The Sky Is Falling and We’re All Gonna’ Die

[Wes]

From the Weather Underground: http://www.wunderground.com

This should lead to the story I am commenting on.  It is an explanation of how they view air quality: http://www.wunderground.com/health/airpollution.asp  or the views of the site's editors.

Outdoor air pollution in the U.S. due to particulate pollution alone was estimated by the EPA in 1997 to cause at least 20,000 premature deaths each year. Other estimates place this number at 50,000 to 100,000 deaths per year.(1) Globally, about 800,000 people per year die prematurely due to outdoor air pollution, according to a 2005 study published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health. This represents about 1.2 percent of total annual global deaths. <snip>

While levels of many pollutants have been decreasing in recent years, progress cleaning up one serious pollutant, ground-level ozone, has been difficult. The American Lung Association estimates that over half of the nation’s population lives in counties receiving a grade of “F” on their rating system for ozone pollution. The death toll due to air pollution only begins to touch the vast magnitude of human suffering caused by breathing our dirty air–for every 75 deaths per year due to air pollution in the U.S., health scientists have estimated that there are 505 hospital admissions for asthma and other respiratory diseases, 3,500 respiratory emergency doctor visits, 180,000 asthma attacks, 930,000 restricted activity days, and 2,000,000 acute respiratory symptom days.  <snip>

The choice of breaking the statistics down to instances per 75 deaths is pretty clever. Take a look at the link for other scary and misleading statements and twisted statistics. In the above I particularly like the part about premature deaths. That makes things so much clearer.  I hope that when it is my time it will be premature.  Don't want to go soon, no way no how.

The Weather Underground is a very fine site for current conditions; I live up by Lake Superior and they get it right most times, but I can't recommend this one for scientific insight.

[ultimatwing]

Talk about a distortion of the facts! I have to agree with you, the statistics are a little out of place.

[Paddy Apling]

This thread hardly qualifies as a world-beater in developed interest, but seems a useful area to intervene in as my first contribution to this forum as it is the area to which my whole professional life has been involved (I retired as a University lecturer in Food Science in 1986,  after beginning my career as a laboratory assistant working for a Public Analyst [cf. FDA activity in USA] in 1941, when pollution of the environment was probably at its peak, and then seen as a very minor problem compared to the daily (and nightly) activities of the Luftwaffe.

Since then, and with increasing attention since around the 70s, by which time the yearly London smogs, which had yearly brought early death to large numbers of those with prior bronchial difficulties were a thing of the past, with the ending of coal domestic fires,  steam trains and factory smoke discharges, threats of pollution to human health have been increasingly top of the agenda.

Yet, apart from the obvious fact that we are all going to die, sometime, REAL statistics  show that life expectancy in the "developed countries" has increased year by year, and in England we have the world's eldest man, 113, is it?).  And yet there is constant furore at parts per million (or even per BILLION) of "unnatural" chemicals found in food, air and water.

Really, how unrealistic can the media representation of our "polluted environment" become.  The whole situation seems to be chasing gnats while avoiding real problems.

I have been using these dire chemicals (of which we all, in fact, are composed) all my life, (85 next birthday, and a pipe smoker) and the only problem I even recall resulting is that during a period in which I was experimenting with tellurium compounds (something to do with their use in semi-conductors in the 1950s), I can remember my wife saying to me "What have you been eating? - your breath smells terrible"  reminding her of a skunk (which she had never seen anyway), a problem which ended as promptly as the tellurium project.  (Now recorded in the scientific literature as causing breath to smell like garlic).   

Of course I remember such dire episodes as the foam pollution of rivers when detergents were first introduced - but soon ended with the development of bio-degradable products (most people have no idea of the capacity of the natural environment to deal with pollutants
- it really all depends on "not too much" !!) - and, of course the terrible tragedy of the thalidomide episode - an unwelcome reminder of the near impossibility of proving "safety" - yet this is always required notwithstanding any proof of benefit.

As to the use of statistics, so much present usage, and not least by scientists, must be making pioneers like R A Fisher and J B S Haldane "turn in their graves" - as so much statistical "news" violates several (or even all) of the criteria for acceptance put forward by these pioneers in the 1930s.

As an active old man, I am appalled that  so many domesday "predictions" are ascribed to "scientists" these days.

[sunsettommy]

Yeah it is amusing that people forget how much worse it used to be in the developed countries,many years ago.

I have seen comparative photo's of large cities,that show drastic improvements in air pollution quality over a few decades in time.It is startling and comforting to realize that we are getting better at reducing air pollution.

Unfortunately in many large third world cities,that is still a big problem.

[livingwill]

Yeah it is amusing that people forget how much worse it used to be in the developed countries,many years ago.

I have seen comparative photo's of large cities,that show drastic improvements in air pollution quality over a few decades in time.It is startling and comforting to realize that we are getting better at reducing air pollution.

Unfortunately in many large third world cities,that is still a big problem.

Most of them will go our route in the long run. Increasing pollution until most of the population is lower middle class(by world standards) and then decreasing pollution.

[LarryOldtimer]

livingwill, you really ought to look at actual facts before you key in comments.  The very worst pollution on the planet in the second half of the 20th Century was in Eastern Europe under USSR control . . . and those people weren't up to "lower middle class" by any standards.  It takes real SURPLUS money to keep pollution down . . . and where there isn't real surplus money. the pollution is always dreadful . . . and the people are always in poverty.

Oh, but we are different here in the US . . . we have wonderful and effective environmental laws . . . and buy our "stuff" from other countries where there are no environmental laws for all practical purposes.  Oh my, that makes sense from an environmental standpoint . . . NOT.  Our environmental laws are impossible to live with.  Which is why we really don't live with them in the least.

[livingwill]

I'll admit that it often doesn't work that way in police states.

[titus]

is that true? were all gonna die? lol. we can still prevent it in so many ways