate combined with how fast the pollution drops off means it's not so dangerous. Very large sources of pollution, however, may be dangerous for some distance.

My operating assumptions here go something like this:

- Living in a sparsely populated area that is near a chip fab presents X health risks due to its specific kind of industrial pollution.

- Living in a densely populated city without a chip fab presents Y health risks associated with higher traffic, other kinds of businesses that produce air pollution, etc.

I would want to see X quantified against Y in order to make an apples to apples comparison here. If such a comparison is made, it seems likely to me that the health risks are similar. Hence, the only way to minimize your health risks is to live in a sparsely populated area that has no jobs. Anyplace with significant economic activity is likely to be hazardous to your health in some way.

And even if X is significantly more hazardous than Y, okay, then what? "Don't move there" is a lot less helpful than proposing regulations that minimize people's exposure to pollution while still letting us have chip fabs. The damn things need to be built somewhere for us to have nice things, so let's figure out how to do it right instead of just scaring people with (potentially) misleading stats.

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