
Air pollution is worse than we thought - elorant
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/8/12/21361498/climate-change-air-pollution-us-india-china-deaths
======
amatecha
I got a reality check recently about air pollution being worse than I thought,
when I was cleaning the dust/dirt off my patio railing. I noticed the dust was
particularly black, and the whole time I was cleaning it, a familiar smell was
in the air. I finally realized: it's brake dust!!

While I live on a street with many cars driving by all day, I thought being a
few storeys up would reduce the amount of pollution from vehicles...
apparently not at all!

~~~
ip26
Yet another benefit to regenerative braking!

~~~
beaner
Can anyone elaborate on this? Do electric cars really cause less break dust
for this reason?

~~~
mikestew
If the car is not slowing down by clamping brake pads to a metal disc, then
yes? I'm not sure how to answer the confusion here: confused on how
regenerative braking works, or conventional braking?

~~~
jimbokun
How does regenerative breaking work?

~~~
sliken
Imagine a generator on a bicycle, you pedal to make a light bulb light up.
There is of course inherent friction in the system, but a large fraction is
actually pushing magnet fields around to produce electricity. That part
actually has no friction, while it's not 100% efficient in the form of stray
magnetic fields and some heating, normal metal on metal friction is a very
small fraction.

Normal brakes use 100% friction, which of course causes substantial heat, and
increases wear and tear on the pads, the rotor, and brake fluid. These type
issues are why it's often recommended to use a lower gear down hills so you
can offload the brakes with engine friction.

So not only does regenerative braking produce less dust, but it produces less
heat, and the brakes/rotors/fluid are on average cooler and in a state where
any needed braking causes less wear.

------
belorn
I like the strategy proposed (linked in the article).

In increased production capacity: 4x electric vehicles, 16x batteries, 12x
wind turbines, 10x solar modules. 2x the nuclear capacity. 25% of the energy
grid converted into communal/consumer owned renewable production.

Basically full production in every technology that result in zero air
pollution for the energy grid. Full production in all technologies also allow
us to see which clean technology is cheaper in practice without people sitting
still while arguing over which strategy they should use.

~~~
ljf
I've spent a lot of my life opposed to nuclear power - but I'm slowly feeling
that even with the currently unsolved long term storage issues - that it is
better than the alternatives (carrying on burning fossil fuel until some point
in the future when storage is good enough.)

I'd love to be wrong and I'd love to see renewable energy and storage solved
in the next 10 years (though likely take longer than that to scale up
nuclear).

~~~
verdverm
There are many types of nuclear power, with thorium salt reactors being one of
the most effective possible components to an overall solution. These could be
scaled up quickly. The problem is public opinion and the lack of nuanced
understanding of the differences.

~~~
jabl
No, the problem with molten salt reactors is that except for a few test
reactors in the 1960'ies, nobody has built and ran them. There is little
knowledge how well they'd actually work as power production reactors running
at high power for years. E.g. how do you do maintenance?

And on top of that, the Th fuel cycle requires reprocessing and breeding,
again technology that looks feasible on paper but little knowledge how it
would work out in practice.

I'm not saying this as a negative, I think MSR's are cool and potentially very
useful technology. We should definitely research them with the goal of taking
them into use for large-scale power production. But this won't be ready in 10
years.

Now, I hope I'm wrong, and maybe IMSR proves me wrong by deploying at scale
sooner. Though that is the traditional once-through LEU cycle, no Th, but
still a MSR design.

~~~
EricE
You know who has picked up all the research on molten salt we abandoned?

China.

The utter hysteria around Nuclear is the biggest threat to climate change and
if you really want to diminish the use of fossil fuels nuclear is the most
economically viable path. The majority of costs are either cultural or obtuse
regulations that have layered up over time. Micro reactors, molten salt and
other really innovative designs don't get traction because of irrational fears
radiation spawns in people.

Similar to a lot of hysteria we are seeing around COVID-19. Even if the
majority of the population gets infected, it's only a real threat to a small
portion of the population - so rather than managing that specific threat we
are acting like it affects everyone the same - with disastrous results that
are still unfolding.

------
abj
A 2019 OECD paper analyzing European satellite data estimates "that a 1
µg/m³[!] increase in PM2.5 concentration (or a 10% increase at the sample
mean) causes a 0.8% reduction in real GDP that same year. Ninety-five per cent
of this impact is due to reductions in output per worker, which can occur
through greater absenteeism at work or reduced labour productivity."

[1]
[https://patrickcollison.com/pollution](https://patrickcollison.com/pollution)

------
jeffreyrogers
I think they overstate the case for clean energy being cheap. It is cheap
because the costs of storage are externalized. If you don't have fossil fuel
producers then suddenly you have to add a lot of storage into the mix, which
is not cheap.

Of course, if it's doable in practice I'm all for it, and if clean energy is
really as cheap as they claim, then we'll get there pretty soon just on
economics.

~~~
leoedin
This is something I don't think is fully understood by most people.

Most people think "clean energy is just about building solar panels" \- it's
viewed as this linear process. I think the media often present it this way.

But in fact, between us and a society run by clean energy is all sorts of huge
technical hurdles we haven't solved yet. Adding 10,20% renewables is simple
enough - but 100% renewables without daily blackouts is incredibly hard. We
need many orders of magnitude more battery storage to get there (or some other
storage technology).

It's the same for electric cars. The cost of electricity to run an electric
car is small, so people assume that if everyone has an electric car, running
costs will be low.

But currently electric cars are subsidised by fuel taxes, and low emissions
vehicles are encouraged by low vehicle taxes. When every vehicle is low
emission, we still need to get the cost of maintaining the roads from
somewhere. And electric car charging at home works because only a handful of
people do it. When every car on the road is plugged in every night the
distribution networks to every street will need to be massively upgraded.

It's a problem because it means most people don't appreciate how far we have
to go before a clean energy society is possible. We need to increase
investment into this technology by an order of magnitude to have a hope of
implementing before climate change has significant effects.

~~~
bryanlarsen
\- the majority of the cost of road construction and maintenance comes from
general taxes. Fuel taxes haven't paid the majority since the 80's.

\- 100% renewables is hard. 90% renewables is straightforward.

\- electric cars generally charge at night and use about the same amount of
power as an electric oven. Distribution network changes are not required.

~~~
read_if_gay_
> electric cars generally charge at night and use about the same amount of
> power as an electric oven.

That does not sound right. Napkin math: A _tiny_ Renault Zoe has a 52kWh
battery. Even assuming 100% charging efficiency, charging for 8 hours over
night you’re looking at 52/8=6.5kW per hour. That’s already more than twice as
much as an oven, and an _extremely_ conservative approximation.

edit: thanks for pointing out what I missed. I was somehow fixated on full
recharges.

~~~
audunw
Just to get some real numbers on the table:

\- My EV has ~30kWh battery

\- I charge about twice a week, overnight, from around 50% to 100%, if I drive
to work every day

I have a relatively short commute to work. So this is may be a lower bound.
But charging 52kWh every single day is definitely an extreme case on the other
end.

Where I'm from, EVs typically charge at 10A-32A at 220V, or 7.4kW to 22kW with
level 2 chargers. That means you can't charge a Tesla from 0% to 100% over
night, but then I haven't heard of anyone who actually needs to do that every
day, if ever. The closest I've done personally is charge a Tesla I borrowed
from around 30% to 100% at a cabin, but then I started when we arrived in the
afternoon and we left just before noon.

It's weird that you'd call a 52kWh Zoe tiny btw. 52kWh is quite respectable.
It's only half of the largest EV you could possibly buy now, and I'm guessing
50-70kWh will be the standard mid/entry level battery size for a long time.

30-40kWh cars _might_ disappear. That'd kind of be a shame, because it's a
useful size for many people. And having a larger battery than you need is a
_huge_ waste unless you have vehicle-to-grid to get more value out of the
battery capacity you're not using. But then again, maybe the 30-40kWh market
will be taken over by second hand 50-60kWh cars with reduced capacity.

~~~
ogre_codes
> 30-40kWh cars might disappear. That'd kind of be a shame, because it's a
> useful size for many people. And having a larger battery than you need is a
> huge waste unless you have vehicle-to-grid to get more value out of the
> battery capacity you're not using. But then again, maybe the 30-40kWh market
> will be taken over by second hand 50-60kWh cars with reduced capacity.

I am sad that there are so few good subcompact/ truly low energy options in
this market. There is a tiny Chinese car coming to the US, but right now it
seems like it's only going to hit a few markets.

~~~
WorldMaker
The US is the only major market really lacking in this space. Asia and Europe
already have a bunch of competitors in the "city car" space with a lot more on
the drawing board. Almost none of those companies believe the US is interested
in "city cars", if they have a US presence at all.

The American (genital) size contest for SUVs and Trucks has sucked a lot of
oxygen out of what is a much more interesting variety in EV production for
Asia and the EU.

------
oxymoran
This is what I never understood about people that don’t think anthropomorphic
climate change was a thing. Like ok, forget the warming of the planet, we
still are making our air, water, and soil unhealthy at alarming levels.

------
calibas
I wonder if the fact that it causes brain damage has something to do with our
collective reluctance to address this enormous human health and environmental
issue.

~~~
asdfman123
No, because people in cities, breathing in that particulate matter daily,
actually want to do something about it.

~~~
latchkey
After living in Vietnam for 4 years, which has massive air quality issues, I
wouldn't say they want or even care to do something about it. They just live
with it.

~~~
bluGill
You need a certain level of prosperity to care. If you have enough to eat and
that is about it you don't care, you would prefer other nice things in life
first. Eventually your house isn't too crowded, you can get to enough places
you want to go, you have good enough medical care, some education for the
kids, and a few other nice things in life. Eventually you cross the line to
where clean air to breath becomes important.

Vietnam has a lot of problems they need to solve before clean air gets to the
top of their priorities. It is a long road but it will come to the top. They
are making good progress on the other issues, but we are talking about
decades, so no surprise they don't care yet. Give it time.

~~~
latchkey
Anyone who thinks Vietnam is poor, is mistaken. They are the epitome of
capitalism gone to the greedy. The richest of the rich and the poorest of the
poor. It is the wealthy who are often the worst offenders, not the people
struggling to make ends meet.

The culture is literally to not care about these sorts of things because it is
someone else's problem. You see it in the day to day living... endless numbers
of people routinely just throw their plastic cups carried in plastic bags,
into the sewer on the side of the street. Knowing full well, it will either
just sit there or one of the govt. sponsored cleanup people will pick it up.

I spent two years actively refusing plastic and it is impossible to convince
every single person you deal with that you don't need yet another plastic bag.

Covid will end up being a giant reset for this country and I'm less
enthusiastic about the future than you are. It will be interesting to watch
for certain.

------
mrfusion
I’m unpopular at parties because I’m more worried about other pollutants vs
co2. (Not that co2 isn’t bad)

~~~
white-flame
But CO2 isn't bad, nor is it a pollutant. The rate of CO2 increase in the
atmosphere is what's bad.

I understand the intended implication, but the vernacular is pendulum swinging
too far in the wrong way factually against CO2.

Nitpicky, but hey this is HN, and I can be unpopular at this party, too! :-P

~~~
philipkglass
"Pollutant" depends on context. Plants need nitrogen and phosphorus compounds
to grow, but when fertilizers run off farmland into rivers and lakes those
same compounds are pollutants. The same goes for carbon dioxide. It is
essential to plant life, and it is also a pollutant when dispersed into the
environment in large quantities.

------
zahma
Plug for open-source air quality monitoring:
[https://sensor.community/en/](https://sensor.community/en/)

Build your own sensor for about 50-60 dollars. The community has a DIY guide.
There used to be a guide that didn't require soldering, but the current guide
still isn't very complex.

------
totetsu
Some more discussion of this topic I have come across recently.

\- Dying to breathe: Mongolia's polluted air (babies with pneumonia)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUNuHxrd7Y0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUNuHxrd7Y0)

and these two podcast describing who is most effected by these issues.

\- OPPRESSIVE HEAT: CLIMATE CHANGE AS A CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE
[https://www.climateone.org/audio/oppressive-heat-climate-
cha...](https://www.climateone.org/audio/oppressive-heat-climate-change-civil-
rights-issue)

\- Broken Ground: Robert Bullard On Environmental Justice
[https://www.democracyworkspodcast.com/broken-
ground/](https://www.democracyworkspodcast.com/broken-ground/)

------
reeddavid
For anyone wondering about immediate solutions in your own home, I can say:
Indoor air filtration really works.

I now use this industrial-level laser particle counter to verify my indoor air
quality: [https://www.iqair.com/us/commercial/air-quality-
monitors/par...](https://www.iqair.com/us/commercial/air-quality-
monitors/particlescan-lite)

I currently live on an arterial road, about 2 blocks from a major Interstate
(I-5).

I'm very concerned about air pollution. Pollution here (Seattle, Downtown /
Capitol Hill area) is bad enough I can see it in the form of black dust which
comes in even through closed windows. And that's just the particles big enough
to see.

I placed 4 HEPA filters throughout the house, and I run them constantly on a
low setting. Based on square footage, I would only need 1-2 of these filters.
But I wanted extra filter capacity in each main room.

One annoyance is that my particle counter returns a particle count (per cubic
meter, I think?) which doesn't have an exact conversion to the standardized
AQI (Air Quality Index). I found a plausible conversion guide, surely not
exact but close enough.

Here's what I learned:

\- Indoor air filters make a _dramatic_ improvement to air quality. When the
outdoor particle count is ~1M, my indoor count can be well under 100K. That's
90% reduction.

– When I approximate AQI, it's common for outdoor air
([https://cfpub.epa.gov/airnow/index.cfm](https://cfpub.epa.gov/airnow/index.cfm))
to be in the "Moderate" scale, and my indoor air to be at the floor (best) of
"Healthy".

– The IQAir HealthPro Plus ([https://www.iqair.com/us/room-air-
purifiers/healthpro-series](https://www.iqair.com/us/room-air-
purifiers/healthpro-series)) is incredibly effective. It lowers particle count
to _zero_ at its outlet.

– My other air filters are still effective, even though they don't get the
particle count down to zero. They are the RabbitAir minusa2, and two Blueair
Classic 205 units.

I was also very surprised when I carried the particle counter around my
neighborhood. The quiet streets often have worse air quality than the
arterial! And the particle count on the arterial was just as bad as on the
Interstate 5 overpass. I think the better airflow on the arterials may help
get the pollution out of the area. I really expected the quite streets to have
fewer pollution particles.

I have not ventured into testing for C02, other gasses, or Volatile Organic
Compounds (VOCs). But I'm very curious and may try to measure that myself
someday soon.

~~~
pretendscholar
You use the 2000 dollar one? Is it possible to get a rough but working
measurement device for around 100 dollars?

~~~
reeddavid
I got the particle counter used on eBay for about $100. I know it's totally
unnecessary to have that industrial version, but it was cheaper (used) than I
could buy their consumer-level AirVisual Pro([https://www.iqair.com/us/air-
quality-monitors/airvisual-pro](https://www.iqair.com/us/air-quality-
monitors/airvisual-pro)).

------
germinalphrase
I live about two blocks from a four lane road (functionally - a highway). We
don’t have forced air. I have considered in-room air filtration, but have
heard mixed reviews on efficacy. Anyone have relevant experience with in/room
filtration machines?

~~~
the_economist
Running any air filter (cheap, expensive, etc) lowers the PM2.5 count in my
home (adjacent to a busy 4-lane road in San Francisco) from ~40 to near zero.
This is the tool I use to measure PM count: [https://www.iqair.com/us/air-
quality-monitors/airvisual-pro](https://www.iqair.com/us/air-quality-
monitors/airvisual-pro)

[https://twitter.com/typesfaster/status/1116732197031956480?c...](https://twitter.com/typesfaster/status/1116732197031956480?cxt=HHwWgMCmlYeBt_8eAAAA)

------
anarbadalov
It's good that pollution's immense consequences on public health get more
attention, so I like the piece for that. Though a little puzzled about why the
author approached, for his main source, an earth scientist and physicist, not
someone with an epidemiology background. No disrespect to that source, whose
work sounds important and very interesting.

------
Erlich_Bachman
(In case it will change, original title was "Air pollution is much worse than
we thought")

The whole piece reads like political propaganda anti fossil fuels. (Which
might be what you are looking for, but not what I expected from the title).
Only about 10% of the text is about the air pollution aspect of using fossil
fuels, these 10% are buried somewhere in the middle and basically come down to
linking to a couple of studies. Are they even new studies? Additionally there
is some mentioning of the phrase "air pollution" in sentences that give no new
information whatsoever and discuss the various political and societal
movements tangentially related to it...

If you are looking for legit reliable information, this piece will hurt your
mind to even read. Even the writing style feels like political agitation and
not information. (It would actually make more sense if GPT-3 wrote this.)

~~~
kyle_martin1
Agreed. Vox isn't in the news business, they're in the selling ads through
confirmation bias business.

~~~
bosswipe
Could it be that you didn't like the article because it didn't confirm your
biases?

~~~
throwaway0a5e
Anyone who takes particulate pollution seriously is not going to like the
article.

To solve particulate pollution in a practical way we don't need to build wind
turbines to replace gas plants (that would be good for CO2 reasons though), we
need to slap filters on diesel garbage trucks and heavy industry exhaust
stacks and wet down construction sites and do other things to keep small dust
(which invariably gets into people's lungs, reacts with various organic
molecules and causes problems) to a minimum.

Straw manning particulate pollution as a fossil fuel problem is a great way to
make particulate pollution seem like a bigger and harder to solve problem than
it actually is.

~~~
bosswipe
Even better than diesel filters is not using diesel at all! Fossil fuels are
never going to not produce pollution. California with some of the strictest
tailpipe emission standards still has huge smog problems. I don't see the
issue with highlighting the air quality co-benefits of fighting climate
change. We need to do both!

~~~
throwaway0a5e
>Even better than diesel filters is not using diesel at all

Of course that would be better but that's a hard and expensive problem and the
99% solution is easy and cheap. Seems like a pretty obvious choice to me.

>California with some of the strictest tailpipe emission standards still has
huge smog problems.

A combination of bad geographic luck and diminishing returns (everyone else's
emissions regulations have 90+% the same effect)

>I don't see the issue with highlighting the air quality co-benefits of
fighting climate change.

If your goal is to stop coughing up a lung today then focusing on better
batteries and cheaper green energy is wasted effort when you can directly
solve the pollution problem more cheaply right now. Sure air quality is a nice
side benefit to reducing C02 emissions but if your true goal is improved air
quality then reducing CO2 emissions is a crap way to go about it because the
two are only loosely correlated and the bang for your buck is so bad. If your
goal is to win eyeballs to your site and get people who's understanding of the
problems is on the level checkout-isle magazine to share your article then it
is probably a good idea.

~~~
AstralStorm
What do you think those filters and extras that a few car companies were
caught software cheating around are meant to do? But then at some point you
reach loss of efficiency which means burning more fuel and producing more
other pollution.

The big problem is prevalence of old cars or ones in disrepair.

Then of course coal and oil plants, secondary gas plants; and of course
industrial pollution from manufacturing.

