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One of the comments posted below asks for the meaning of the phrase “contributes to premature death.” This is the most important question and I am grateful someone asked it – and embarrassed for failing to do so myself. Of course, the research literature likely offers several well-crafted and technically accurate answers to this question, but I would prefer to approach it from a practical perspective.
Diesel particulate matter has been linked with health problems at the macro level for decades. Despite ample evidence to support the linkage for people generally, it is maddeningly difficult and frequently impossible to attribute specific health issues experienced by specific people in specific places to air pollution. Exposure to particulate matter affects people differently. Some smokers never develop lung cancer. Similarly, some people are impacted by air pollution more than other people.
The tragedy is that we have not developed the ability to establish the link in specific circumstances. For example, my children suffer from chronic coughs. Our insurance company gave us a respirator, which we use a few times each month to treat them. Is it the highway? I am convinced it is, but my wife disagrees. In the meantime, we have bought a cadre of air purifiers and filled our house with plants to improve the air quality. This has not had an appreciable impact on the coughing issues, which makes me wonder if maybe it isn’t the highway. I will probably never know for certain.
So if there is no link in specific circumstances... how do they come up with these numbers?
You are apparently unaware that theres this thing called science.
You quite literally sound like a lawyer trying to defend cigarette companies. How can you not understand this? Yes we cannot say person X died from Y. We CAN say that if you change the amount of pollution from A to B it will save Z deaths +- a certain amount.
This isn't rocket science you know.
Apparently in your world smoking doesn't cause any deaths either right? What utter and complete hogwash.
So if there is no link in specific circumstances... how do they come up with these numbers?
You can refer to my first post in this topic in how they arrive at these numbers. To elaborate a little more 720K people have a heart attack each year, they are estimating 2% of the cause of each death to diesel exhaust. To get to the 15K for each 50 people they assign all of those 2% to one individual.
Nope. Emission standards are based on emissions per mile not per gallon. A diesel getting 45 mpg that doesn't meet the standard emits more NOx than a 25 mpg gasoline ICE that does any way you slice it. It would emit less CO2, but I am going to go out in a limb and suggest that most VW defenders probably don't consider tCO2 a problem anyway.
Does the EPA consider CO2 a problem anyway?
The problem is we have idiots making the regs. Europe takes a more balanced approach, one that doesn't force their people to drive inefficient, fuel wasting, CO2 dumping gas engines. Our standards should look at a combination of pollutants, give diesels a break on NOx like they do with gas engines with CO2.
This becomes very complicated and the EPA themselves will admit the methodology is very uncertain. There is two major issues with these results. First and foremost hard data is impossible to obtain, secondly the risk assessment considers every particle of pollution equally as dangerous regardless of total exposure.
One of the comments posted below asks for the meaning of the phrase “contributes to premature death.” This is the most important question and I am grateful someone asked it – and embarrassed for failing to do so myself. Of course, the research literature likely offers several well-crafted and technically accurate answers to this question, but I would prefer to approach it from a practical perspective.
Diesel particulate matter has been linked with health problems at the macro level for decades. Despite ample evidence to support the linkage for people generally, it is maddeningly difficult and frequently impossible to attribute specific health issues experienced by specific people in specific places to air pollution. Exposure to particulate matter affects people differently. Some smokers never develop lung cancer. Similarly, some people are impacted by air pollution more than other people.
The tragedy is that we have not developed the ability to establish the link in specific circumstances. For example, my children suffer from chronic coughs. Our insurance company gave us a respirator, which we use a few times each month to treat them. Is it the highway? I am convinced it is, but my wife disagrees. In the meantime, we have bought a cadre of air purifiers and filled our house with plants to improve the air quality. This has not had an appreciable impact on the coughing issues, which makes me wonder if maybe it isn’t the highway. I will probably never know for certain.
So if there is no link in specific circumstances... how do they come up with these numbers?
From that link:
Quote:
The study, “Public Health Impacts of Combustion Emissions in the United Kingdom,” concluded that diesel emissions from cars, planes and power plants contribute to an estimated 13,000 premature deaths annually in the United Kingdom.
AFAIK there is no such thing as a diesel powered plane (though there was some experimenting years ago) nor commercial power plants. Given that level of accuracy, I would suspect that the whole article is just more ignorant fear mongering. Sounds like the anti-Monsanto nuts or anti-vaxers. Some blogger taking an article out of context isn't exactly something I spend a lot of time worrying about.
The problem is we have idiots making the regs. Europe takes a more balanced approach, one that doesn't force their people to drive inefficient, fuel wasting, CO2 dumping gas engines. Our standards should look at a combination of pollutants, give diesels a break on NOx like they do with gas engines with CO2.
Actually, I think it's CO1 that's considered a health hazard, per se; and CO2 that's considered a flood hazard.
The AGW crowd would tell you that a flood is just as deadly as carbon monoxide poisoning.
The problem is we have idiots making the regs. Europe takes a more balanced approach, one that doesn't force their people to drive inefficient, fuel wasting, CO2 dumping gas engines. Our standards should look at a combination of pollutants, give diesels a break on NOx like they do with gas engines with CO2.
You want to trade CO2 for particulate matter? Quite frankly that is insane. The air quality is not that great in many European cities and lot of that is driven by the large amount of diesel vehicles.
You want to trade CO2 for particulate matter? Quite frankly that is insane. The air quality is not that great in many European cities and lot of that is driven by the large amount of diesel vehicles.
Are we talking particulate pollution or NOx now? Seems like the story is changing. I doubt either is significant from diesel cars, but commercial vehicles, perhaps. Either can be a balanced trade for a nearly 50% increase in operating efficiency, with the resulting reduction in oil imports and economic improvements. Should we force all city busses to be converted from diesel to gas and outfitted with cat converters? How about all trains?
This scandal goes beyond the US. The EU is coming down much harder than the US/EPA is. How can this be retribution against Merkel of the EU is fining VW even harder than we are?
As for the semis, VW cars aren't pulling freight, that seems pretty simple to me.
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