Doctors Might Have Been Focusing on the Wrong Asthma Triggers
theatlantic.comI have had asthma my entire life, and it definitely flares up with airborne irritants.
There has been awesome citizen science work going on helping people understand the direct link between anything that emits smoke and asthma attacks: https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2017.1315
They even found that parents waiting to pick up kids at schools with their ICE engines running increased PM2.5 inside the entire building by orders of magnitude.
This data helped the kids teach their parents to stop their engines when waiting outside the school in order to help their asthmatic classmates.
The transition to EV is going to have a positive impact on people’s health and make city life better.
I've apparently never had asthma in my life, until I moved to Sydney, Australia for a while.
It's a city which _loves_ cars.
I used to cycle about 20 minutes to the office, the view was beautiful but the traffic was horrendous. I used to wheeze and struggle with breathing a lot more than usual. The doctor diagnosed me with "seasonal asthma" and gave me a ventolin prescription, which I've never felt the need to refill since leaving.
The doctor told me there was some phenomenon which made the air pollution worse, something about the reflection of the water from the harbor ? I wish I could remember what it was called.
It's anecdotal but that was my experience.
Where did you live previously?
Australia has one of the highest rates of asthma in the world, with higher rates in rural and regional areas than the cities. Sydney also has a high rate of moulds which can be triggers due to its often humid environment and poor building standards (cf Melbourne for example where houses are more ruggedised)
I cant live in sydney, I nearly died from asthma when I moved there as a child to live with my father. every time i visited he would have to rent a nebulizer, i have asthma but not that terrible, that place is horrid. I believe its the pollen as well as the cars.
Coastal regions are way better for asthmatics. the dry salty air. gold coast/sunshine coast.
> something about the reflection of the water from the harbor
Temperature inversion? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(meteorology)
Isn't most PM 2.5 pollution produced by brake pad and tire wear, which is made worse by EVs due to their weight?
> which is made worse by EVs due to their weight?
What a ridiculous supposition.
First the weight difference is not that huge, second EV's use regenerative breaking for a huge portion of their breaking spectrum bypassing break pads entirely.
Idk if you tried looking at any evidence when making your claim, but this clearly supports the gp and contradicts your statement [1] [2].
[1]https://www.ridef2.com/blog-del-direttore-ridef/will-electri...
[2]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...
Both those sources are the same paper, fyi. Found a PDF here: http://www.soliftec.com/NonExhaust%20PMs.pdf
And the claim is a bit dubious, imo. It looks like they're counting "resuspension" (kicking up existing settled PM2.5 in the wake) as a source.
The first link cites multiple papers, including the one in the second link. Looks like the study that mentions "resuspension" is a different study[1] than the one in the second link.
[1]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...
Idk, if you bothered to read the study that you are pointing to in your coup de grace, you'd would realize your cited sources admit that EV's create no more particulate pollution than ICE engines. Your cited study actually states that EVs do reduce particulate pollution but only by a couple percent, which is opposite of "creating more" for those who prefer evidence based positions.
It's almost as if regenerative breaking reduces break wear and compensates for the marginal increase weight as many other people have already pointed out?
The original GP's post had two points:
- most PM 2.5 pollution is produced by brake pad and tire wear
- which [i.e. PM 2.5 pollution produced by brake pad and tire wear] is made worse by EVs due to their weight
These are direct quotes from my links:
- "A large fraction (50-85% and up to 90%) of traffic generated PM10 and PM2,5 is not due to the exhaust emissions by the motor, but rather to non-exhaust emissions (brake wear, road wear, tyre wear and road dust resuspension)"
- "A positive relationship exists between vehicle weight and non-exhaust emissions."... "Electric vehicles are 24% heavier than their conventional counterparts."
> "A positive relationship exists between vehicle weight and non-exhaust emissions."... "Electric vehicles are 24% heavier than their conventional counterparts."
Both are true. However, without factoring in decreased friction-brake usage in EVs (due to regenerative braking), this point is meaningless or deceptive.
What’s your point? That we should continue to favor gas cars over EVs? That cars should be taken off the road entirely? Something else?
My point was to defend ADSSDA's post against deeviant's claims.
Personally, I would like light EVs.
So en EV without a battery? They didn’t make them weigh more just because they wanted to.
I think it's just that EVs will not reduce asthma caused by small particle air pollution. They may in fact make it worse.
The study cited to me in order to defend the point that EVs make more particulate pollution flat out found that EV's create less particulate pollution.
> A positive relationship exists between vehicle weight and non-exhaust emissions."
As others already pointed out, that is the same study, the same study that found that EV's create less particulate pollution. The more weight = more particulate emission part did not control for EV regenerative breaking. So your position is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worse.
This will be my last comment here on the account that I will not debate facts with random people on the internet. If you can't be bothered to read the study, don't cite it, don't reference it and for god's sake don't try to use it to say something that is literally the opposite of it's findings.
Brake. The word is brake.
I am dyslexic, I swap words like that frequently, shit happens.
But if that is all you have to add to this discussion, I wonder why you bothered.
People tend to assume that gasoline engines don't produce PM2.5, but that's apparently wrong. I saw some seemingly legit report that claims tire and brakes create about 10% of the PM2.5 pollution.
EV and Hybrid cars have regen braking which reduces brake pad wear. I don't know about PM2.5 but hybrids also emit much less NOx than straight gasoline cars.
These are idle cars which are not braking, so the PM2.5 here is purely the engine pollution. City life might not be affected as much, but school buildings with cars waiting outside will be!
If the ev has regenerative braking, the brakes actually last much longer than in ICE cars. Not sure how tires are affected but I'd imagine they do have a shorter life, and I'm not sure how the longer brake life balances with (probably) shorter tire life from a pollution perspective
Why would tires last longer in an ICE vehicle? I don't think tires care what makes them spin.
I believe tires last less time in an EV, because of the increased mass. But maybe that isn't the case. I just looked up a comparable ICE to a model 3, got the BMW 330i, and that has approximately the same weight (3500 lbs)
Electric cars are heavier due to the battery.
It depends on exactly which car you are comparing. The Tesla Model 3 is somewhere around 3500 lbs, isn't it? That's pretty average for a car these days.
And there are plenty of big SUVs that have a similar weight to the heavier EVs.
Besides, you can't assume that electric cars use the same tires as non-electric ones.
There is a huge range of tires out there from extremely long wearing ones to sticky ones that last a fraction of the time.
I come from a part of the US with fairly severe air pollution (2cd or 3rd worst in country). And asthma is a huge problem there, much so more than elsewhere. It is fairly obvious that the air pollution is the cause of the problem. Perhaps we should differentiate between the causes of the disease, and the hazards that trigger asthma attacks.
This doesn't really suggest a wrong focus.
Pollution was down. Stress was down. People staying at home means cleaner houses. Sharp temperature changes were down... probably, you'd miss the commute big ups and downs but also miss the office climate control. Peoples lives were mostly more controlled, far less variance.
And viruses were down.
> The ensuing months, to everyone’s surprise, turned into “this beautiful year,” Lawson told me. Scarlett hasn’t had a single asthma attack. Not a single visit to the ER. Nothing. She’s breathing so much better,
This doesn't fit with viruses, wouldn't lack of viruses only account for severe ER attacks that happen during a few scattered periods, not the whole year. It will be a mix, but 80:20, it should be one big thing.
I certainly noticed this - over the last year I've gone from using reliever inhalers several times a week to not needing them for months.
I did also start a new medication, Montelukast, around the time of the first lockdown, so it could conceivably be due to that in my case - but not having a chest infection at all for the last 18 months whereas I used to get one a year or so has been lovely.
PSA: Montelukast (Singlar) can slowly and subtlety "change your mind"
[0] https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-r...
Anecdata: I took Montelukast for 3 years to help with my allergies & asthma. Worked like a charm. Except for the fact that it made me really irritable. I was angry and down all the time. And I didn't really notice it until I stopped taking the tablets. That's when I started to put two and two together. I spoke to my friends about it, and they agreed that I suddenly seemed much less murdery.
Thanks for that link, I've read something about that before but haven't thought about it since I've been prescribed it myself since March.
For me since then most of the symptoms in the list on that page have actually improved. The only thing my doctor (in The Netherlands) warned me about was the bad/vivid dream part, before Montelukast I could hardly remember dreaming but now I do almost daily (but I am also sleeping much better).
That's interesting - another asthma medication I was on as a child made me an absolute horror as well - wonder if there's some relation in the mechanism of action.
Any idea what to use to replace it?
Friend of mine cannot forget to take it, or their chest/airways are quite heavy.
Does it take time for the body wean off?
* I totally read this backwards sorry. But I'll keep the relevant part about different steroid and my mistake below.
maybe also check out a Ciclesonide inhaler (alvesco, another steroid) which has helped me a lot in my cardio. I can get that last 5-10% into my lungs and don't have those tiny wheezes at peak respiration.
And I'll make a note of that drug for the future thanks!
-- I got on steroids last year. Had huge increase in use of albuterol over the last 2 years. For like a decade i barely used anything, inhaler sat in the bottom of my climbing bag.
I'm in Denver, really bad pollution and the fire smoke is literally unlivable at its worst.
Do you think this was largely due to wearing a mask? Whether a mask would block a virus particle is debatable but even cheap masks are effective against larger particulates such as pollen, dust, dander, etc.
When I was a kid my neighbor always wore a mask while he was cutting his lawn. He had asthma that was pretty easily triggered and he said it made a big difference.
That's a good question - I didn't actually start wearing a mask until a little later, when the mask mandate came into force in the UK. Our first lockdown was definitely pretty severe and there were much fewer cars on the road here, but that has gone away, so you could indeed be onto something.
I wonder how much impact the reduced pollution due to reduced traffic during the lockdowns and increased remote work later had on the study subjects, even if they were indoors.
I came to post just this. Rubber is a pretty common allergen. Wearing masks (especially N95) when out/about also probably helps a lot.
Irceline publishes PM2.5 stats for Belgium. Here's [1] a pretty little chart with the annual mean PM2.5 concentration. If you switch between 2020 and 2019, the difference seems pretty small. Same for PM10 and Black Carbon. If the pandemic had a big impact on air quality, that effect seems to have skipped Belgium at least. It's a shame there's no similar dashboard for viruses and allergens.
[1] https://www.irceline.be/en/air-quality/measurements/particul...
I wonder what the PM1 and under figures would look like. I recall seeing some analysis stating that the bulk of car related PM was smaller than PM1.
That's pretty much what the black carbon component indicates.
Surprised not to see exercise listed. It’s a common trigger for asthma attacks, especially in cold dry air, and I bet there were pretty big changes in exercise patterns for a lot people during the pandemic.
https://publicintegrity.org/environment/the-invisible-hazard...
I imagine that keeping schoolchildren home from those schools would substantially help their respiratory health.
No traffic and no bullying.
If kids can learn by themselves, this could change everything.
But currently my kid likes unboxing videos and nothing else. School is forced variety and social skills..
Kids are helpless against teams of PhDs turning them into addicts. Your responsibilities as a parent include protecting them from addictive apps. Sell the iPad and buy them books & Legos.
There has been the hypothesis that it’s actually bad ventilation in schools and offices causing the asthma related problems. One thing to check before choosing a school for the kids.
This year, I had my first summer without needing to take antihistamines in over a decade, I actually wonder what has caused this