Eliminating particulates from combustion is a major co-benefit of phasing out fossil fuel use.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    4 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The World Health Organization sets a guideline that people shouldn’t breathe more than 5 micrograms of fine particulate matter per cubic meter of air, on average, throughout a year.

    The few oases of clean air that meet World Health Organization guidelines are mostly islands, as well as Australia and the northern European countries of Finland and Estonia.

    Although North America is one of the cleaner regions in the world, in 2023 wildfires burned 4 percent of Canada’s forests, an area about half the size of Germany, and significantly impaired air quality.

    Without accounting for short-term exposures, “we might be underestimating the mortality burden from air pollution,” said Yuming Guo, a professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and one of the study’s authors.

    But studies that dig deeper show air quality is still an issue, said Gaige Kerr, a research scientist at George Washington University and the lead author of the disparities paper published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

    Dr. Kerr’s research showed that mortality rates were highest on the Gulf Coast and in the Ohio River Valley, in areas dominated by petrochemical and manufacturing industries.


    The original article contains 1,012 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    This is especially tough, because nobody likes to credit Nixon with anything, but the clean air act has really set the United States apart from almost every other country following the modern industrial era.

    There are filters that factories in any country can put on their chimneys relatively cheaply to the profit of production, and in many other countries they do not, because they are not legally required to.

    So yes, Nixon was a bigoted a******, but he did pass the clean air act, which directly lead to the fortified amendments to the clean water act a couple years later and significantly improved responsibility and maintenance of clean US environments (except for those allocated to native Americans, which are, to this day, horrifyingly abused so that native American waterways give native Americans cancers at obscene levels).

    But generally, for most of you guys reading this, you can thank Nixon for the very clean air and water Americans take for granted.

    We should also include the warmonger Teddy Roosevelt in that gratitude because he preserved so many natural landscapes.