|
|
PUBLISHED : 10 DEC 2019 AT 13:15
Smog returned to Bangkok with PM 2.5 dust exceeding safe levels at seven monitoring stations on Tuesday morning, up to 57 microgrammes per cubic metre of air.
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration’s environment office reported tha levels of particulate matter 2.5 microns or less in diameter (PM2.5) rose above safe levels in Bang Khen Laksi, Phasicharoen, Bang Sue, Pathumwan, Bang Kho Laem and Khong San.
|
Breathing London air same as smoking 150 cigarettes a year, experts warn
Living in the UK's most polluted cities and towns increases the risk of an early death by the equivalent of smoking 150 cigarettes a year, a charity has warned.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) said air pollution must be declared "a public health emergency".
Its analysis shows that people living in the Newham, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Islington areas of London are worst hit by air pollution – the equivalent to smoking more than 150 cigarettes a year on average.
Those in Waltham Forest, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Barking and Dagenham, Lambeth and Southwark in London are also badly affected, as are people in Slough, Dartford, Portsmouth, Medway, Luton, Gravesham and Thurrock.
The BHF wants the next government to urgently introduce tougher World Health Organisation (WHO) air pollution limits.
|
Air pollution linked to seven million deaths globally per year
Seven million people died as a result of air pollution in 2012, the World Health Organization estimates.
Its findings suggest a link between air pollution and heart disease, respiratory problems and cancer.
One in eight global deaths were linked with air pollution, making it "the world's largest single environmental health risk", the WHO said.
|
Air pollution: Half a million early deaths in Europe despite progress
"The EEA said a wider assessment included in the report had found that early deaths each year due to PM2.5 had been cut "by about half a million" since 1990."
half a million since 1900. Seven million die of this a year according to the BBC, so since 1990 is 28 years and at 7 million a year that's 196 million people. And they've shaved 500 thou off that? Is this a joke?
Notice that they're talking about a half a million poeple that didn't die since 1990 ignoring the 196 million that did?
|
Tracking the toxic air that's killing millions
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says air pollution causes the death of seven million people a year and accounts for a third of fatalities from stroke, lung cancer and heart disease, with more than 90% of children breathing toxic air every day.
|
EU says one in eight deaths is linked to pollution
It said factors such as air and noise pollution, as well as poor water quality and exposure to chemicals, contributed to 13% of all deaths.
The report also noted that poorer communities and vulnerable people were the hardest hit by pollution.
|
Pollution particles 'get into brain'
Tiny particles of pollution have been discovered inside samples of brain tissue, according to new research.
|
All organic farming. No dead coral.
Cuba has no agricultural runoff or any man made compounds for farm use.
They have the only living coral left in the Caribbean.
|
20% rise in the rate of dead activists
This isn't because deforestation and pollution are becoming less of a problem, quite the opposite.
|
|
We'd like to think large industrial giants contribute most to water pollution but it's not true, farms are by far the major source of water pollution. Just in the US alone farm runoff all eventually ends up in the Mississippi nd then drains into the Caribbean Sea. The net result of this now is all the Atlantic Elkhorn coral is now dead, the coral necropsies all show the immune system of the coral is taken out by antifungals and they fall prey to simple infections and die.
|
India air pollution at 'unbearable levels', Delhi minister says
Air pollution in the north of India has "reached unbearable levels," the capital Delhi's Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal says.
In many areas of Delhi air quality deteriorated into the "hazardous" category, with the potential to cause respiratory illnesses.
Low visibility caused more than 30 flights to be diverted on Sunday.
Rules have now gone into effect allowing only cars with odd or even number plates to drive on given days.
The initiative is aimed at getting more vehicles off the road in an effort to curb air pollution.
|
|
The reef is not dead and has not been impacted by climate - pollution is solely responsible for the decline (not death as reported in the lay-press) of the reef.
|
|
|
|
Warming isn't killing people, pollution - that makes covid-19 worse, actually is.
Background: United States government scientists estimate that COVID-19 may kill between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans. The majority of the pre-existing conditions that increase the risk of death for COVID-19 are the same diseases that are affected by long-term exposure to air pollution. We investigate whether long-term average exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) increases the risk of COVID-19 deaths in the United States.
Methods: Data was collected for approximately 3,000 counties in the United States (98% of the population) up to April 04, 2020. We fit zero-inflated negative binomial mixed models using county level COVID-19 deaths as the outcome and county level long-term average of PM2.5 as the exposure. We adjust by population size, hospital beds, number of individuals tested, weather, and socioeconomic and behavioral variables including, but not limited to obesity and smoking. We include a random intercept by state to account for potential correlation in counties within the same state.
Results: We found that an increase of only 1 μg/m3 in PM2.5 is associated with a 15% increase in the COVID-19 death rate, 95% confidence interval (CI) (5%, 25%). Results are statistically significant and robust to secondary and sensitivity analyses.
Conclusions: A small increase in long-term exposure to PM2.5 leads to a large increase in COVID-19 death rate, with the magnitude of increase 20 times that observed for PM2.5 and all-cause mortality. The study results underscore the importance of continuing to enforce existing air pollution regulations to protect human health both during and after the COVID-19 crisis. The data and code are publicly available.
"We found that an increase of only 1 μg/m3 in PM2.5 is associated with a 15% increase in the COVID-19 death rate, 95% confidence interval (CI) (5%, 25%). Results are statistically significant and robust to secondary and sensitivity analyses."
It's actually easy to explain why. There are two main reasons. Harald Foster did most of the work here, I'm just summarizing.
First understands what epithelial cells are. This is the lining of thing slike the lungs. In this epithelial layer a lot of vitamin C is stored and it neutralizes poison so the lungs are not harmed.
One of the big problems with covid-19 is the iron from red blood cells get into the extracellular fluid and impedes oxygen transfer (which is why covid-19 in later stages acts like carbon monoxide or cyanide poisoning, these are both problems that impede hemoglobin's ability to transfer oxygen). The vit c in the epithelial layer usually fixes this but is overwhelmed. The worse the pollution the easier this is overwhelmed.
So in a heaivly polluted city like Mexico city or Beijing, the covid-19 will hit harder.
The other thing way that pollution makes this worse is by attenuating selenium levels. Selenium is nature's antiviral but airborne pollutants reacts with soil selenium rendering it less biologically active. Reductions in serum selenium have been shown in the Congo when Belgium put highways evertwhere, this exacerbated the spread of HIV and Ebola which was shown to spread along train lines and roads as early as the 1930s.
Again, pollution not non existent "warming" is what will kill people.It's time wre acknowledge this. More poeple die of cold - by far, but pollution takes the most.
2003 Kaunas: 20,000 hypothermia--related deaths a year in Britain, about 25,000--in the USA, 8,000 deaths a year in Canada
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12576771
Cold Killed: Excess winter deaths in England and Wales highest since 1976
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/30/excess-winter-deaths-in-england-and-wales-highest-since-1976
Cold Kills: Moderately cold weather 'more deadly than heatwaves or extreme cold'
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/21/moderately-cold-weather-more-deadly-than-heatwaves-or-extreme-cold
Scotland: Complexity in crisis: The volcanic cold pulse of the 1690s and the consequences of Scotland's failure to cope
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377027319303087
|
Herbarium specimens are archives for heavy metal cntamination
HErbarium specimens show varying degrees of heavy metals depending on location and age. A reduction in lead can be shown while copper and zinc remain constant.
|
Coronavirus detected on particles of air pollution
Coronavirus has been detected on particles of air pollution by scientists investigating whether this could enable it to be carried over longer distances and increase the number of people infected.
The work is preliminary and it is not yet known if the virus remains viable on pollution particles and in sufficient quantity to cause disease.
The Italian scientists used standard techniques to collect outdoor air pollution samples at one urban and one industrial site in Bergamo province and identified a gene highly specific to Covid-19 in multiple samples. The detection was confirmed by blind testing at an independent laboratory.
|
Air quality is slipping once again.
Health effects from ozone pollution have remained essentially unchanged over the last decade — “stubbornly high,” according to a study published this year by scientists at New York University and the American Thoracic Society.
Nowhere is the situation worse than in Southern California, where researchers found a 10% increase in deaths attributable to ozone pollution from 2010 to 2017. The region has long reigned as the nation’s smog capital and has seen a resurgence of dirty air in the last few years, one that has sharpened the divide between wealthier coastal enclaves with cleaner air and lower-income communities farther inland with smoggy air.
|
photos reveal what Los Angeles looked like before the US regulated pollution
|
Shocking state of English rivers revealed as all of them fail pollution tests
All English rivers have failed to meet quality tests for pollution amid concerns over the scale of sewage discharges and agricultural and industrial chemicals entering the water system.
Data published on Thursday reveals just 14% of English rivers are of good ecological standard, a rating that suggests they are as close to their natural state as possible.
Figures released by the Environment Agency show for the first time that no river has achieved good chemical status, suggesting pollution from sewage discharge, chemicals and agriculture are having a huge impact on river quality. In 2016, 97% of rivers were judged to have good chemical status, though the standard of tests used this time was tougher.
|
New Research Links Air Pollution to Higher Coronavirus Death Rates
WASHINGTON — Coronavirus patients in areas that had high levels of air pollution before the pandemic are more likely to die from the infection than patients in cleaner parts of the country, according to a new nationwide study that offers the first clear link between long-term exposure to pollution and Covid-19 death rates.
In an analysis of 3,080 counties in the United States, researchers at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that higher levels of the tiny, dangerous particles in air known as PM 2.5 were associated with higher death rates from the disease.
For weeks, public health officials have surmised a link between dirty air and death or serious illness from Covid-19, which is caused by the coronavirus. The Harvard analysis is the first nationwide study to show a statistical link, revealing a “large overlap” between Covid-19 deaths and other diseases associated with long-term exposure to fine particulate matter.
“The results of this paper suggest that long-term exposure to air pollution increases vulnerability to experiencing the most severe Covid-19 outcomes,” the authors wrote.
|
|
"Seafood is a main source of human exposure to environmental pollutants, such as methyl mercury and lipophilic contaminants, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). In addition perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) biomagnify in ocean food chains, with the highest concentrations in marine mammals at high trophic levels. The investigators recently discovered that PFCs may adversely impact on human immune system development. Thus, in Faroese children, elevated PFC exposures were associated with reduced humoral immune response to routine childhood immunizations. The investigators now propose to extend this observation by utilizing existing and unique birth cohorts of Faroese and Greenlanders with high levels of seafood intake and traditional consumption of marine mammals high in ocean food chains"
Now imagine you're coral. Imagine how much more your immune system is suppressed bathing in these pollutants 24x7. With suppressed immune systems coral falls victim to pathogens it would normally be able to defend against.
|
Lancet says WHO Air Pollution Safety Standards Still Unsafe
More than 90 percent of cases linking cardiac arrest to PM2.5 particles occurred in environments with air pollution levels set lower than the WHO benchmark, according to the study.
A leading medical journal said Tuesday that brief exposure to air pollution can cause heart attacks, even under levels most monitoring agencies consider safe.
Peer-reviewed journal The Lancet said a comprehensive study conducted in Japan with the largest recorded monitoring, population density and relative air quality samples, had shown even short-term exposure to certain levels of fine particulate matter could be deadly.
|
Air pollution is responsible for more deaths each year than malnutrition, malaria, AIDS, or alcohol and drug abuse.
And a spate of new studies suggest that our problems with unhealthy air are more pernicious and persistent than previously understood.
Today, the American Lung Association released its annual State of the Air report, finding that 43 per cent of U.S. residents — some 141 million people — now live in areas where poor air quality regularly risks damaging their health. That's seven million more people than in the group's last survey.
In places like California — the state that is home to seven of the nation's 10 smoggiest cities — the major driver of air pollution continues to be car and truck traffic, with the rapidly increasing population overwhelming even the most stringent environmental regulations.
And perhaps most worryingly, only six U.S. metro areas recorded no unhealthy smog or soot days: Bangor, Maine; Burlington, Vt.; Lincoln, Neb.; Wilmington, N.C.; Melbourne, Fla.; and Honolulu, Hawaii.
Overall, the World Health Organization now estimates that 75 per cent of the Earth's population — 5.5 billion people — live in areas where particulate pollution exceeds safety guidelines.
|
|
|
