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And yet we’re all living longer and longer

Europe is facing a “severe public health crisis”, with almost everyone across the continent living in areas with dangerous levels of air pollution, an investigation by the Guardian has found.

Analysis of data gathered using cutting-edge methodology – including detailed satellite images and measurements from more than 1,400 ground monitoring stations – reveals a dire picture of dirty air, with 98% of people living in areas with highly damaging fine particulate pollution that exceed World Health Organization guidelines. Almost two-thirds live in areas where air quality is more than double the WHO’s guidelines.

Perhaps it’s the guidelines that are wrong?

17 thoughts on “And yet we’re all living longer and longer”

  1. Guardian investigation finds 98% of Europeans breathing highly damaging polluted air linked to 400,000 deaths a year

    Lol, wear your little masks then.

  2. What happens when the death of Covid vaccine victims means that life expectancies start to turn down?

    Are THEY getting their excuses in early?

  3. ‘London and Milan, are making strides to tackle air pollution, from the introduction of ultra-low emissions zones to traffic reduction schemes and walking and cycling initiatives’

    So it’s all about the blessed ULEZ then, and the Just Stop Oil heroes??

  4. Maybe the guidelines are right. Maybe we are now living long enough for the cumulative effects of poor air quality to be a public health issue. Not sure that’s what they are saying though.

  5. Analysis of data gathered using cutting-edge methodology

    Don’t you dare question cutting-edge methodology!

    However, if you accept for the sake of argument that Europe according to wiki is 3.93M square miles big (or a shade under 500 Waleses), then each ground monitoring station is busy monitoring on average 2800 sq miles of territory. Should one suspect a bit of modelling mixed in with the cutting edge?

    There should be four ground monitoring stations in Wales itself so it would be very useful to see if the air quality there has improved since the introduction of the 20mph speed limit.

  6. AFAIAA, air pollution has been cited on precisely 0 death certificates in the last 20 years in the UK. If the evidence is now that there have been hundreds / thousands of deaths, when do we start prosecuting those physicians who lied on the death certificates?

    The vast majority of deaths from ‘air pollution’ (circa 3 million IIRC) occur in Africa where they are forced to burn twigs and animal dung because the ‘climate experts’ in the west will not allow them access to fossil fuel derived electricity.

  7. I think we need to have access to the actual data. It’s quite possible that satellites provide good generalized data, but we don’t know how that data is ‘normalized’. Similarly I have seen several ground monitoring stations – and they are placed in the centre of towns. This may be useful data for city life but does it hold up for countrywide living.

    “Analysis of data gathered using cutting-edge methodology ” sounds very much like media savvy experts making a living. Are they correct? Maybe yes, maybe no.

  8. “… reveals a dire picture of dirty air, with 98% of people living in areas with highly damaging fine particulate pollution that exceed World Health Organization guidelines.“

    And in Africa and Asia it’s much, much worse due to particulates from open wood or dung fires which could vastly be reduced by electricity from coal-fired/gas power stations. But…

  9. “There should be four ground monitoring stations in Wales itself so it would be very useful to see if the air quality there has improved since the introduction of the 20mph speed limit.”

    I doubt it. The air in Wales moves to England pronto – and at rather more than 20mph.

  10. . . . in Africa where they are forced to burn twigs and animal dung because the ‘climate experts’ in the west will not allow them access to fossil fuel derived electricity.

    Not so different from UK towns and cities where poor people, not just Guardian twats and Steve, are increasingly burning coal or wood to heat their homes instead of gas. It’s been quite noticeable just in the last few years that as soon as the temperature dips the air is full of smoke, such that being in the garden varies between unbearable and pointless.

  11. ‘Not so different from UK towns and cities where poor people, not just Guardian twats and Steve, are increasingly burning coal or wood to heat their homes instead of gas.’

    PJF. I’m naturally thinking of my favourite tale of Eleanor of Aquitaine fleeing the foul woodsmoke of Tutbury castle.

    Can I hope that after TPTB choke enough on the wood and coal smoke, they’ll deign to permit fracking again??

  12. So we can depend on satellites for air quality measurements but not for global temperature measurements?

    No, because doing that might lead to people coming to “Doubt The Science” and that would be doubleplus ungood verging crimethink.

  13. Ah! The sweet, sweet air of the 1950s…

    I enjoyed watching Endeavour, and with their big budget they put a lot of effort into dressing Oxford locations as they were in the 60s. But the one thing they couldn’t do was cake all the buildings in an inch of grime.

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