[makeitdouble]

That sounds incredibly obvious on the face of it though ?

Having the study at hand is nice of course, but environnemental factors being alleviated through money and discriminatory policies is rampant enough I don't get the surprise.

People using high quality water filters or straight buy clean water tanks in areas where tap water is bad, getting better indoor air filtering, blocking construction of pollution sources to move them further away (near poorer areas) in the county, redlining/manipulateing zoning rules to make it systematic etc.

It's a old as humans.

[Manuel_D]

15 years disparity in life expectancy exclusively attributed to air quality is not incredibly obvious. To put this in perspective, nationwide average disparity in life expectancy is 5 years between Black and white people. Triple that amount, exclusively attributed to air quality, is a substantial claim.

[olalonde]

Exactly. Even smoking doesn't shorten life expectancy by that much (it's 10 years).

[makeitdouble]

Smoking is voluntary, partly self-adjusting (willingly or not you'll reduce smoking as you get worse), composition is regulated and that habit only starts at a later stage in life.

None of that applies to PM2.5 kind of pollution.

[makeitdouble]

For an area that has well known air pollution issues it doesn't sound far-fetched.

Comparing to the national average helps put it into perspective but doesn't make sense as sanity check. Flynt could be a better data point.