UK facing £300 million fine for pollution from EU
Discussion
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7801436...
Unbelievable! Who signed us up to this nonsense?
Unbelievable! Who signed us up to this nonsense?
Ohhhhh, now I'm mad. No, worse than mad....
This is bad enough, without the inevitable certainty that our £300,000,000 would disappear into this festering, stinking pile of corruption called the European Union, never to be accounted for, never to be seen again.
What we need are lots of walls and lots of firing squads, then the biggest leaving party this country has ever seen...
This is bad enough, without the inevitable certainty that our £300,000,000 would disappear into this festering, stinking pile of corruption called the European Union, never to be accounted for, never to be seen again.
What we need are lots of walls and lots of firing squads, then the biggest leaving party this country has ever seen...
mybrainhurts said:
Ohhhhh, now I'm mad. No, worse than mad....
This is bad enough, without the inevitable certainty that our £300,000,000 would disappear into this festering, stinking pile of corruption called the European Union, never to be accounted for, never to be seen again.
What we need are lots of walls and lots of firing squads, then the biggest leaving party this country has ever seen...
Signs up the become a bricky, hope the course doesn't take long.This is bad enough, without the inevitable certainty that our £300,000,000 would disappear into this festering, stinking pile of corruption called the European Union, never to be accounted for, never to be seen again.
What we need are lots of walls and lots of firing squads, then the biggest leaving party this country has ever seen...
mybrainhurts twice said:
ShadownINja said:
So what happens if we say "You can fine us £300 billion if you want but you can whistle for it cos we aren't paying it."
Like the French would...
I guess the EU would send the Belgian army over to chastise us and confiscate all their chocolate...
Finlandia said:
mybrainhurts twice said:
ShadownINja said:
So what happens if we say "You can fine us £300 billion if you want but you can whistle for it cos we aren't paying it."
Like the French would...I guess the EU would send the Belgian army over to chastise us and confiscate all their chocolate...
k off IMO.
The Telegraph said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7801436...
Previous research shows air pollution already kills 24,000 people a year and could kill up to 36,000 because of lung complaints.
This is another 'everybody knows that...' moment and as often happens, what everybody knows, and what newspapers print, is contrary to the evidence. That evidence is overwhelming. Viewpoints based on the evidence are also available but just about every newspaper ignores them. Here are those viewpoints and the evidence.Previous research shows air pollution already kills 24,000 people a year and could kill up to 36,000 because of lung complaints.
In the London Weekly Times of 03 Feb 1995 Professor Emeritus Stanley Feldman of Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School said:
In the last 40 years the level of (outdoor) air pollution has decreased dramatically
Nevertheless the incidence of asthma has risen
Pollution does not cause bronchitis or asthma, nor does wearing a so-called anti-pollution mask do anything except identify the wearer as a sucker
Nevertheless the incidence of asthma has risen
Pollution does not cause bronchitis or asthma, nor does wearing a so-called anti-pollution mask do anything except identify the wearer as a sucker
1995 Department of Health Study on the Causes of Asthma by Dr Kenneth Calman then Government Chief Medical Officer said:
Air pollution does not cause asthma.
There is no correlation between levels of vehicle emissions and asthma incidence.
There is no correlation between levels of vehicle emissions and asthma incidence.
A report for the NHS Executive in 1999 covering air quality and respiratory complaints said:
the available evidence does not support a causative role for outdoor air pollution
http://www.londonshealth.gov.uk/pdf/lhs/transport....
http://www.londonshealth.gov.uk/pdf/lhs/transport....
From the report:
Air pollution decreases, asthma levels increase. Clearly by the (flawed) logic of these newspaper reports, cleaner air causes more asthma.
Office of National Statistics said:
Life expectancy at birth in the UK has reached its highest level on record for both males and females. A newborn baby boy could expect to live 77.4 years and a newborn baby girl 81.6 years if mortality rates remain the same as they were in 2006–08.
More evidence directly countering the erroneous received wisdom is this, with my added emphasis.Research report from the University of Guelph said:
Challenging accepted wisdom, a University of Guelph professor says claims about the health effects of air pollution are not supported by data from Canadian cities.
Guelph economist Ross McKitrick, along with Gary Koop of the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and Lise Tole of the University of Edinburgh, analyzed a new database from 11 Canadian cities over a 20-year period. Unlike most earlier studies, this one included controls for effects of smoking and income.
They found no evidence that air pollution affected either hospital admission rates or time spent in hospitals. However, they did determine that both smoking and income levels directly affect respiratory health. Their findings appear this week in the journal Environmental Modelling and Software.
The researchers compared monthly hospital admission rates between 1974 and 1994 for all lung ailments to ambient levels of five common air contaminants. “We were looking for predictable, common physical effects from standardized exposure levels,” McKitrick said, adding the researchers examined data over a longer time span than most previous studies, and used advanced econometric methods called Bayesian Model Averaging to ensure they considered all possible combinations of effects.
“Our examination of data back to the early 1970s was motivated in part by the fact that air pollution was much higher compared to today,” he said. “If today’s air pollution levels are causing thousands of hospitalizations, the effects should have been even stronger in the 1970s when air quality was much worse.”
“But the data showed no evidence of changing health effects at the pollution levels observed in Canada over recent decades.”
The findings contradict hundreds of studies that have connected urban air pollution levels and respiratory health problems. Such studies have resulted in calls for tighter air pollution regulations and more stringent emission standards.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/airhealth/kmt.htmlGuelph economist Ross McKitrick, along with Gary Koop of the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and Lise Tole of the University of Edinburgh, analyzed a new database from 11 Canadian cities over a 20-year period. Unlike most earlier studies, this one included controls for effects of smoking and income.
They found no evidence that air pollution affected either hospital admission rates or time spent in hospitals. However, they did determine that both smoking and income levels directly affect respiratory health. Their findings appear this week in the journal Environmental Modelling and Software.
The researchers compared monthly hospital admission rates between 1974 and 1994 for all lung ailments to ambient levels of five common air contaminants. “We were looking for predictable, common physical effects from standardized exposure levels,” McKitrick said, adding the researchers examined data over a longer time span than most previous studies, and used advanced econometric methods called Bayesian Model Averaging to ensure they considered all possible combinations of effects.
“Our examination of data back to the early 1970s was motivated in part by the fact that air pollution was much higher compared to today,” he said. “If today’s air pollution levels are causing thousands of hospitalizations, the effects should have been even stronger in the 1970s when air quality was much worse.”
“But the data showed no evidence of changing health effects at the pollution levels observed in Canada over recent decades.”
The findings contradict hundreds of studies that have connected urban air pollution levels and respiratory health problems. Such studies have resulted in calls for tighter air pollution regulations and more stringent emission standards.
Typically it takes actual data and people such as McKitrick to get to the truth.
Clearly cleaner air is better than polluted air, that's not disputed. There's no reason not to want to improve it. Given that London's air is cleaner now than at any time over the last 400 years (Lomborg, 2001) there ought to be some reward not a threat of a large fine.
What happens, bizarrely, is that cities go in for the car-hatred mantra and ban cars in favour of busisation. When that happens as in Oxford, a trip to the top of the polluted city league tables beckons.
The Oxford Times of 23 September 2004 said:
Doubts have been raised about a survey that places Oxford at the top of the UK's air pollution league.
It's not first, says city council expert Roger Pitman, it's fourth.
Oh that's alright then. Asthmatics everywhere can now sleep soundly in their beds at night.
The disputed survey, by gas supplier Calor, claimed that nitrogen oxide levels were higher here than in 29 cities nationwide, including busy parts of London.
But the city council has hit back, less than convincingly, by saying that a 2003 study by scientists at Harwell showed Oxford fourth out of 87.
The nits are being well and truly picked here. Whether it is first from 30 or fourth from 87, that is a terrible indictment of our air quality.
Although the expected asthmatics line is trotted out, the question that must be asked is how Oxford came to be top of a league table of 30 polluted UK cities or fourth our of 87.It's not first, says city council expert Roger Pitman, it's fourth.
Oh that's alright then. Asthmatics everywhere can now sleep soundly in their beds at night.
The disputed survey, by gas supplier Calor, claimed that nitrogen oxide levels were higher here than in 29 cities nationwide, including busy parts of London.
But the city council has hit back, less than convincingly, by saying that a 2003 study by scientists at Harwell showed Oxford fourth out of 87.
The nits are being well and truly picked here. Whether it is first from 30 or fourth from 87, that is a terrible indictment of our air quality.
The Oxford Mail of 02 June 1998 said:
Transport minister backs Oxford car ban.
Transport minister Glenda Jackson gave her backing to a radical scheme to ban cars from Oxford City Centre.
Bingo. Shortly afterwards Oxford city centre got busisation and it hit the top of the polluted city league tables by 2004.Transport minister Glenda Jackson gave her backing to a radical scheme to ban cars from Oxford City Centre.
That potential EU fine is multiply galling and the final reason is that on days of poor air quality there is a pattern in the data showing that with high pressure and a southerly air flow, trans-boundary pollution is brought over the UK from Europe.
The outdoor pollutants with the most severe air quality health risk arise from vehicles with large diesel engines where the use pattern includes frequent periods with the engine under load, as happens with buses pulling away from bus stops and trains pulling out of stations. Under these conditions, such large diesel engines emit the two most mutagenic carcinogens known to science, 3-NBA and 1,8-DNP. In standard Ames tests of carcinogenicity, only 0.0000003 grammes of these pollutants caused 6 and 5 million mutations respectively.
The initial research on 3-nitrobenzanthrone was carried out by Prof Hitomi Suzuki but there's also a detailed report from Mersch-Sundermann et al supported by the European Community grant QLK1-CT-1999-00810 which concluded "3-NBA caused DNA migration as a parameter of DNA damage in human derived hepatoma cells (HepG2) using the single cell gel electrophoresis (SCGE, comet assay). At the highest concentration cytotoxicity was observed. Additionally, 3-NBA caused DNA migration in human derived lung carcinoma cells".
So, as public transport is a major polluter emitting two powerful carcinogens, perhaps the politically correct media find it just a step too far to investigate and report accurately.
There are few if any calls for indoor pollution to be addressed, despite the nature of the claim for 24,000 premature deaths annually due to poor air quality...deaths which occur indoors.
The 24,000 claim arises due to already seriously ill patients dying earlier than their medical team expected, with no other 'obvious' cause of this premature departure the reason is ascribed to low air quality. Even though these people are indoors not outdoors when they are being treated and when they finally succumb to their illness(es) it's outdoor air that features in media coverage. Given such an approach, confusing outdoor and indoor air within weak methodology, it's not surprising there is a mass of data and evidence confounding the inaccurate received wisdom, yet newspapers continue to peddle myths about air quality impacts.
Where the focus of media attention should be, but isn't:
Dr Jeff Llewellyn of the government Buildings Research Establishment labs said:
Air in the average UK home is 10 times more polluted than city smog
This key finding has been available for many years.Edited by turbobloke on Thursday 3rd June 20:15
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