I found all the existing sites for looking up air quality to be slow, so I made a faster alternative. I just finished the MVP and I'm interested to hear if people find it useful: https://aqi.today
AirVisual's global air quality map provides some perspective: https://www.airvisual.com/earth?nav
Much of Southeast Asia and Africa are about to enter "burning season," so AQI will soon spike in these regions.
There was a great podcast interview with Dr. Karen Clay about this finding and area of research back on November 7th.[0]
She discusses how they evaluate the effect from wildfires. Also, how they trace sources by analyzing PM2.5 composition--but how that's becoming much harder as the mix of these particles is becoming much more ambiguous than it used to be. Good wonky discussion of the science.
Not in the interview, but another of the surprising things I read about local pollution from transportation over the last year is that tailpipe emissions are now a minority of PM2.5 contributions from most cars.
Tailpipes have become cleaner over the last few decades, so braking and tire wear now contribute as much. The biggest contributor is something called "resuspension." Vehicles slowly grind up debris or roadway surfaces into finer and finer dust, then kick it into the air where it just hangs.
The implication is that average vehicle weight, prevalence of regenerative braking, and frequency of street cleaning can all have much more significant impacts on local pollution than other measurers you might expect, like fuel efficiency, emissions check programs, or even electrification.[1][2]
[0] https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/neolibpodcast/Karen_Clay_f...
Don't be thrown by the podcast name, the discussion of the underlying science is very apolitical.
[1] Local pollution is obviously not the same as CO2, which requires a different analysis and is more from tailpipes. But the scientific consensus is that PM2.5 leads to 200,000 early US deaths a year, and as the above podcast mentions, we're not just talking about the elderly or infirm. These are independently important issues.
[2] EVs have many advantages, but, counterintuitively, removing the tailpipe only marginally reduces PM2.5 from roadways: https://www.ridef2.com/blog-del-direttore-ridef/will-electri...
I don't take from that that EVs are bad-- just that we need to combine it with other efforts and technologies to reduce local pollution.
The Denver-Boulder area used to have "brown cloud" pollution caused by temperature inversions trapping auto exhaust, back in the 70s and 80s. These went away with better national auto emissions standards and with state regulations testing car emissions. Recently, however, I've noticed more ozone and particulate pollution, but it's coming from the northeast, not Denver. This appears to be caused by fracking operations. Colorado now produces more oil than California or Alaska:
It's probably a lot due to the California fires. Last November we had the worst air quality I've seen since I moved here in 93.
Anyone recommend a good air quality detector for use in an apartment?
I live close to a highway and would be interested to compare it to the city average.
Amazon is showing most of the decent ones are in the $150-200 range...
Mercury is quite heavy and
isn't soluble in water, so
the idea that the fog
somehow wafts it in strikes
me as bullshit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning
Mercury poisoning can result
from exposure to water-soluble
forms of mercury, by inhalation
of mercury vapor, or by ingesting
any form of mercury.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease
All in, 30 seconds of Google, 5 minutes of reading.
Thank you GOP. This is the Air America deserves.
thanks Trump
It’s Donald Trump’s ass.
Is this Donald Trump succeeding at bringing industry back to America? Because the West had been outsourcing its pollution for quite some time...
As bad as this is, keep in mind it’s small potatoes compared to co2.
Dropping air pollution so significantly seems like something to celebrate- yet the first mention is when, presumably forest fires, have caused regression.
People are surviving longer and it’s not news worthy?
I recently moved to Kathmandu, Nepal (I'm a US citizen). The air quality is debilitating. All the gyms I've looked at (except the American Club which costs $100/month) have open windows, so you are more or less unable to exercise unless you have a gym at home and an air purifier. We have an AP but when the wind blows the right direction our sensor reports sometimes as high as 200 - it comes in under the door (we are searching for a solution). Let's hope it never gets this bad in the US.