If you like to see how much of your life expectancy is lost due to air pollution in your particular region or city, I can recommend the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) map [1] created by the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute.<p>You can click on a particular region and see exactly how the air quality impacts you long-term and also can see the developments from 1998 till today. It is interesting to see e.g. for China that the air quality got substantially worse until the 2010s and then better in recent years -the same development the article talks about. Other countries like e.g. India unfortunately seem to get worse.<p>I often use this map and information on life years lost when advocating for clean air action in my talks as it makes the more abstract micrograms or standard AQIs much more tangible.<p>[1] <a href="https://aqli.epic.uchicago.edu/the-index/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://aqli.epic.uchicago.edu/the-index/</a>
What does "10 million die from air pollution" means?<p>We know that air pollution is bad, but how can we say "this person died from air pollution"? One can die from cancer, we know it is the cause of death because we detected cancer cells and the symptoms are consistent with cancer. Air pollution may have been the cause, or it could have been many other things, including bad luck, we can't really attribute this death to air pollution, even if the patient lived in a polluted environment.<p>It is not the same as saying that someone died of covid, like stated in the article. Controversies aside, we know when someone died of covid because of the symptoms and virus testing.<p>I guess it is a result of weird calculations based on estimated life expectancy reduction correlated to air quality metrics multiplied by the world population or something like that. But speaking in terms of life expectancy directly would make more sense, and probably would give a clearer idea.
Sometimes I wonder if all this air pollution isn't the reason why my body feels hot and inflamed at the end of the day in the summer. I'm just resting in a bed and I feel like I'm in salt.<p>After a quick shower, I just feel fresh again. Showering is not just for normal skin hygiene, it's because the air is just so full of crap.<p>The worst isn't just the engines fumes and particles, it's also the dust, the asphalt that's made with oil, the concrete etc everything that's artificial.<p>Pandemic lockdown was a better world, there is no doubt about it. I really want the economy to crash and stop. I understand hermits who go live in the lands eating pasta. It's not just the noise, the rent, the crowding, it's the air.
May 2023, "US CDC sets first federal target for ventilation of indoor air to lower risk", <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36238958">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36238958</a>
Asthma, autism and ADHD have had huge impacts on my family, and it seems this is likely air pollution related.<p>Then we get to the aerosols hiding the impacts of climate change, and the mind boggling scale of recent forest fires.<p>Gloomy.<p>Excuse me while I go learn linear algebra. AGI is our only hope. The only thing that can create the massive changes we need now is an AGI capable of persuading, coordinating and aligning the interests of every human on the planet.<p>Point me to the ditch, HAL, and I'll start digging.