It's not blown out of proportion. Diesel and just all combustion in general is shaping up to be the next asbestos/lead. It's extremely clear how dangerous these fumes are but we have been desensitized in to accepting it.
That last article itself cites 15 sources. The data shows significantly more deaths from diesel than asbestos and roughly or par with lead. Remember that those exposures last a lifetime, so the data lags significantly.
"That last article itself cites 15 sources. The data shows significantly more deaths from diesel than asbestos and roughly or par with lead. Remember that those exposures last a lifetime, so the data lags significantly."
Not saying it's not bad, but this equivocation is just not accurate in my view. More deaths sure - because more people were exposed. Can you honestly tell me you would rather be exposed to asbestos or lead (no ppe)? Also, emissions controls have increased as has air quality since the 80s. I doubt this idea that the data still has lag left in it. We would expect to see the most impact at the higher exposure levels.
The question was whether diesel could plausibly be “the next asbestos/lead” and the answer is yes, absolutely.
The question was not which dosages of which chemicals would be more harmful for a short term exposure. That’s not relevant to answering the above question. In fact it likely has a different answer.
(For lag I’m referring to the lead/asbestos data. Exposure to these has been on the decline for decades but we’re still seeing deaths due to exposures 40 years ago), so they presumably cause an outsize number of deaths per year currently).
"The question was whether diesel could plausibly be “the next asbestos/lead” and the answer is yes, absolutely."
If you mean by perception only, then sure. These three things have existed together for a long time. If you eliminate the two more dangerous ones, then the remaining less dangerous/acute one will be next in priority and get the attention.
No, as noted and cited, the absolute numbers for diesel are worse than those for lead. That’s not perception, it’s fact. And we’ve absolutely not eliminated the other two because they still exist in the environment and everyone ever poisoned by them who is currently still alive is yet to appear in the death statistics, hence the lag.
Obviously you personally would rather not be exposed to asbestos or lead but at the societal level 1000 people that are really really dead and 1000 people who are just normally dead aren’t that different. And honestly it’s worse for diesel having wide exposure because there are in between states between totally fine and dead and those affect more people.
But that wasn't the grandparent thread question where someone asked for sources on exhaust gasses being as dangerous as asbestos/lead?
We all know that car accidents are one of the top killers in the world, yet we don't ban cars outright. But that's because absolute numbers are big simply because billions of people drive cars: on a per-trip basis, they are actually not that bad.
What does being exposed mean? Being around asbestos and lead in its normal use is completely safe. People live in asbestos buildings without issues. There is no standard dosage of asbestos but if you count grinding it up and huffing the dust then it would only be fair to compare to standing in a garage of exhaust fumes which will kill you within minutes.
That's not true either. We're talking about normal use. You can stand near an engine thats not running, just like you can live in a building with asbestos or lead. How about lead pipes, that's normal use and exposure at one point in time. Asbestos used to be much more common than it is today, with no idea that it was dangerous. People would commonly come into contact with it when remodeling.
In any case, under normal conditions, nobody is going to choose realilistic exposure levels of lead or asbestos over ambient diesel fumes.
Flipping it slightly, what intuition leads to anyone thinking that fumes from burning _anything_ is safe to breath in large quantities? We know that standing in a room filled with fumes from burning one thing — be it gasoline or wood — kills quickly. So why wouldn’t it make sense for a million cars running every day to also have a negative health impact?
There are plenty of events in history where stale air in a city along with significant pollution killed tens of thousands of people over a short period, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London.
But taking it to a philosophical level, what framework gives one the right to pollute? In my view, the opposite is true. Clearly, if a factory dumps toxic waste on your property, they are violating your property rights. I don’t believe anyone should have the right to pollute, based on the simple fact that any polluter violates another’s property. Our society of course isn’t quite there, but I believe we are sacrificing a rights by allowing pollution (even from ourselves), rather than the other way around (polluters having a right to pollute.)
What a strange way to pose a question. So, we know that there are risks with electromagnetic waves in X-rays, so we try to limit our exposure to them.
But do you, for instance, run a Wifi access point at home? Do you use a cell phone? And you surely know how radios work: electromagnetic waves. To use your phrasing, "what intuition leads to anyone thinking that electromagnetic radiation is safe in large quantities?"
While we know something of electromagnetic radiation effects on health, we know almost nothing regarding long term effects of the type that have become our daily environment, because this level of exposure (wifi APs, cell phones) is a very recent phenomenon.
But, we could find out in the long run that they have a non-negligible effect on a part of the population that it may end up being classified as "pollution" in the future too.
The point is that people disagree on what are "large quantities" with exhaust gasses (even different governments do, which is why there are different standards), or where do we draw the line. Going with the extreme example can actually be counterproductive because it can easily be proven irrelevant.
The other problem with air pollution from cars is that it's conflated with global warming today (not saying it's not an issue, just that everyone wants to solve both problems at once). One can easily solve for one problem without solving for another (eg. allow only use of clean vehicles during peak hours as a pretty light restriction, to banning non-clean vehicles only in dense urban areas as a pretty strong one).
As a kid, our scout troop had a fundraising deal with the local Schwan's distributor, they would bring in a delivery truck full of ice-cream and we'd sell it at a local festival, and then pay wholesale for what we'd used.
Anyway basically there was no power at the festivals, it was usually just a parking lot at a local highschool, so they'd plug it in overnight. Not sure whether they had batteries/etc, but they were perfectly fine being out in a hot parking lot for 16 hours, no problem. And we were constantly in and out of the trucks selling ice cream which is not what a delivery truck was designed for.
No it is not. They are major pollutors, as mostly are older trucks run by local semi-mafioso organizations (I am not kidding. There even have been turf wars over it).
This is exactly my reaction to this whole comment section too honestly. "Reporting your neighbors and being a professional snitch is good" is the type of take you only see in HN. Yes, laws need to be enforced but it does not mean we need to all turn into paid petty neighborhood cops/informants .
Not only because it makes you miserable but also because there's always a risk when you start calling law enforcement on people.
It's one thing to call the cops when another party has aggrieved you or violated your rights in some (even minor) way. It's entirely another for the government to create financial incentives for people to report their fellow citizens for petty crimes that the payee would otherwise not care about / be impacted by.
Even this particular bylaw is clearly contentious in the comments here. Surely you can think of at least one law that you disagree with - imagine if there was a payout for reporting on it, and how that scenario could play out.
I outlined this above, but I think there is a very clear argument that pollution is a violation of your property rights. Would you be happy if someone ran 200 Diesel engines upwind of you, making the air around your home on your property unbreathable? I believe that should philosophically indicate that your rights are being violated when someone is polluting.
I'm not against the law. If someone is polluting your air then you have a right to call the police and report it - but you should be doing that because you care about the air, and not because you're getting a cut of the ticket.
Property rights in the US, for good or ill, don't entitle you to force others to stop the flow of air going into your property. You can use your property rights to live inside of a sealed bubble if you don't want access to air.
What you really mean is you want to infringe on the property rights of others, because you're unwilling to seal off your own property.
Can you think of no other laws or situations where the same incentivized system was in place?
Personally, I can see both sides of the argument. I hope that most people can as well, even in today's polarized world, where sensationalism and tribalism abound. Ultimately, if one's action (privilege) poses a danger/risk to others, I tend to favor curbing that privilege, even if I don't like it. The key issue is the balancing act between the real danger/harm posed vs. the cost to privilege/right. In this instance, most people would agree that a city like NYC has plenty of privileged vehicle operators. So, curbing that privilege by limiting idling of diesel vehicles is more than acceptable.
