Anecdata I was living very close to a busy highway, and my young daughter was wheazing when she had a cold, we had to give her medicine via a nebulizer. When we moved out to the country more, far away from any major roads, these issues all disappeared within a couple months.
Living very close to busy highways is known to generate poor air quality. I recommend anyone in those locations buy an air purifier for their kids' rooms.
I bought a couple reasonably priced HEPA purifiers and I change the filters on schedule. Replacement HEPA filters are very cheap.
Also watch out for things that we do indoors that can generate bad air quality. I had a friend who bought a VOC meter and noticed very high readings in his kid's room. He traced the source to his chemical and paint cabinet nearby, which he never considered because he couldn't smell anything. Throwing out a lot of the old containers dropped the measurements to the unmeasurable range.
It's a good start, but for VOCs and gases you'll need activated carbon. Those 2-in-1 filters do exist but cost more. And many are scams because they don't have enough volume of activated carbon.
Getting rid of the VOC source, if possible, is much easier than trying to filter it.
> Those 2-in-1 filters do exist but cost more. And many are scams because they don't have enough volume of activated carbon.
Any filter with a little bit of carbon added is going to be useless after a few days, or maybe even hours.
The only VOC filters that work have multiple pounds of carbon, with the good filters having upwards of 10-20 pounds. It also has to be replaced regularly.
Because it’s not obvious to most customers that a corner’s been cut. Same reason most new construction in the US sucks.
You can safely put a washer and dryer on the upper floor of a house if you add a proper floor drain, but you’re unlikely to see anyone add a floor drain in new construction because buyers aren’t looking for it. Now multiply that by everything a buyer isn’t looking for and you’re talking real money.
And manufacturers do a sneaky swap too, my Coway 150 which is a great air filter by the way, came with a nice thick grid of hexagonal cells each filled with carbon granules - that insert alone weighs like half a kg. I ordered official filter and carbon filter replacements off their website ....got a thin carbon "foam" that weighs maybe 50g instead.
Agreed, just buy air purifiers with HEPA filters and change them regularly. The main expense is buying one for every room, but it's one of those expenses you wish you had made sooner.
A friend of mine does research on air pollution from cars - the TL;DR is you should not live within a third of a mile of a highway. The falloff is pretty sharp, but you don't want to be in that zone.
Generations of men have been taught that when walking with a woman on a pavement, they should always take the side closer to the road allowing her to keep further away from the traffic.
But Dr Iarla Kilbane-Dawe claimed that Londoners should avoid walking too near the kerb because on busy streets, air pollution can be up to a third higher than on the inside of the pavement.
Notably, most major cities have been building tons of housing (especially ‘affordable housing’) right next to highways, as it is the only areas that aren’t already built out with tons of high value houses.
When I talk about health implications I often end up saying "but it's less bad than living next to a street" which statistically many things we spend time optimizing about are.
However most people live next to a busy street ...
ULEZ massively reduced the amount of NO2, which is a trigger for asthma. It also seems to have reduced the hospital admissions for heart related emergencies.
'"I was absolutely stunned when I first saw the results," Prof Chris Griffiths, a senior author on the study, at Queen Mary University of London, told the BBC."'
I agree. Though they did at least put it in quotes in the first sentence, which I hope doesn't indicate how far people are generally getting through an article before commenting on it on Hacker News.
Smokers don't magically undo the damage they did to their lungs after they stop smoking. Stunned might be hyperbole, but it is at least a little bit surprising.
The lifetime risk is approximately 1.3% for women and 1.8% for men. For regular smokers: 11.2% for women and 14.8% for men. So about 15 to 30 more likely to get lung cancer. Bringing that down to 4x is close to "almost the same".
They absolutely do! Not all the way, but if you'd have smoked a pack a day for 15 years and then have given up for the last 15, there's absolutely no way you'd be saying this!
"Stunned" isn't really a scientific term. It's the sort of editorializing you should expect to come from people who aren't the scientists themselves. More than hyperbole, it is classic click bait.
Also, quitting smoking definitely eases a number of symptoms, especially if you're not at the point of chronic emphysema. The reduction of inflammation triggers alone after a bit of time is fairly significant. Less coughing, less mucus buildup, etc.
But this isn't that at all. "Stunned" is used here because it's the word one of the study's authors actually used.
'"I was absolutely stunned when I first saw the results," Prof Chris Griffiths, a senior author on the study, at Queen Mary University of London, told the BBC.'
I'd like to imagine the stunned scientist is a scientist from another field, they show some medical findings to a guy who looks at snail butts all day and he's the one "stunned" by the findings
completely anecdotal. my earliest childhood memories in india were of asthma, sinusitis and constant cold. this was consistent until i was 26 and since then I've moved to the US and lived in New York with 0 days of sinusitis or breathing trouble. and i fallback to trouble breathing when i go home again.
even New York is so much more better than Bangalore or my small village in the middle of coffee farms
Bangalore has historically (over decades) been known to have a high incidence of asthma due to the high pollen in the air. It's been made worse in recent years due to pollution. The pollen is present for a significant portion of the year while other pollen regions in the world tend to have it for a smaller duration.
During my childhood, I lived across the street from a brewery. I suffered from chronic sinusitis for years, and no one understood the cause.
When I moved to a different part of town, the problem immediately stopped.
The same thing happened to one of my classmates who lived in the apartments next to me.
I just made a comment about having good air quality but with summer fires we were getting smoke for weeks at a time so I got an air purifier. My kid wasn't struggling horribly but I did notice right away after putting one in his room that he slept better and his breathing seemed so much more relaxed at night and it just felt like it made a noticeable improvement to me.
> strongest evidence yet that local clean air zones could help reduce some of the harm caused by pollution during childhood.
It's incredible this is even in debate. It's one of those intuitive things well known since the reduction of coal burning and smog during the industrial revolution in London?
I've been meaning to do some data mining on how much PM2.5 differs with even a few hundred feet of elevation. I have a theory that even around Silicon Valley, living even up a little bit in the foothills would have you breathing massively cleaner air most of your life vs living in the pits of the valley. I see it all the time when I'm out there for recreation or just driving, the smoggy haze all over that just sits in the valley and the Bay. It's probably not too tough of a data processing challenge to compare the stats on Purple Air AQI sensors in reasonably close geo proximity vs elevation to get some statistically-significant data on this.
I use air purifiers mounted on my windows, running continuously except in the deep summer and deep winter. This makes my air contain 50-100x fewer particulates than the outdoor air. In contrast, the best I can achieve with floor air purifiers as people have them is a 5-10x reduction. The window purifiers also keep excess CO2 and VOCs out.
Health improvements are not measurable any more if you go below 5 mcg/m2 average level of PM2.5 particulates. For 50x reduction to be beneficial, you need to live in an area where the pollution is 250 mcg/m2, which is an extreme level found only in a few unfortunate places on Earth. 5-10x reduction is reasonable almost everywhere.
> The window purifiers also keep excess CO2 and VOCs out.
I assume you mean that the increased air-exchange (purified or not) helps CO2 that originates inside the house to leave promptly? (Equalizing it with the outdoors.)
Literally "keeping CO2 out" is a much trickier and more-expensive proposition.
I live in British Columbia so we have fairly good air quality. But with the yearly fires lately summer air some years is poor. So one year with the fires smoking and air quality getting poor I got an air purifier for my kids room and the living room.
It is only anecdotal but right away if felt like he had better sleeps. The smoke wasn't thick as it was from fires hundreds of miles away and it wasn't like any of us were hacking or coughing crazy but in hindsight I felt that my young son who would have been effected the most slept better and his breathing at night seemed quieter and easier.
100%,
and not just due to no emissions / minimal break dust.
The noise reduction is a massive dividend. I used to live in london 10+ years ago, and when I come back I’m stunned by the noise difference, it really is so much quieter especially in central london. EVs everywhere especially replacing the horribly noisy diesel black cabs and buses. Very noticeably different and much more pleasant, and improving all the time as EV adoption continues to accelerate, hooray
Regen braking means significantly less brake dust, especially at city speeds and with blended braking.
> Although…rail might solve those?
Trains still have brakes. Some can regen brake but because they usually don’t have batteries they need the rail or overhead gantry to support inputs.
But on a passenger-mile basis, I expect an electric train produces essentially no particulates compared to a car, even a light rail on tyres. I do not however have numbers.
EVs use regenerative braking. So they hardly produce any brake particulates. And the tire particulates are heavy so they don't stay airborn for nearly as long. At low speeds, tires don't wear out as quickly.
Europe has quite a few cities where traffic is increasingly discouraged from going to the inner cities. Cities like Paris and London are much transformed from what they used to be and it shows in the health statistics.
It's not just the particulates but also nitrous oxides (nox) produced by combustion engines. Nox is correlated with lots of health issues. Take it away and you see lower rates of chronic lung issues, cancer, development issues with kids, etc.
But yes, tires are also an issue. But a fairly minor one to anything coming out of a combustion engine.
Mass transit indeed is nice in big cities. Removes the need for taking the car.
There is a generator at the end of my street in a shipping container sized metal box, it also has a mini office and loo, and is used by the construction workers digging holes in the road. It has company spiel written on the side, promoting the box's environmental credentials, including the punchline: 'Zero NOX when generator not in use'.
Might instead refer to a start-stop / battery backup kind of system, where idling-but-on doesn't burn any fuel, but sudden loads can still be serviced.
Do the numbers in that article make sense? 5.8g/km for tyre wear? Generally my tyres last maybe 25000 miles. So at that rate they would lose 230kg. Seems high.
"Non-exhaust emissions (NEE) are particles released into the air from brake wear, tyre wear, road surface wear and resuspension of road dust during on-road vehicle usage."
Tyre, no, but regen braking almost eliminates brake particles at the speeds I drive in London. But mostly I take the train. Unfortunately the highest I measured on my particulate sensor is not near the roads, but in the tube.
Electric vehicles are stills cars. But better than gasoline and especially diesel cars.
So yeah.
That said not clear to me about PM2.5 is I've never seen anything legit seeming that tries to characterize the harm based on the type/source. Though it seems agreed diesel is especially bad.
Asthma is so common that this is not only easy to test, but has been. That's what the article was about.
Anyway, by your own line of thinking, wouldn't sensitive lungs be an advantage? The incentive to find cleaner air is also breaking away from the pack. Since humans are social creatures, that's more likely to look like new leadership for followers who have their own reasons to break away.
Every civilization in history has started out that way. It takes more than mere brute force to beat the competition. Survival is just as much about picking your battles and working smarter.
I bought a couple reasonably priced HEPA purifiers and I change the filters on schedule. Replacement HEPA filters are very cheap.
Also watch out for things that we do indoors that can generate bad air quality. I had a friend who bought a VOC meter and noticed very high readings in his kid's room. He traced the source to his chemical and paint cabinet nearby, which he never considered because he couldn't smell anything. Throwing out a lot of the old containers dropped the measurements to the unmeasurable range.
> Those 2-in-1 filters do exist but cost more. And many are scams because they don't have enough volume of activated carbon.
Any filter with a little bit of carbon added is going to be useless after a few days, or maybe even hours.
The only VOC filters that work have multiple pounds of carbon, with the good filters having upwards of 10-20 pounds. It also has to be replaced regularly.
You can safely put a washer and dryer on the upper floor of a house if you add a proper floor drain, but you’re unlikely to see anyone add a floor drain in new construction because buyers aren’t looking for it. Now multiply that by everything a buyer isn’t looking for and you’re talking real money.
The real activated carbon filters have 10s of pounds of carbon. The little black foam thing that comes with those 2-in-1 carbon filters is useless.
DHH is also a fan (pun not intended?): https://world.hey.com/dhh/air-purifiers-are-a-simple-answer-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanatorium
I guess the modern descendants are the health retreat, the rural airbnb, and the day spa that offers oxygen therapy.
Living in the country gave me bad hay fever/asthma in the city much less asthma.
Generations of men have been taught that when walking with a woman on a pavement, they should always take the side closer to the road allowing her to keep further away from the traffic.
But Dr Iarla Kilbane-Dawe claimed that Londoners should avoid walking too near the kerb because on busy streets, air pollution can be up to a third higher than on the inside of the pavement.
Surprise surprise.
However most people live next to a busy street ...
Visiting London used to mean blowing your nose to black snot for a week afterwards, these days living in London it's pretty good.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c75q9d2pqyeo https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/12/emergenc...
'"I was absolutely stunned when I first saw the results," Prof Chris Griffiths, a senior author on the study, at Queen Mary University of London, told the BBC."'
Except that they do undo the damage.
“ After 15 years, your chances of getting lung cancer are almost the same as someone who has never smoked.”
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/lung-cancer/prevention/
https://www.verywellhealth.com/risk-of-lung-cancer-in-former...
Also, quitting smoking definitely eases a number of symptoms, especially if you're not at the point of chronic emphysema. The reduction of inflammation triggers alone after a bit of time is fairly significant. Less coughing, less mucus buildup, etc.
'"I was absolutely stunned when I first saw the results," Prof Chris Griffiths, a senior author on the study, at Queen Mary University of London, told the BBC.'
even New York is so much more better than Bangalore or my small village in the middle of coffee farms
It's incredible this is even in debate. It's one of those intuitive things well known since the reduction of coal burning and smog during the industrial revolution in London?
They made it into a culture war topic.
I assume you mean that the increased air-exchange (purified or not) helps CO2 that originates inside the house to leave promptly? (Equalizing it with the outdoors.)
Literally "keeping CO2 out" is a much trickier and more-expensive proposition.
It's annoying though that EV's need that extra Darth Vader on wheels sound to warn pedestrians, I'd prefer them to be as quiet as possible.
We don't all live in the city.
Regen braking means significantly less brake dust, especially at city speeds and with blended braking.
> Although…rail might solve those?
Trains still have brakes. Some can regen brake but because they usually don’t have batteries they need the rail or overhead gantry to support inputs.
But on a passenger-mile basis, I expect an electric train produces essentially no particulates compared to a car, even a light rail on tyres. I do not however have numbers.
It's much less wear and tear than friction brakes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_braking
https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/subway-air-pollution-dispro...
But I expect it's much better in open-air rail systems.
Europe has quite a few cities where traffic is increasingly discouraged from going to the inner cities. Cities like Paris and London are much transformed from what they used to be and it shows in the health statistics.
It's not just the particulates but also nitrous oxides (nox) produced by combustion engines. Nox is correlated with lots of health issues. Take it away and you see lower rates of chronic lung issues, cancer, development issues with kids, etc.
But yes, tires are also an issue. But a fairly minor one to anything coming out of a combustion engine.
Mass transit indeed is nice in big cities. Removes the need for taking the car.
No shit Sherlock.
I guess they mean total non-exhaust particulates.
So yeah.
That said not clear to me about PM2.5 is I've never seen anything legit seeming that tries to characterize the harm based on the type/source. Though it seems agreed diesel is especially bad.
Hormesis and natural selection have been driving factor of evolution for a long time.
Anyway, by your own line of thinking, wouldn't sensitive lungs be an advantage? The incentive to find cleaner air is also breaking away from the pack. Since humans are social creatures, that's more likely to look like new leadership for followers who have their own reasons to break away.
Every civilization in history has started out that way. It takes more than mere brute force to beat the competition. Survival is just as much about picking your battles and working smarter.