Anti pollution masks - waste of money?

[Uni_student]

Hello! I'm a final year design student at university, for my final year project I'm investigating city air pollution and designing a protective solution for cycling commuters. It would be great if you could spare a bit of time, your knowledge and experiences with your commute and opinions on current wearables and pollution masks available.

If you wouldn't mind filling out a very quick questionnaire it would help my degree massively: https://goo.gl/forms/1Alm2ZDTY5gnz1RD2

Thank you and kind regards.

[[XAP]Bob]

Easy - ban petrochemical based vehicles.

Next

[crazydave789]

when they first started coming out there was some discussion on them and the science at the time said and still says that cyclists fair better because we puff and gasp a lot more so expel most of it compared to car occupants and pedestrians. of course there was fewer diesels and catalytic converters which exacerbate the issue spewing out no end of crap on the school run.

sheffield uni proved that we were going the wrong way regarding engines. lean burn was much better but then they couldn't add 500 quid to the price of a new car with lean burn so it went the way of the 10 year light bulb

the respro bandit was comfortable when it was cold but that's about it. I've got one of the city masks somewhere. some of the masks I have from working in a fibreglass mill would probably do the job as well and much cheaper than the pricey respro ones.

with add blue and particulate filters they can clean up diesel engines much cheaper than they dare admit now the thermageddonists have got their teeth into something new to complain about, have a CAT scrappage scheme and retune engines to lean burn and you will cut average emissions by 30-50% for most vehicles saving fuel as well by around a quarter.

[crazydave789]

Easy - ban petrochemical based vehicles.

Next

but you cannot replace them with electric ones proven to pollute even more.

fred flintstone probably has the ideal vehicle

[RickH]

Easy - ban petrochemical based vehicles.

Next

but you cannot replace them with electric ones proven to pollute even more.

fred flintstone probably has the ideal vehicle

They only pollute more if you're a Daily Fail reader! (Robert Llewellyn, of Red Dwarf fame, has a good rant about it in this recent Youtube video - https://youtu.be/ELyGrIQTqjw )

Or, alternatively, believe a report published by an university undergraduate that got circulated as being from the university (Edinburgh) before being thoroughly discredited & withdrawn by the author. (Also given a good kicking by Robert here - https://youtu.be/cOsAb760o48)

[MikeF]

Firstly define pollution.

[Randy_Butternubs]

I do think those respro masks are probably useless. The filters are too small and I can't see them sealing well enough to your face.

I've said it before but if someone really wants to use a respirator I'd recommend a 3M 7500. It'll seal to your face properly, have proper filters and will minimise restriction to breathing. Costs around £25.

It won't take out CO or NOx though unless you use heavier, fancier filters with a limited lifetime though.

If you are worried about particulates I'm not sure it's just diesels you need to be concerned about. Diesels get a bad rap largely becuase you can see the old, knackered ones farting out soot but the larger particles you can see are not such a large health concern. It's the tiny, invisible ones that are the big issue.

I've seen in a few articles/reports that new petrol cars are putting out vastly more particulates than new diesels, around 10-20 times more depending on the source.

[crazydave789]

Easy - ban petrochemical based vehicles.

Next

but you cannot replace them with electric ones proven to pollute even more.

fred flintstone probably has the ideal vehicle

They only pollute more if you're a Daily Fail reader! (Robert Llewellyn, of Red Dwarf fame, has a good rant about it in this recent Youtube video - https://youtu.be/ELyGrIQTqjw )

Or, alternatively, believe a report published by an university undergraduate that got circulated as being from the university (Edinburgh) before being thoroughly discredited & withdrawn by the author. (Also given a good kicking by Robert here - https://youtu.be/cOsAb760o48)

the problem is they factor CO2 as a pollutant in which case from the very beginning electric vehicles have never added up. just like the claims that adding 30% palm oil or grain alcohol to fuels would make us more eco friendly and reduce our carbon footprint. until they develop a friendly fuel cell though they remain toxic time bombs but at least they have stopped using cadmium batteries

our digging up sequestered carbon and burning it has saved the planet - simple fact, the carbon cycle was headed for a crash with CO2 going too low to sustain life on earth. if electric cars continue but using gas and clean coal to power them then the planet will be glad of the CO2 produced. we have done a little better getting up to around 350ppmv but the best levels for plant life and phytoplankton is 2000ppmv. this has no effect of us because being carbon based and CO2 dependent we breathe out 50,000ppmv and even in submarines are quite happy at standard levels of 8000ppmv.

CO2 is not nor ever has been a pollutant the whole global warming debate is based on a single experiment in the 19th century that has never been repeated or factored into the atmosphere because they don't know how. nobody objects to the claim that it is a greenhouse gas, the problem is how it reacts with the other gases when it itself is only 3% of greenhouse gases that themselves only make up 3% of the atmosphere.

what we need is to start fining the EU when our pollution levels go too high due to their pollution drifting over here and use that money to fund a dutch style cycle scheme, tax breaks for living withing 5 miles of your workplace, fee school meals for kids who cycle or walk, cycle parks and lots and lots of greenery to soak up the pollution.

[Mark R]

the whole global warming debate is based on a single experiment in the 19th century

[kwackers]

the whole global warming debate is based on a single experiment in the 19th century

Wrong.
At least twice; I also did it to show my kids.

[[XAP]Bob]

CO2 is not nor ever has been a pollutant the whole global warming debate is based on a single experiment in the 19th century

Erm - I'm stunned that anyone could think this, but out of interest... which 19th century experiment are you referencing?

[Wanlock Dod]

...CO2 is not nor ever has been a pollutant the whole global warming debate is based on a single experiment in the 19th century that has never been repeated...

Whilst somebody is clearly as mad as a box of frogs, there is actually more truth in that than you might have thought. That experiment is ongoing, and the outcome is likely to be terminal for many of the test subjects. There are those that feel performing experiments, the outcome of which is widely considered likely to be undesirable, on the only currently habitable planet for human life was something of an oversight, but at least when it is too late we will at least be able to tell our grandchildren with absolute confidence that it is now too late.

[crazydave789]

CO2 is not nor ever has been a pollutant the whole global warming debate is based on a single experiment in the 19th century

Erm - I'm stunned that anyone could think this, but out of interest... which 19th century experiment are you referencing?

so explain to me why we breathe out 50,000ppmv CO2 as part of living and sequester CO2 ourselves along with every other living thing on the planet, we are called carbon based life forms for a reason.

the fact the earth warms is not the question, every single scientist will confirm that the earth is warming, 0.1 degree C per decade on average - but only during a warming period, then it cools or stagnates like it has for the past 20 years now. Glaciers were melting 200 years ago nothing to do with man but the facct that we are in an interglacial period, worryingly they are growing again which could mean we are heading back down to 12 degrees average global temperatures which is officially an ice age. the average global temperature over the past 5 million years or so is 22 degrees C - I can't wait.

the best level for CO2 based on the life sciences is 2000ppmv.

I'll have to find the science experiment reference as it escapes me at the moment (Svante Arrhenius in 1896 I think) but the experiment was based on CO2 alone in a jar exposed to solar radiation in 1897 or around there, the fact that it is a greenhouse gas is not the question as it is added to greenhouses to improve crop yields and is why kerosene greenhouse heaters are not vented outside for fear of poisoning the plants. Light refraction makes greenhouses warm not the increased CO2 they put in them.

no experiments have been done to work out the balances or the fact that CO2 is less that 3% of greenhouse gases that themselves make up 3% of the atmosphere. its like putting a nightlight candle into a basketball court in december and expecting it to be toasty warm afterwards.

Hydrocarbon use post 1940s is 6x that of pre 1940s yet 1936 was and remains the hottest year on record regardless of the IPCC and NOAA trying to delete it from history. CO2 did not increase and temperatures went down. science fails to take in the whole carbon cycle because it doesn't understand it. so we get front page headlines about defrosting peat bogs releasing catastrophic amounts of methane and another set of scientists proving that a once defrosted that same peat bog processes 10x the amount of methane in its natural carbon cycle. you only have to look at the court case against Al Gores oscar winning sci fi comedy horror and the claims vs the results to see what a sham it is. meanwhile Mr Gore has made quite a lot of money and bought several sea front properties that according to him should have been underwater 7 years ago.

the IPCC mandate is to purely look at CO2 as the cause of all global temperature variance and blame it on mans activities which is funny when you cannot measure it to anything near accuracy due to natures output getting in the way. a single volcano as we are seeing in Bali in a week belches out enough CO2 to match mans annual output. Thermageddonist science also fails to factor in solar activity, cosmic rays which are now proven to be the reason clouds form so less solar activity less solar winds to keep the cosmic rays away and thus more clouds. it fails to factor in geothermal and 50,000 odd subsea volcanoes some of which are warming the pacific to over 30 degrees C.. non climate science has proven that it takes 2000 years for a global oceanic temperate variance to take effect - so if the seas are warming you can blame jesus.

also we now have 7bn people on the planet all recycling carbon and all emitting roughly 150w of thermal output. stick 12 people in my log cabin and it gets rather warm, nothing to do with CO2 but I'm sure you would measure around 7000-10000ppmv so could make that claim using the same science as the IPCC does. the IPCC itself cannot explain the fact that the earth has cooled while CO2 has reportedly doubled, nor can it explain the reasons why we have seen a 14% increase in global greening which equates to an are twice the size of the USA - why can it not explain it? simple they fail to grasp the carbon cycle - high school science proven by the french in the 17th century IIRC.

then we have the fiddling of the figures because the science cannot match the claims, as proven in the IPCC report and the climate gate emails where they clearly state that they need to fiddle the figures.

warming and cooling is a proven natural cycle over thousands of years, but the science behind man made global warming is excessively flawed and biased towards whatever makes them the most money. scientists make wild claims are lauded by the press and celebs then delete the data sets when asked for them by congress because nobody is able to duplicate the claimed feedbacks. the basic climate sensitivity equations are wrong and you can build electronic circuits to prove them. they are multiplying sensitivities by a factor of 40 or something like that which is why the 400bn dollar IPCC climate models are 95% wrong and counting. add to that the fact that the atlantic climate cycle is around 60 years long the models have not been running anywhere near long enough to be a viable comparison. Chapter 9 I think it is of the IPCC report states clearly that if the models are not matching up then they need to doctor the models to fit. hence the deletion of the 1930s and the medieval warm period from their graphs and the blowing up of the hockey stick to make it look more dramatic - again shown clearly in the IPCC report at 10x magnification over the rest of the historical temperature chart.

its not rocket science to see there is a massive problem and that problem is politically driven science addicted to money. one thing you will notice is that AGW has changed to climate change to sustainability - they know they are losing the arguament but they are desperate to implement a global cap and trade scheme to tax the rich to give to the poor because that is easy money and they know they do not have to do anything about the claimed problem.

the UN asked the EU for help in gaining cross border powers similar to the ones it has stolen for itself and the EU was all for it until it realised that it too would lose powers to the UN so it removed its advisory team tout de suite. There is a pollution problem yes but CO2 is not it and never was, it removes itself from the atmosphere quite naturally unlike your starbucks cup or the red bull can you throw away at the side of the road.

[crazydave789]

so in short the science is based on comparing the temperature of a jar of pure CO2 and a jar of normal air when exposed to sunlight. so when the atmosphere is pure CO2 we are indeed in trouble.

nothing has been done to see what happens when you mix and match the CO2 with other gases or indeed water vapour the no1 greenhouse gas. so the experiment has not been repeated using modern standards just taken as a given that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. when it became a pollutant I can't say but lumping it in with sulphur dioxide to sound sinister probably has a lot to do with it. Thatcher became a sceptic when she looked at the science behind AGW even though she used the same arguaments to kill off coal a few years earlier.

AGW science only focused on warming and not cooling which is just as important. but leaving the solar variance out of the studies was just sheer stupidity.

nor are they taking into account that science since the 70s has shown that CO2 lags behind temperature changes by around 800 years, CO2 is driven by climate it is not a driver.

so the stuff I studied in the 80s based on science since the 50s that we are going back into the ice age we never left only paused 11,000 years ago still holds true. and the recent proof that that ice age might have been paused by a series of massive meteor impacts is rather worrying. as is the fact that during the last ice age siberia was not frozen under miles of ice sheet only antarartica, europe and north america. whether this is down to the geothermal history of siberia is unknown, but it is known that siberian geothermal activity killed off 97% or so of life on the planet a few million years back.

[foxyrider]

Thank you CrazyDave - pretty much what i've been taught/read from my education in earth sciences over the last 30 years.