Behold air quality stripes; like climate stripes, but for the stuff that kills you directly. The visualization shows how much clean air legislation, moving away from coal, and generally not setting carbon on fire improve air quality and reduce excess deaths. airqualitystripes.info/stripes/?con... - ThreadSky

davidho.bsky.social • 198 days ago

Behold air quality stripes; like climate stripes, but for the stuff that kills you directly.

The visualization shows how much clean air legislation, moving away from coal, and generally not setting carbon on fire improve air quality and reduce excess deaths.

https://airqualitystripes.info/stripes/?continent=Europe&country=United%20Kingdom&city=London&plot=stripes

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Comments

celestelabedz.bsky.social•198 days ago

LA's is also a cool one to see! My mom said that when she visited there in the 80's, it was absolutely putrid with smog, so she was relieved that it was better by the time I moved there for grad school.

wdncnu.bsky.social•198 days ago

I am AMAZED it wasn't MUCH worse at it's peak, we, nadir. I recall much the same experience as your mom back then.

hormiga.bsky.social•198 days ago

When I started college in LA in 1989, new students in my cohort from elsewhere were all like, why does my throat hurt? And local folks were like, oh that’s the air pollution, you’ll get used to it.

hormiga.bsky.social•198 days ago

(That was in September when there are the big inversions, summer always was/is the worst for air quality)

thereunderneath.bsky.social•198 days ago

📌

shapednoisae.bsky.social•198 days ago

WOW: thats… terrifying.

meanwhile…

chelecajeleca.bsky.social•198 days ago

I’m a bit surprised by Sydney compared to Wellington. I assume the 2020 blip is the Australian bushfire smoke that did a world tour.

shapednoisae.bsky.social•197 days ago

Same re the bushfires. (didn't know they did a World Tour though!

chelecajeleca.bsky.social•197 days ago

“By 7 January 2020, the smoke was carried approximately 11,000 kilometres (6,800 mi) across the South Pacific Ocean to Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_Australian_bushfire_season#:~:text=At%20its%20peak%2C%20air%20quality,weather%20conditions%20in%20other%20continents.

shapednoisae.bsky.social•197 days ago

F A R K !

peiferlabunc.bsky.social•197 days ago

Very interesting!! I wish it had more cities in the US--striking that LA, known as a US hotspot for smog, never hit the levels of London

greasyboiler.bsky.social•198 days ago

bloody hell what's going on in Riyadh

cjthered.bsky.social•198 days ago

Blown dust particles from the desert, I would think

ckoven.bsky.social•198 days ago

pretty funny that the only three cities available for the US are: DC, LA, and Fairbanks.

davidho.bsky.social•198 days ago

Maybe this will drive up tourism to Fairbanks.

ckoven.bsky.social•198 days ago

Maybe, but I suspect that the climate-driven wildfire smoke increases there aren't fully showing up in their stripes.

lilfern.bsky.social•198 days ago

The 2004 fires did, by the look of it!

infopointa.bsky.social•198 days ago

📌

fallingbothways.bsky.social•198 days ago

📌

altagliabue.bsky.social•197 days ago

Very interesting - thanks!

leedstours.bsky.social•197 days ago

For this post especially, I wish there were a 🖤 option.

jjs.business•198 days ago

A friend of mine who lived through Ireland’s coal ban said it really was like waking up one day and being able to see the sky for the first time. It all just went away. I think about that a lot

adityan.bsky.social•196 days ago

Delhi began with 🚩air quality in the 1860s?! Found this v interesting article on Delhi: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4418951.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3Ab7b42dbb4e7d2df5501f2ee0d4a1a5ed&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1

sarahofsb.bsky.social•198 days ago

This is very cool!

davidho.bsky.social•198 days ago

There might be no better example than Beijing, China, to show how industrialization made air quality worse and how quickly legislation can improve air quality.

https://airqualitystripes.info/stripes/?continent=Asia&country=China&city=Beijing&plot=stripes

groversbathtub.bsky.social•198 days ago

Wow, you can see the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s on that figure.

golvio.bsky.social•198 days ago

Beijing was a rough place to be for someone with sensitive lungs back around 2012, which is a crying shame because it was such a wonderful city to visit otherwise. I’m glad to see the air quality’s improved & hope things keep getting better for the health of everyone living there.

golvio.bsky.social•198 days ago

I’m also curious about which laws were able to bring it back down. I remember when I visited the officials were trying a rule where people with certain license plates were only allowed to drive certain days. The massive overhaul their subway & bus systems got for the Olympics likely helped, too.

golvio.bsky.social•198 days ago

I remember the subways & buses being really convenient & easy to use, even for a non-native Mandarin speaker, since the signage was majorly improved. The only problem was capacity during rush hour, but you could say the same for the NYC subway.

golvio.bsky.social•198 days ago

It’s also pretty walkable (as long as your destination isn’t on the other side of the city, which is massive), w/ dedicated bike lanes downtown. I remember seeing a surprising number of people on bikes even in the hot summer weather. I imagine bicycle traffic increased as the air quality improved.

golvio.bsky.social•198 days ago

It looks like the first push for clean air happened in 2013-2014, which means I was there right when the reforms were starting. Looking at this photo, I realize just how bad things were back then—the sky was usually white with haze, & on the worst days it was yellowish. https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/23/china/china-air-pollution-mic-intl-hnk/index.html

gandalfpc.bsky.social•197 days ago

A big part of the problem was the sift brown coal briquettes everyone in North China used for heating and cooking whichb were phased out from the mid 80s. 'Dust' pollution was also a major problem along the coast from industry, bulk cargoes and so on. As for smoking!

matthewterrill.bsky.social•198 days ago

Paris' massive transit/bike/ped reforms show up pretty clearly!
https://airqualitystripes.info/stripes/?continent=Europe&country=France&city=Paris&plot=stripes

climatemegan.bsky.social•198 days ago

it's stark how much worse Delhi's pollution is than London's was at its worst, if the historic data is to be trusted

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