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Bring on electric cars. I'm so sick of the poor city air quality, and the noise. Electric cars would be the biggest improvement we can make as a society honestly.

Findings in title quoted from the linked release^1 and peer-reviewed research article:^2

From the linked release:^1

>The study, published February 24 in JAMA Network Open, is one of the largest to date to look at the effects of long-term exposure to fine particle air pollution, which is emitted from sources such as vehicles, smokestacks, and fires.

>Fine particle air pollution, also known as PM2.5, are fine particles that are 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller.

>The researchers tied each adult’s address to a specific geographical location — a process known as geocoding — to establish annual average exposure to fine particle pollution so it could be linked to annual PM2.5 exposure data.

>Then they identified the patients diagnosed with a heart attack or who had died from heart disease or cardiovascular disease.

>The research lends support to current efforts to make the country’s air pollution standards more stringent.

>In January 2023, the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] announced a proposal to tighten the annual PM2.5 standard by reducing the acceptable level to between 9.0 to 10.0 micrograms per cubic meter.

>The EPA said it was advising this change because the current standard did not adequately protect public health under the guidelines required by the Clean Air Act.

From the peer-reviewed research article:^2

>Findings In a diverse cohort of 3.7 million adults, this cohort study found that long-term PM2.5 exposure was associated with an increased risk of incident acute myocardial infarction, ischemic heart disease mortality, and cardiovascular disease mortality, and these associations were more pronounced in low socioeconomic status communities.

>This study also found evidence of associations at moderate concentrations of PM2.5 below the current regulatory standard of 12 μg/m3.

>Meaning This study’s results add to the growing evidence that long-term PM2.5 exposure is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular events and that the current regulatory standard of 12 μg/m3 is not sufficiently protective.

^1 Current air pollution standards tied to higher heart risks, Kaiser Permanente, 24 Feb. 2023, https://about.kaiserpermanente.org/health-and-wellness/health-research/news/current-air-pollution-standards-tied-to-higher-heart-risks

^2 Stacey E. Alexeeff, et al.Association of Long-term Exposure to Particulate Air Pollution With Cardiovascular Events in California. JAMA Network Open 2023, 6(2):e230561. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.0561

Make them affordable then.

Just another reason to decarbonize: it saves health care costs.

As if regular cars are affordable currently anyway.

They are starting to bring electric car incentives in in Australia. For instance you can lease an electric car now through salary sacrifice and not pay fringe benefit tax, effectively reducing your tax by a third of the cost of the car which is pretty good.

Get a better job then.

Ah, yes very sensible answer. Tell that to the communities who are suffering the most.

Welcome to capitalism.

Are you going to drive me? Because as someone with epilepsy, it's very hard to get to one of those "better jobs". And are you going to help me get accepted? Because so far no matter what I've tried, I haven't been able to get accepted into any, even with my diploma and some college-level education.

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The job market is getting hammered. There are tons of layoffs recently and maybe more to come. Pin pointing the cause of not getting a job is unclear at this point.

Under capitalism, there is competition between companies and individuals, the best should rise to the top. The reality and the theory don’t overlap 100%, but none the less is what’s going on in general.

Products cost what they cost, based on what it cost to make the product, plus some profit.

Differences in employment status, salary, and product cost will make some products not accessible by some groups.

I understand the fact it's not going to be easy to get a better job with everyone else losing theirs, but you just told us to go and get better ones regardless and an electric car is basically my only shot at keeping a decent job like that. So are you going to help me or not?

Bring on the bicycles. So much more efficient.

Wildly impractical. Cannot transport goods or multiple people or small children. Not suited to places with lots of hills or spread out cities. Not suited to places with very wet or very hot weather.

I ride my bike to work. We should encourage bike commuting where it’s possible.

It's 30KM to my work in either blazing heat or torrential rain usually. That's a no from me. Most cities are simply not designed for this. There's a couple of places in europe where they kind of make this work but I don't see it as being practical in most places.

21 for me, and it’s a trail the whole way. I just have to be selective on which days I ride.

I own a pretty nice bike but I hate riding it. It's uncomfortable and hot and hard work. I much prefer the train.

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An electric car is not the only option.

In any economy, there will be people who can’t get jobs. It’s impossible to make the market perfectly balanced. We will have either some people that are un-employed or companies who can’t find employees.

Depending on what sector of the economy you’re education is in, that sector may not have enough jobs for the general population.

This is a big issue in American Society. How we solve this issue is is the problem.

The world is a zero sum game. there aren't enough "better jobs" to go around. Someone has to clean the toilets, someone has to stock shelves, someone has to bake bread. The people doing those jobs are often paid too little to live in the cities they work in. The solution? Commuting from cheaper cities. How do you commute without a car? Your 'advice' not only lacks empathy but it lacks logic.

Edit: Before you write a reply about how people should buy ICE cars instead of electric, ICE cars are unaffordable to people in these sorts of occupations as well. Whether electric or ICE, cars should be made cheaper. In my travels across Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa I've seen quite a few car brands that are never sold in the West which would be very affordable for lower income families. About one third of cars produced in the world are produced under Chinese brands which are subject to a 27.5% tariff and in some cases out right not allowed to be sold (a non-Chinese example of which would be Japanese light trucks which are quite affordable yet not allowed to be sold in the US). Cars can be made cheap, we just don't want to do it.

That’s a terrible solution. Here’s a better solution: Raise the min wage to a living wage.

I can agree with that.

I read the edit: If people are so poor, they can not afford an old used ICE car, then the real problem isn’t the car industry; it’s the legal min wage that’s the problem.

Particulates are a killer.

So glad I moved to rural Georgia.

Again, I can definitely agree with that. I think raising minimum wages should be a priority but afterwards I also think they should reform the car industry. I'm an avid /r/fuckcars enthusiast but I do recognize that cars can be necessary for some people. They could be so much cheaper but our regulations are needlessly strict in areas they don't need to be and ridiculously loose in areas they should be tough on. Kei trucks can be bought new for less than $10k. If minimum wage was like $25 an hour and kei trucks were sold in the US no one would have to worry about transportation.

Cars, electric or otherwise, are just a way to transport people and goods from A to B. We use to use horses. And over time things have evolved. Horses can run around 30 mph. Todays cars can easily go 90mph. And most speed limits are in the 60s+. At higher speeds there is more danger or death in a crash. So the govt and society called on automakers to invest in safety measures.

Telling automakers what they must do and must not do, is a tricky thing. We want competition in the market place, but we also need safety; this goes for all markets.

The safer a car, the more expensive. There’s no way around this. Building an inexpensive car means taking cost out. Safety cost, as well as other cost, less parts, less expensive parts = less expensive car.

If we want a society with safe products, we must define what safe means, and make sure everyone in that society can pay for that base line safety level.

really? How much stuff you do actually carry around on a daily basis? I bet most of it you don't really need. Get kiddie bike seats or kiddie trailers for the small ones. Hills? You have legs, for christ sakes. Use them. Get fit. Stop using lazyness as an excuse. Weather? We have clothes for that. Stop being such a milquetoast washout. Myself and plenty of others ride bikes daily for transport, it works fine.

... and this is why fossil fuel power kills more people every few hours than nuclear power has in its entire history.

No. You don't live in the real world obviously you live in some sort of bubble. Bikes are fine for exercise but as an actual means of transport they are ludicrously impractical.

Not to mention the health issues with knees and balls from long term riding. Bikes are not the answer.

Bring on the electric bicycles!

While it's not for everyone, its worth a try. E-bikes are amazing, no sweat unless you wanna. We make it an intergenerational 20k + return fun run, a few times a week, outside of deep winter and high tourist season.

I pick up full pannieres of milk, water, veg, then either get a running start or trudge it up the (40degree) hill, with gramma on her e-trike. E-bikes are awesome. Works great in the fallen snow too. There are ferrings, hoods and carts available to attach. The bigger problem, outside of both locking and guarding the bikes, is lack of interconnecting trails to supplies and the biggest danger is motor traffic.

We manage to do this in 3 countries and 5 states. It's nice that employers support this by allowing bikes into buildings and card access to monitored parking garage lockers in others. Trains are good with e-bikes too but buses make you lift them. I'd like to see faster lifts on buses and trains for less able people.

There are also some impressive little pod bikes/cars (covered trikes), Sporty e-trikes, snow and water craftsman as well as off roaders, to be experienced.

When you live more than 20 miles away from any job openings, it starts to become the only option

China does have a relatively high incidence of cardiovascular disease, but they also don't have the same obesity crisis that america does. Having more risk factors like obesity and pollution significantly increases the incidences of heart attacks.

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Take a look on youtube electric vehicle channel: there is so much to see. Check the Aptera, the Vandersall Edison (so MG) and the Nobe with trailer, so Jetsons!

Lazy rivers. Everybody floats to work

There are options. The sooner we show all-route uptake, the more bike and e-commuter lanes will appear, as well as long country routes, connecting urban trails and bypasses. Start with weekend sports and work it your way. It's cheaper, quieter and healthier. For everyone.

Is complaining your middle name or just what you do for a job? Ahh, there it is, it should be your last name then. Like how people took on names according to their profession.

Remember the rockhopper? They (Specialized) make really good ebikes now. Easy peas getting around. Pricey but check the specs and shop around.

Trikes. Trikes are the answer. E- trikes, with seats and canopies. Like the Edison. OK, that one isn't practucal but pretty cool. There are so many now though, take a minute and have a look.

Bikes for <6 miles, electric cars for further.

Yeah I'll just load up all these landscaping supplies... Oh... Wait...

I don't think all these bags of soil and tools are going to fit somehow

Bikes only work for a tiny portion of the population. They are not a practical replacement for cars.

For anyone living in cities and concerned about this. I've been living in a number of major cities for most of my adult life. I HIGHLY recommend grabbing stand alone air filters for your living spaces. You spend most of your time in your home so having these things can significantly improve breathing and sleeping problems driven by city pollution.

It is impossible with current battery technologies and energy infrastructure. There is only so much lithium in areas in which we are willing to devastate the environment to mine it.

We should definitely invest in electrification, but priority should be more efficient transportation (public transport, biking infrastructure, and walkability).

And in the end, traffic is not even close to the top of the air pollution causes. Burning coal is much worse, and burning wood is also pretty bad in regard to PM10 particles. Not to mention industrial pollution. Cars are pretty bad for co2 emissions, but a modern car emits 100x less nox and particulants than a gas-powered lawn mower or a chainsaw per minute.

Car dependency is killing us.

Yes. But it is not as simple as that. Coal is extremely bad. Oil and wood are much better for different reasons, but they are still bad for health. Natural gas is pretty neutral for health reasons, but you could argue that global warming caused partially by gas burning is killing millions.

There should be a list of priorities as we can't handle it all at once.

You only have to spend 5 minutes with your window down in peak hour traffic to see that cars are the immediate problem for those of us who live in cities. No one is burning coal within 100km of my house but every day I am exposed to fumes from cars. It's not just C02 by a long shot either. Australia has some of the worst emissions standards so we are getting dumped with all the dirtiest burning cars, not to mention all the old cars on the road here that you see just billowing black smoke. The best thing for air quality here would be to replace as many of these as possible with electric cars.

Great in theory, but there is only so much lithium. There is only ~50M tons of lithium somewhat easily available. That is not enough to replace all cars. Maybe enough for 40% of all cars. Just cars. And that is if we put all lithium into cars. We still need it for other kinds of power storage and for other industries.

We need new tech before we can even discuss it as an option.

we have 8 billion people in the world. Time to "multitask"?

We are already. There are many technologies being developed. Battery storage, new fission technology, fusion technology, more efficient infrastructure and devices, lab grown meat, new shipping technologies, more efficient planes. I'm optimistic on that side. What I'm afraid of are conservative policies and people's unwillingly to adapt.

Australia has enough lithium to replace all our cars if we would actually manufacture batteries and cars ourselves instead of just exporting raw material so we can buy back finished products at exorbitant rates, but in principle I agree with you, except again this is a question of political will and our politicians are all just greedy corporate schills. There's tonnes of potential in graphene and sodium batteries, we just aren't putting in the effort.

I agree that on a country scale, Australia could do it. It is a lithium rich country. On a world wide scale, we need new tech. And I'm optimistic that in 10-15 years there won't be anything holding us back on electrifying transportation except for policy making and greed.

High speed trains are the future. Why are we all driving cars? They coukd put trains on the roads and everybody has to use them. Let's go. We all donate the cars and they sell em and make trains. I'm in.

EVs create huge pollution problems of their own. We need less cars and more walkability/bike infrastructure/public transit, not heavier cars.

https://carbuzz.com/news/ev-tires-worse-for-the-environment-than-tailpipe-emissions

So cities are literally killing us faster. Good to know.

"don't worry those toxic ohio chemicals in the ground and water and on your car and that you can see in the runoff whenever it rains will quickly evaporate into the air you breath"

It’s the particulates that kill people- that stay isn’t even accounting for global warming

Nobody ever said "bikes for all travel ever and cars won't exist". Black and white thinking is the enemy of progress.

I have a bike and I have a car. The bike is too slow and is mostly useless for anything other than recreation because it cannot move anything heavy. A frikkin horse would be more useful in all honesty.

Other research also ties it to depression, stroke, and dementia, apart from socioeconomic influences.

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>What I'm afraid of are conservative policies and people's unwillingly to adapt.

Totally agree.

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