Tonight, after returning home after a very long week, I decided to unwind and relax by reading about morbidity, mortality and risk associated with air pollution, not the serious form of air pollution represented by climate change inducing gases, but the less serious kind that only kills two million people per year, chiefly - but not limited - to particulate matter from combustion. Many people know of course, that combustion products, of which tobacco smoke is only a relatively minor example - contain a mixture of highly carcinogenic compounds, and many major inorganic irritants, represented by oxides of sulfur, nitrogen, and, if you will, an "oxide" of oxygen, ozone.
Another risk associated with air pollution is cardiovascular disease. An interesting commentary related to this topic - here with respect to the incidence of stroke in connection with air pollution - is found in the Journal of the American Medical Association, (Matteen and Brook, JAMA, JAMA, March 23/30, 2011—Vol 305, No. 12, 1240-1241) contained this interesting tidbit:
Although the public health burden of air pollution–related stroke is significant in high-income countries (in which pollution levels have declined over past decades), the health effects associated with air pollution may be most important in developing countries, where approximately 85%of the world’s population lives. Thirteen of the world’s megacities(10 million inhabitants) are located in tropical regions. Biomass burning (affecting 3 billion individuals worldwide) has been estimated as the sixth leading contributing factor for death in developing countries.1
Not to worry. Biomass burning is, um, renewable energy, and therefore it's good, unless of course you're one of the 3 billion people on this planet who reside in areas that never joined in the abandonment, by the richer 10 or 20 percent of the world's cultures, of renewable energy in the early 19th century in favor of coal driven steam - which is now more widely used than ever before, as well as ultimately (largely in the 20th century) petroleum and natural gas. Today there's a certain kind of reactionary enthusiasm for returning to the old "natural" ways.
Split wood, not atoms, cough, cough, cough.
I oppose all dangerous fossil fuels, if you must know, and often demand an end to them, not that anyone on the planet gives a rat's ass what I demand. The world is using the largest amounts ever not only of coal, as mentioned above, but also of petroleum and natural gas.
As of 2010, world consumption of oil was 85,710,000 barrels per day, just slightly short of the all time record set in 2007. The 2010 world consumption of coal was 7.994 billion short tons, an all time record (until we find out what the figures for 2011 are) and up by nearly three billion tons from the turn of the last century in 2000. Natural gas burning and waste dumping produced 119 Quads (125 exajoules) of energy in 2010, also an all time record, up from 91 Quads, (96 exajoules) in 2000.
Heckuva job fighting climate change humanity! Don't worry. Be happy. Split wood, cough, cough, not atoms.
Enough of that. Anyway.
I meant to pull up and collect reference (1) in the above citation, which is a reference to N Engl J Med. 2010;363(13):1196-1198, but I got distracted by an electronic monograph which I downloaded in its entirety, entitled "Urban Airborne Particulate Matter: Origin, Chemistry, Fate and Health Impacts." (Zereini, Wiseman, Eds, Springer-Verlag, 2010)
This is a diary about particulate palladium volatilized out of catalytic converters in cars, which seemed to be a big topic in this book about the air pollution that is classified under the general rubric of "particulate matter."
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