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Another statistic from the Department of Make It Up To Suit Your Views.
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>> Another statistic from the Department of Make It Up To Suit Your Views.>>
Couldn't agree more. Power over the people to suit a political agenda and save face.
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I have wondered about this myself.
It is a reasonable assumption that breathing air with pollutants in it that in large quantities are known to be poisonous will have some adverse effects. However, calculating that must be impossible so assumptions and estimates (guesswork) must be stacked one on top of another.
As far as I know, nobody has ever had "Atmospheric NOx poisoning" written on a death certificate, so it isn't like counting heart attacks. Essentially, they die of something else, which might or might not have been exacerbated, more or less, by pollution.
So 'they' must be looking at causes that might be related to pollution such as COPD, and/or ages at death compared with levels of pollution from one place to another - adjusted for lots of other factors. Also, no quantum is usually mentioned for the shortening. Before a statement can be made about how many, surely a conclusion would have had to have been reached or a criterion set as to by how much?
The way that these figures are bandied about only highlights the difficulty in finding credible evidence.
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Thank you for adding the executive summary.
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>> Thank you for adding the executive summary.
>>
A fuller version may be obtained here.
wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/news/does-air-pollution-kill-40000-people-each-year-uk
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I should have read the article first, I assumed it was just more journalistic off-the-cuffery.
I love this bit -
But the authors of this report stressed the uncertainty of their findings. In particular, COMEAP said when it used the 6% figure that it was 75% confident the actual figure was between 1% and 12%. That translates as meaning that that the number of early deaths, for which 29,000 was the central estimate, was probably between 5,000 and 60,000, but there was a one in four chance that it was even outside that range.
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>> Its cobblers.
>>
Also knows as : DADA - Doing a Diane Abbott
Last edited by: BrianByPass on Fri 5 May 17 at 22:44
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Is there ANY doubt that NOx, at multiple times it's permitted limit, is affecting people's health?
Whether there are 15k or 50k lives cut short each year is angels on head of a pin territory.
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I wonder if it includes pollen as air pollution - on occasions that nearly kills my missus!
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I think it does matter, is it shortening life by 5 minutes or 5 years and on what by what risk factor? A 50% increase could still tiny if at a negligible base level.
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Obviously difficult to make anything like an accurate assessment, but the excess deaths in the week-long 'great smog' of London in 1952 put down to (mostly) exacerbations of respiratory disease was a little over 10,000.
Although that was from a single week's exposure, and only in the capital, the level of pollution was exceptional.
Last edited by: Lygonos on Sat 6 May 17 at 12:10
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>>Although that was from a single week's exposure, and only in the capital, the level of pollution was exceptional.
>>
It was very thick in the Twickenham area.
We lads went out in it and earned some good tips guiding motorist on the A316.
How things change.
We then got smokeless fuel.
For fear of the authorities, one must light fires with a gas poker or a turbo charged electric paint stripper not yesterdays newspaper.
Today, what the hell, lets all have ( unregulated ?) trendy wood burners ignited by ?
How times change :-(
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I think that there are a number of factors here including the fact that pollution in the western world has been falling despite an increase in the population and the number of vehicles, flights etc.
However it's also a matter of risk over experience, in the same way that some ride motorbikes and horses or play rugby or jump out of serviceable aircraft we are all in some way happy to accept risk in exchange for experience - accordingly if the choice were to give up our BMWs, Mercedes, Jaguars, Fords, VWs, Hondas, Yamahas, Australian, Chilean Californian wine, Japanese made AV/hi-fi, Chinese made IT stuff, phones etc, cruises, foreign holidays etc etc ...
... for 5 years extra life expectancy - would we?
Ce la vie!
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Accepting avoidable risk and being exposed to unavoidable risk are somewhat different.
I don't care if someone wishes to smoke (they're doing the world a favour by paying tax, taking less pension, and dying young)- I don't want to share in their experience though, or have it thrust upon my children.
Last edited by: Lygonos on Sat 6 May 17 at 12:15
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Increasing the risk of something surely doesn't necessarily mean that someone succumbs to that risk?
If you take the appropriate precaution - vaccination, holding on to the handrail, wearing a smog mask, reading the wiring instructions, etc, then the risk remains, theoretically, but with no ill effects.
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Tell that to a child Cliff.Have them wearing a mask when going to school because they can't breath reasonable fresh air.
We shouldn't have to live our lives that way should we.
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We should put this in perspective. In the 1960's when I was a kid, air quality must have been considerably worse than it is today. More people smoked back then, indeed it was still almost fashionable; pretty much every house was heated by coal in one way or another because the vast majority of electricity was generated by that means.
There were less lorries and cars, admittedly, but those that were on the road were highly polluting by modern standards, so that factor needs taking into account too and not done simply on numbers of vehicles. I cannot recall the city smogs, being a bit too young and also having been brought up in rural Nottinghamshire, but I do remember the smell of coal fires on a winters evening in the mining communities esepcially; the memory is triggered to this day whenever I drive through Port Talbot. I also recall a jouirney from Loughborough to Nottingham in the early 1970's when the fog on the A46 was so bad that my mother had to walk in front of the car to guide my father. I haven't experienced anything like that since and I drive considerable distances virtually every day.
Which begs the question; why is it that only now, in an age where the air quality must surely be far better in most of the UK than it was back then, that we are being told that we're all going to die earlier because the air we breathe is so contaminated? Is it because of more pollutants which didn't exist back then? Or more likely, has our resistance to such pollutants been eroded by over-prescription of pharmaceutical products? I do wonder if there's a link.
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Which begs the question; why is it that only now, in an age where the
>> air quality must surely be far better in most of the UK than it was
>> back then, that we are being told that we're all going to die earlier because
>> the air we breathe is so contaminated? Is it because of more pollutants which didn't
>> exist back then? Or more likely, has our resistance to such pollutants been eroded by
>> over-prescription of pharmaceutical products? I do wonder if there's a link.
>>
Neither, it's because people are more aware of such things now. We are also in an age where there is more information access able than ever before.
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>> I cannot recall the city smogs, being a bit too young
>>
It really was awful.
>>
>>I remember the smell of coal fires on a winters evening in the mining communities
Well it is back in my urban area, so much for " smokeless " fuel.
The smell of wood smoke is also back.
>>I recall a journey from Loughborough to Nottingham in the early 1970's when the fog on
>> the A46 was so bad that my mother had to walk in front of the car to guide my father.
Thats what it was like in Twickenham but I was not aware it hit other non city areas so badly.
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>
>> Which begs the question; why is it that only now, in an age where the
>> air quality must surely be far better in most of the UK than it was
>> back then, that we are being told that we're all going to die earlier because
>> the air we breathe is so contaminated?
No the real question is if we are all being harmed by these pollutants, why are we living longer. So long in fact that the sheer number of elderly people living beyond their design life is causing an issue.
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I'm living longer, so there must be something in what mister Z sez.
(*_*)
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>>
>> We shouldn't have to live our lives that way should we.
>>
No, of course not. I'm just using that as an illustration that risk doesn't necessarily result in succumbing to that risk. A risk can still exist even if no one is caught by it. It's risky using a chainsaw in bare feet. But wear steel-capped boots and no one will ever cut their toes off by accident.
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No, of course not. I'm just using that as an illustration that risk doesn't necessarily
>> result in succumbing to that risk. A risk can still exist even if no one
>> is caught by it. It's risky using a chainsaw in bare feet. But wear steel-capped
>> boots and no one will ever cut their toes off by accident.
>>
>>
Then it's not the same risk as before, but a reduced one due to modifying the activity.
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>> Tell that to a child Cliff.Have them wearing a mask when going to school because
>> they can't breath reasonable fresh air.
>>
>> We shouldn't have to live our lives that way should we.
We dont because it doesn't happen.
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Does pollution cut short 40,000 lives a year? - Robin O'Reliant
