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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 07 2019, @11:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the full-of-electric-eels dept.

Amsterdam's head of transport has announced plans to ban petrol and diesel cars in the city by 2030.

The clean air action plan aims to make the Dutch capital a "world leader in emission-free transport".

Transport chief Sharon Dijksma said residents "live a year less on average due to dirty air" and that the plan should "prolong the health of the average Amsterdammer by three months."

But the plan has already incited strong reactions in the Netherlands with one motoring organisation branding it "bizarre" and wondering how normal people would afford electric cars.

The plan, which would be applied 20 years before the Paris Agreement aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions, would require up to 23,000 electric charging points by 2025. The city currently has 3,000.


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  • (Score: 2) by sshelton76 on Tuesday May 07 2019, @06:42PM (2 children)

    by sshelton76 (7978) on Tuesday May 07 2019, @06:42PM (#840333)

    Look, this last link is much better I'll grant you that. But you're still relying on the conclusions of a study rather than the data it's sourcing.
    If you look at the data, the link with cancer is tenuous at best.

    I'm not saying that pollution is healthy. It's pretty easy to step outside in heavy smog or during inversion season, take a deep breath and instantly realize it was a mistake. You will get sick from it. But it isn't going to cause cancer.

    PM2.5 is particulate matter at 2.5 microns and smaller. These are generally speaking, abrasive to soft tissues such as those in the lung. It is long term exposure to this abrasive, constantly killing off healthy lung cells that gives the cancerous ones a better chance to grow. It isn't causative, it is correlative. You had lung cells and some of those lung cells were cancerous, i.e. immortal or at least much harder to kill. Being the survivors of constant abrasion they then go on to dominate the scene by virtue of the fact they are harder to kill.

    The PM2.5 topic does bring up something I hadn't considered previously though. California has much tougher emissions requirements even though cities like LA have much worse air quality overall. Therefore it is likely the reason you see lower lung cancer rates in California vs the east coast is directly related to those tougher emissions requirements. Not sure how this holds though considering Utah has relaxed standards vs Cali, yet in Utah the lung cancer rate is much, much lower than Cali. Yet the per capita rate of smoking in Utah is lower than anywhere else in the country and therefore both the first hand and second hand smoke rate is lower. So I would guess that makes up the difference but that is only a guess and I say that as person who is well over 40 with a 30 year long, pack a day habit. Ergo my conclusion...

    Car exhaust is a terrible health problem, but is not what causes lung cancer. Cancer causes cancer meaning when your cells decided to suddenly become immortal, other things may have helped it along but they didn't cause it. Unless of course they are mutagenics like say nicotine. But that's a whole other discussion.

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  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 07 2019, @07:59PM (1 child)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday May 07 2019, @07:59PM (#840394) Journal
    • (Score: 2) by sshelton76 on Tuesday May 07 2019, @08:36PM

      by sshelton76 (7978) on Tuesday May 07 2019, @08:36PM (#840412)

      I give up, you win...

      Car exhaust causes cancer... In mice :)