
More than 95% of world's population breathing unhealthy air, says new report - optimusrex
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/17/health/world-dangerous-air-report-intl/index.html
======
aphextron
Imterstingly there’s a pretty much 1:1 correlation between air quality and
longetivity, much stronger than just wealth disparity. The longest lived areas
in the US are Hawaii (constant supply of clean air via tradewinds, total lack
of heavy industry) and the high mountain valleys of Colorado/Montana.

~~~
gascan
There's more going for Summit County than clean air and wealth.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/summit-county-is-the-
healthie...](http://www.businessinsider.com/summit-county-is-the-healthiest-
in-the-us-2017-10)

[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-healthiest-state-
in...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-healthiest-state-in-the-
country-has-some-of-the-steepest-premiums/)

[https://www.aspentimes.com/news/regional/study-summit-
county...](https://www.aspentimes.com/news/regional/study-summit-county-has-
the-highest-life-expectancy-in-the-nation/)

[https://www.summitdaily.com/news/2017-year-in-review-
great-h...](https://www.summitdaily.com/news/2017-year-in-review-great-health-
news-for-summit-county-but-at-a-steep-cost/)

~~~
lisper
"A lot of what makes Summit County so healthy is also what makes the other
four Colorado counties in the top-10 ranking for life expectancy so healthy:
an over-representation of higher-income, young, white residents relative to
national averages."

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zitterbewegung
This really affects me. I have asthma throughout my life and it shows. I think
it has made me more sedentary throughout my life.

I have actually breathed really well once when I was doing work halfway inside
a server farm at Alcatel Lucent (it was one of the monitor rooms so it wasn't
noisy).

I can notice the air in my house is not fit to breathe and I buy hepa filters
for my house.

I have thought about using an oxygen tank or some respirator and seeing if
that had any measurable affect .

I just had an asthma attack today because someone spilled toner on the ground.

~~~
Symbiote
Where do you live? A city, or a small town, or a village?

The difference seems like it would make a big difference in traffic pollution.

I know of
[http://airqualitynow.eu/comparing_home.php](http://airqualitynow.eu/comparing_home.php)
for some EU settlements, and the difference between places can be massive.
(Storrington at the bottom has a population of 4000. I don't know the criteria
for appearing on that list.)

~~~
zitterbewegung
I mainly commute in the Chicagoland area and live in the Suburbs.

~~~
santiagogo
I started suffering from exercise induced asthma last year. It sucks, but I've
found that with good nutrition, using the correct medications and trying to
stay in a clean air environment (air cleanser, HEPA mask, etc), it's very
manageable. There is a lot of good recent research out there on how to manage
it, but I've noticed that most asthma sufferers and doctors are not even aware
of it.

------
trop
The man who self-immolated in Brooklyn on Saturday cited this among many other
concerns:

> In retrospect, Mr. Morales said he knew Mr. Buckel had been upset as
> recently as February when he began discussing articles about the
> environment, for instance one about how 96 percent of human beings breathe
> polluted air and another about the Arctic Circle experiencing record
> breaking temperatures.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/nyregion/david-buckel-
bro...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/nyregion/david-buckel-
brooklyn.html)

------
InquilineKea
Is living near a major roadway (e.g.
[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/brain-pollution-
evide...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/brain-pollution-evidence-
builds-dirty-air-causes-alzheimer-s-dementia) ) also sufficient to cause
unhealthy air?

>> Deepening the concerns, this month researchers at the University of Toronto
in Canada reported in The Lancet that among 6.6 million people in the province
of Ontario, those living within 50 meters of a major road—where levels of fine
pollutants are often 10 times higher than just 150 meters away—were 12% more
likely to develop dementia than people living more than 200 meters away.

>> Just how the fine airborne particles might travel from a rodent’s nasal
cavity to its brain is a mystery. But a research team led by Günter
Oberdörster at the University of Rochester in New York has used traceable,
radioactive specks of elemental carbon to demonstrate that inhaled particles
smaller than 200 nanometers can get through the delicate tissues lining a
rodent’s nasal cavities, travel along neurons, and spread as far as the
cerebellum, at the back of the brain, triggering an inflammatory reaction.

>>"In 1403 elderly women, the total volume of white matter—the insulated nerve
fibers that connect different brain regions—decreased by about 6 cubic
centimeters for every 3.5-µg/m3 increase in estimated PM2.5 exposure, based on
air monitoring data from participants’ residences for 6 to 7 years before the
brain scans were taken. Chen’s white matter findings are consistent with
studies of cultured neurons, which show that exposure to PM2.5 can cause
myelin—the fatty insulation that wraps around neuronal axons—to “peel up at
the ends, like a Band-Aid,” Block says"

I mean, hell, even trees _do_ increase the amount of certain types of
"pollutants" in the air (pollen for one). They make the air less pure for one
thing.

~~~
cfadvan
Unlike magnetic nanoparticles, pollen isn’t going to literally stick in your
brain, just provoke an allergic reaction in some.

~~~
InquilineKea
trees still produce air impurities beyond just pollen :)

------
jxramos
I may have missed it but I didn't see anything explicitly spelling out what
components of pollution in the air that were so deadly. You'd think they'd
define what form of air pollution we're talking about, not just pollution in
the generic.

~~~
sp332
It's in the report which is linked at the beginning of the article.
[https://www.stateofglobalair.org/sites/default/files/soga-20...](https://www.stateofglobalair.org/sites/default/files/soga-2018-report.pdf)

------
banderman
Keeping a variety of houseplants seems to help at least a bit
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study)

------
tedunangst
Does this mean 95% breathing unhealthy air today? Or breathed unhealthy air in
the past year? Sometimes the air here is healthy, sometimes there's too much
ozone. Am I in the 95%?

~~~
gascan
Usually it's in the past year, over some threshold, more than X times.

Even the worst locations for air quality have many good days, and some
locations with normally good air have terrible inversions.

If you're in an ozone non-attainment zone, I'm guessing you might be in the
Front Range. Yes, we need to get it fixed.

------
sathomasga
The latest More or Less podcast episode covered this.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06478pz](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06478pz)

------
sneak
Relevant: one of my favorite articles.

[https://samharris.org/the-fireplace-delusion/](https://samharris.org/the-
fireplace-delusion/)

------
smaili
Here's the real scary quote:

> According to the report, China and India were found to be jointly
> responsible for over 50% of global deaths attributable to pollution.

~~~
sametmax
They also almost host 50% of world's population.

~~~
reubenswartz
Closer to a third, but probably more than half of the population in huge
cities with terrible air...

------
aoner
What if we made HEPA filters in cars mandatory in such a way that every car
‘clears out’ the smog it creates plus some extra (won’t help for all the coal
burning). We could then throw out/recycle the filters once in a while and at
least compensate for traffic related smog.

------
g12mcgov
Wonder where the 5% clean areas are?

~~~
WhompingWindows
I believe it's a population based percentage. However, there is a global map
on page 15:

[https://www.stateofglobalair.org/sites/default/files/soga-20...](https://www.stateofglobalair.org/sites/default/files/soga-2018-report.pdf)

------
randyrand
What impact does this have on average life expectancy?

~~~
WhompingWindows
Some quotes for you:

Among the 84 risk factors included in its comprehensive analysis, the GBD
project reported that ambient air pollution from PM2.5 ranked 6th globally in
its contribution to mortality in 2016, accounting for 4.1 million deaths.
Household air pollution was ranked 8th globally, responsible for 2.6 million
deaths. Air pollution from ambient PM2.5, ozone, and household burning of
solid fuels combined was the 4th-highest global risk factor, accounting for
6.1 million deaths — 11% of the global total.

page 18,
[https://www.stateofglobalair.org/sites/default/files/soga-20...](https://www.stateofglobalair.org/sites/default/files/soga-2018-report.pdf)

~~~
randyrand
I've always thought the "accounting for X" deaths metric was silly of things
that kill you over time. Wish they reported life expectancy changes. Perhaps
it has a negligible impact.

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test6554
All those former smokers on oxygen are the lucky ones.

~~~
lallysingh
They still breathe plenty of air.

