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A year in Paris is as bad for your health as smoking 183 cigarettes
A study by the European Transport & Environment association published on Friday confirmed that spending a few days in various popular European capitals is equivalent to smoking between one and four cigarettes.
[...] The Transport & Environment study compared the contamination from fine particles of the ten largest European tourist cities by converting it into the number of cigarettes smoked. The NGO used a method of calculation created by Berkeley Earth, an international climate association.
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A Year in Paris is as Bad for Your Health as Smoking 183 Cigarettes
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There's no such thing as an original sin.
-- Elvis Costello
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday August 13 2018, @12:41PM (2 children)
It'd be really interesting to consider micromorts for supposed "risks" that freak out many people vs. other everyday behaviors that no one worries about.
A couple examples: lots of pregnant women have a long list of foods they worry about consuming. But when my wife was pregnant and we were in Europe for a while, I did detailed research because she wanted to enjoy some of the stuff there. And some of the "conventional wisdom" for these risks were actually about things for which the risks were astonishly low (like the chance of getting listeria from that food while pregnant was less likely than getting struck by lightning at the moment you bought a winning Powerball ticket).
Meanwhile, everyday behavior about food risks and food safety isn't questioned. What's the micromort number for leaving frozen meat on the counter to thaw -- bet it's low but still a lot higher than those supposed pregnancy food "risks." Or what about food bags? Reusable grocery bags are known to carry a lot of bacteria and can accumulate huge amounts if never cleaned or washed (which the vast majority of people don't do). It's good for the environment to not use disposable plastic bags, but how many micromorts are you accumulating?
Another example I remember looking into after that kid was born: SIDS risk. So many parents are on"high alert" in the first few months due to so many campaigns about SIDS. But what if they compared the micromorts for SIDS risk factors to everyday stuff like micromorts for driving your baby to the store or to daycare. Pretty sure you might think twice about making sure you're alert and being careful while driving if people compared these stats rationally.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday August 13 2018, @02:07PM
To some extent that's apples and oranges in that you're vastly more likely to spend 24-48 hours in the bathroom feeling like you're gonna die, vs actually dying, of most food poisoning incidents.
I don't follow reasonable food safety guidelines to avoid death, but to avoid the vastly more likely outcome of feeling like death for a day or two.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13 2018, @02:36PM
How many cases of SIDS are women exercising their right to choose in the fourth trimester?