[Vaskerville]

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.

[randycupertino]

Here in California, insanely high levels of mercury have been found in cougars and mountain lions in the mountains between Santa Cruz and the Bay Area. Current research shows the fog has been picking up mercury from the ocean and delivery to our doorstep. I liked the infographic in this article:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/environment/article/Fog-brings-p...

I think one of the problems is even with tough regulation that we have here in California, it's hard to control the actions of all individuals.

We have "spare the air days" and half my neighbors houses still have smoke coming out of their chimneys on those days because they use wood to heat their homes. You can narc them out and report them however the current workaround is for them to claim it's backyard pizza ovens as there is a loophole for cooking food.

When I leave for work in the morning or come home at night and see all the smoke rising laugh to myself that everyone we live nearby is having a massive backyard pizza party and we are not invited! :(

There's also this ridiculously persistent anti electric vehicle roll coal trend happening right now on Tik Tok and platforms where the current fox tag objective a lot of people play on CB radios is to bag a Tesla - benchmark used to be to bag a Prius. I only know about this mainly because my old coworker commuted from Placerville to San Mateo and was obsessed with playing fox tag on his commutes (which would make sense if you're a mega commuter trying to stay awake so making up dumb nicknames with your friends and all keeping each other awake on your CB radios and talking as you drive sounds fun to you).

Anyways... I've just sort of internalized the fact that more and more nonsmokers here are all going to die of lung cancer and hopefully the research and cell therapy trials will get there first before I and my family go out. :(

[nostrademons]

"Here in California, insanely high levels of mercury have been found in cougars and mountain lions in the mountains between Santa Cruz and the Bay Area"

That area is on top of a mercury mine - there's a reason it's called "Almaden Quicksilver County Park", because the primary economic activity before it became a preserve was mercury mining. The southern Santa Cruz mountains sits on top of a massive mercury deposit.

I'd really like to see the evidence that it's because of the fog. When you have pervasive elevated mercury levels throughout the food chain in an area that's a natural mercury deposit, the obvious explanation is that animals, plants, and fungi are picking it up from the soil, rather than it's being wafted in through the fog. (Mercury is quite heavy and isn't soluble in water, so the idea that the fog somehow wafts it in strikes me as bullshit.)

[kaikai]

The researchers measured mercury levels in the fog, specifically. Almaden is also on the other side of the mountains from Santa Cruz.

[panzagl]

Don't you see, it goes from the fog to the animals to the ground, man.

[apta]

> There's also this ridiculously persistent anti electric vehicle

I'm all for working toward better air quality, and electric vehicles definitely reduce greenhouse (and other) gas emissions. At the same time, pollution from cars is not just from exhaust emissions due to combustion. I recall reading somewhere that 80% or more of particulate matter pollution from cars comes from tires and brakes. So the notion of replacing all combustion engine cars with electric cars will somehow solve the pollution issue is not realistic. The Tesla Cybertruck might be a great vehicle, but it's heavy (large tires and lots of break wear). We need better solutions.

[MayeulC]

As a cyclist, I still find it very hard to breathe when a truck passes me (worst are motor scooters going uphill), and would welcome such a reduction in particulate emissions. I guess that the size of those particulates is not the same either (tires and ICE).

Last article or paper I read on the topic counted particulates drafted from the ground as emissions, which of course EVs do not reduce much. But there's still much less nocive emissions, and doesn't smell as bad...

[davidw]

> We need better solutions.

A good start is fixing our land-use regulation in the US to:

* Allow apartments https://www.sightline.org/2019/11/27/end-apartment-bans-to-s...

* Allow things people need day to day near where they live: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/2/6/complete-neighb... - if they still have to drive, it won't be as far, and more people will be able to walk and bike.

[fignews]

EVs have regenerative braking. Brake pads last the life of the vehicle.

[thisisnico]

EV's are harder on tires though because of the weight, does it balance out?

[ricw]

Minutely so. Tesla’s model 3 is 200kg (~400 pounds) heavier than BMWs equivalent 3 series. Don’t think the tire wear due to that difference will make much of a difference...

[OnlineGladiator]

400 pounds is a lot, that's more than 10%. The degradation is almost certainly not linear. There is an old study, which admittedly has its flaws, showing road damage was proportional to the fourth (!!!) power of the weight. I don't believe it's that bad (there are very specific conditions for that study and also it does not directly translate to tire wear), but I'd imagine it's at least to the second power, making a roughly 25% difference using your example vehicles.

If someone knows more precise math, please share.

[MertsA]

Electric vehicles can use regenerative braking for the majority of the time in normal driving. Brake pads can last substantially longer on hybrids and electric cars because of this.

[wasdfff]

With stick shift cars you can use the engine to brake and get the same brake pad savings

[mikestew]

...at the expense of piston rings and other expensive, hard-to-get-to items. And, an educated guess here, probably increased emissions on the overrun.

Besides, who drives stick anymore? I've driven stick since I learned to drive forty years ago, and I even I admit that I can't do better than a computer-controlled DCT, on performance or fuel efficiency. Next car is either electric (we already have a Leaf), or DCT if we must.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> ...at the expense of piston rings and other expensive, hard-to-get-to items. And, an educated guess here, probably increased emissions on the overrun.

This seems like a bad tradeoff. Increasing wear on expensive, hard to replace parts (your engine and transmission), so that you can save on relatively inexpensive, easy to replace parts (your brake pads)

[kovach]

There are no fuel emissions when you engine brake in a modern fuel injection vehicle, as fuel intake is stopped [1].

But it could be bad for your piston rings and catalytic converter [2], so there's that...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_braking#Gasoline_engine...

[2] https://ricksfreeautorepairadvice.com/engine-braking-cause-d...

[inferiorhuman]

...at the expense of piston rings and other expensive, hard-to-get-to items.

Uh, no.

And, an educated guess here, probably increased emissions on the overrun.

Also, no. Most cars built in the last 30+ years will stop injecting fuel during overrun.

[thfuran]

You can but very few people drive stick in the US and, of those, I suspect very few use engine breaking for a significant fraction of their braking. For getting off a highway maybe, but probably not for stop and go in a city.

[paulie_a]

In fact engine breaking is illegal in most populated areas

[PeterStuer]

Or just use the Cruise Control speed toggle on your automatic. At least on mine (BMW) it engages regenerative breaking when you click down the speed.

[volkl48]

I think most of the things you mention are minor fringe activities unlikely to be more than a rounding error in overall pollution.

I can't find an exact % for how many people in CA heat with wood, but it looks to be <3%. It could be much higher for you locally if you live in a rural area, but for state-wide pollution, I think it's mostly irrelevant.

That doesn't make them good (for places with pollution issues, wood isn't entirely bad as an energy source) or things to encourage, but I don't know that they're worth focusing on on either.

----------

The reason cited by the article for worsening air quality in the West is wildfires.

[stevenwoo]

I spend a lot of time in the semi rural areas outside of San Jose/San Francisco and out of fire season in the cold months the smell of burning wood is persistent until temps get well out of the 60's (given the number of valleys/mountains, lots of areas stay cold all day in the shade/fog zone once it gets cold). Even if it's a small percentage, the odor is omnipresent, so the particulate pollution is present to some extent as well from a non scientific sampling.

Wood burning (not even special low pollution devices) is not permitted in new construction in the Bay Area because of how much effect even a small percentage of homes can have on air quality.

[labawi]

Wood burning is a pollution problem only when burned incompletely i.e. improperly. Unfortunately, properly burning solid fuel for home heating is not typical.

[_2d30]

> There's also this ridiculously persistent anti electric vehicle roll coal trend happening right now on Tik Tok and platforms where the current fox tag objective a lot of people play on CB radios is to bag a Tesla - benchmark used to be to bag a Prius. I only know about this mainly because my old coworker commuted from Placerville to San Mateo and was obsessed with playing fox tag on his commutes (which would make sense if you're a mega commuter trying to stay awake so making up dumb nicknames with your friends and all keeping each other awake on your CB radios and talking as you drive sounds fun to you).

I don't really understand what this is. What do "fox tag" and "roll coal" mean?

[js2]

You can't believe how selfish and awful people can be till you see it in person, but:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal

[MereInterest]

Uncertain about "fox tag", but to "roll coal" is to intentionally bork up the emissions of your car, leaving a black cloud of smoke and stench behind one's car.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal

[oftenwrong]

This is "rolling coal":

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZdDxjge5hmY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/07/rolling-coal-con...

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/business/energy-environme...

[runako]

I don't know "fox tag" but here's rolling coal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal

[paulcnichols]

Re Mercury, on the San Jose side isn't there an old Mercury mine (Almaden Quicksilver Park). I'm not saying the fog doesn't carry anything bad but I think the region has a history too.

[bproven]

Yes, there is. It was a afaik Superfund site before it was a park.

[hammock]

Pretty much the entire South Bay is a Superfund site.

[jhallenworld]

You don't have to go so far to experience this: Guadalajara rush hour today is what LA was like in the 70s.

https://aqicn.org/city/guadalajara/

But OMG, Nepal: http://aqicn.org/city/india/patna/igsc-planetarium-complex/

Or New Delhi: http://aqicn.org/city/delhi/national-institute-of-malaria-re...

[BurningFrog]

> Let's hope it never gets this bad in the US

It used to be that bad in the US, when it was as poor as Nepal is today.

[cafard]

Actually, it was pretty nasty during periods of US prosperity.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Donora_smog

[BurningFrog]

GDP per person was $14k in 1948. It's $58k now.

Inflation adjusted, of course.

https://www.multpl.com/us-real-gdp-per-capita/table/by-year

[mikestew]

I wouldn't consider 70s-era Los Angeles "poor" by much of any standard.

[Vaskerville]

A friend visited recently, within three days with very little time outside, their throat was burning.

[throwawayhhakdl]

Do locals suffer from symptoms like that?

[Vaskerville]

Yes.