Climate Change, Particulate Pollution, and Air Quality

We’re back with another episode on climate change and health, and this time we’re looking at some of the indirect health effects, with a focus on how things like air pollution and allergens arise from a warming planet and make us sick, particularly affecting our respiratory system.
Related HCT episodes:
Climate and Health Playlist:
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Credits:
Aaron Carroll -- Writer
Tiffany Doherty -- Writer and Script Editor
John Green -- Executive Producer
Stan Muller -- Director, Producer
Mark Olsen - Art Director, Producer

[@mason2971]

i live in Rhode island and the wildfire smoke from Canada has been pretty bad lately. i work outside and can feel it in my chest some days.

[@PeaceOnEarth013]

I work outside in Canada and I feel you. Stay safe, fellow worker ❤️

[@cbpd89]

I empathize, it's really terrible to have our of control smokey air. I live out west, so late summer and into the fall we get smokey air fairly often. 2021 was the worst year I can ever remember though. The entire month of August the air was so smokey it was almost yellow. I couldn't go outside without feeling a burning sensation in my throat.

[@psalmy26]

Use a mask my friend. It's only your health on the line.

[@meanpersonable]

I find it funny that when I think of industrial pollution and my pollution (driving a combustion engine car and using the products or energy of industry) I make the immediate connection with increased Co2, but when someone mentions forest fires (or just wildfires) I think - oh, that's natural. Well, maybe x amount of forest fire are natural, but if anthropogenic climate change is causing global temperature rises that increase wildfires by 2x . . . doh! [2x is just a way of saying increase. Twice is probably too high - maybe]

[@alexcrouse]

I want to know what Sam does for a living. They have been top contributor for a LONG time! Thanks, Sam!

[@TakeWalker]

Yes, since they first had a way to support the channel, I think! Thanks, Sam!

[@healthcaretriage]

Sam is our hero!

[@shakeyj4523]

@@healthcaretriage Would you ever consider doing a segment on Masks and pollution. PM 2.5 masks are pretty obvious for particulate air pollution, but it is my understanding that they don't help with Ozone. I did read a couple of studies that said an Activated Charcoal Mask can reduce Ozone up to 30% but I don't know how accurate they are, or if you can even find masks that help with Ozone and particulates. I means that some are basically locked in during the summer, and can't even exercise. It's just a thought.

[@anderstermansen130]

He*

[@Praisethesunson]

He developed the software American health insurance corporations use to auto deny healthcare claims humans would approve.

[@Discitus]

The smoke from the wildfires in Quebec has reached my city. There's a slight haze, I'm getting a big time allergy flare up and my chest hurts a bit. Such nice weather, but I'm staying inside.

[@thfr4321]

Love the casual situs inversus X-ray at about 2:50

[@chelseashurmantine8153]

I think there should be a counter in the corner of every news station like during the BP gulf spill that shows air particulates. Because this ish is usually invisible, it’s hard to demand action or get people to care

[@slevinchannel7589]

That helps less than going to your next-nearest Schoolboard and proposing "Hey, why not show the Climate-Change-Videos by Hbomberguy and UpisNotJump'?

[@emilyplunkett6034]

This video came on a day when the viability in Ottawa were comparable to my brown gradient sunglasses; all due to the Ontario/Quebec fires, which are all immediately north and west of the city. It's weird, because I'm originally from the Canadian side of the Great Lakes and have dealt with summer smog warnings all my life - but I've never experienced anything quite like this.

[@charlespentrose7834]

I've had a cough for the past few days and am wondering if smoke from wildfires is causing irritation.

[@mccannms]

Good video, but a couple of nits - 3 oxygen ATOMS, (not molecules) and definitely not odorless.

[@平和-v1z]

Great presentation, very informative!

[@scottabc72]

Well this is topical as a massive cloud of smoky haze has descended from Canadian forest fires has gotten as far as Philadelphia where I am today

[@pnwmeditations]

A perspective I appreciated from a climate policy analyst: even if climate change was somehow a big hoax, the cost/benefit on decarbonization would be worth it just on the grounds of pollution reduction alone, and its downstream health impacts.

[@slevinchannel7589]

!!

[@Praisethesunson]

Spoken like someone that doesn't own billions of dollars in fossil fuel infrastructure.

[@drehherd7394]

@@Praisethesunson that comment made my day lol haha. How dare people stop me from getting rich on the cost of environment!!!!

[@muphynman221]

I'd be very interested in an expanded video about the footnote at 6:56 to create communities that promote walking and biking. The Dutch government, in it's administration of their public healthcare coverage system, conducts and publishes studies about the monetary and non-monetary results of their world-famous bicycle culture. As Healthcare Triage has mentioned in former episodes that very modest increases in daily physical activity have substantial health benefits, both for healthcare expenditute and quality of life of the individual, I would expect that corresponding reductions in air and noise pollution are also discussed in their papers that can tie to this episode. Supplemental data for such an episode can probably also be helped by another established biking country like Denmark for long-term health data, and maybe short-term looks can be found in more recent up-and-coming bike cities like Paris, London, and New York City, cities with a history of local pollution so bad it hits the history textbooks and not just the medical ones. Less probable, a collaborative effort with youtuber Not Just Bikes would be a great idea and provide a big crossover in audiences that probably have a lot in common!

[@katiem.3109]

Alternatively, there's an urbanist youtuber called Nimesh in Los Angeles who's a doctor and has talked about how car centric cities harm health.

[@sorchaazuragaming4765]

The Canadian wildfire smoke got much worse overnight (eastern PA). The light coming in the window is distinctly yellow, and walking outside was like getting doused in a bottle of liquid smoke flavor. My kid isn’t going to the playground anytime soon 😢

[@CG_Hali]

Diddo on wildfires in Ontario. We live 100km from 2 of them. There's a slight grey haze to the forest. What's interesting is I'm very sensitive and the smell doesn't affect me as much as cold winter days where I literally choke if there's a pin hole leak of wood smoke. Yet we only turned off our air exchanger yesterday. In winter we have to condemn it, lock windows and use weather tape on some windows. Not in this case. Smoke isn't coming in much at all, but people who aren't bothered by winter much are having issues. So there's a definite difference in air quality (levels of air particules and types) from forest fires that make it worse than normal wood burning (still a lot in our rural town). Maybe because the particules are bigger and irritate lungs differently?!? The sun shining orange in the house is also a bit ominous O_O

[@WoLpH]

The name "ozone" is derived from the Greek word Ozein, meaning, "to smell". It is certainly not odourless ;)

[@rickyquanjr.8923]

Great video as always

[@sixvee5147]

May the Anthropocene epoch make the Permian-Triassic extinction event seem like a minor footnote in the pages of Earths history. Here's to making scenario SSP5-8.5 of the IPCC assessment a reality.

[@Praisethesunson]

Salude! Burn the world so our corporate overlords can become slightly richer. A cause totally worth killing the world for.

[@milos_radovanovic]

ozone is certainly not odorless

[@slevinchannel7589]

Grammar?

[@Peachy_Skyes]

Where I am the sky is bright yellow

[@elliotv5354]

If ozone dissapates in a matter of hours why does this matter? Genuinely asking

[@chairshoe81]

he said its odorless but if youve ever used an ozone machine you know its a super nasty cloistering floral plasticy smell that makes your body panic

[@Susan-z7m]

We live and work away from the city and air is fantastic. Internet is fast mobile phone full reception. Amazon next day delivery to our house and office

[@EB-vj1rr]

Why isnt Dr. Doherty credited as such, just with her credentials?

[@healthcaretriage]

Hi! Tiffany here - this is how I usually sign my name professionally (with credentials afterward and without Dr. before my name) so I thought it made sense to do that here, too! I would like to give you a virtual high-five for asking about this though!! Whenever Aaron mentions me in a video he does call me Dr. Doherty :)

[@slevinchannel7589]

@@healthcaretriage Its odd you dont recommend the Best Climate-Change-Coverage in existence to your Fans. LQike Hbomberguy, UpisnotJump, Not Just Bikes.

[@bipolartorecovery1485]

Hi

[@shanebowling4858]

Since 1945 there have been over 2000 nuclear bomb tests around the world. The majority being by the USA. What impact do these have on the environment?

[@rootsm3]

Just took my last amoxicillin for my sinus infection I got from the wildfires lol

[@mariasilviapossas3872]

Ozone is O3. A molecule with 3 atoms of oxygen. Not 3 molecules.

[@Knedlajz2]

there's no reason why there should be so many cars in cities, if they're well designed everything can be reached by public transit or by walking/cycling and other means of transportation that don't have individual people sitting in individual 2 ton metal boxes spewing exhaust everywhere on the street

[@SinHurr]

"If" in your post is carrying more water than the Hoover Dam, buddy.

[@Knedlajz2]

@@SinHurr it's something to aim towards, and clearly an achievable goal (eg. Amsterdam in the 70s vs now)

[@drehherd7394]

​@@Knedlajz2Big Lobby didn't like that... Remember when they abolished trains for public traffic in some cities in favor of cars.

[@Praisethesunson]

But then who will the financial institutions that own our auto manufacturers make the maximum amount of profit off of you?!??!?!

[@90sejo]

2012 begining muvie is real

[@anthonymorris5084]

Expressing that allergies and respiratory issues are worsening because of warming is literally claiming that summer is bad. You know what else occurs from earlier summers? More tennis, bike riding, outdoor cafes, swimming, fishing, golf................

[@anthonymorris5084]

How ever many deaths and respiratory issues you care to cite about fossil fuels, they will never come close to the billions of lives that fossil fuels have saved.

[@odizzido]

My city has essentially made it illegal to not own a car for a lot of people.

[@she3esh]

Australia is pretty good for both, you can get anywhere with public transport in cities but a car is a nice to have

[@silviashefa4097]

As the climate heads into greater extremes globally, how can we best deal with future climate crises? The short answer is that we cannot deal with them unless we take care of nature's inner balance. We live in a tightly-closed and interdependent system in which everything boomerangs back to us. While living in such a system, we need to reconsider what we want and think, and how we treat each other, because our human connections are the primary influence on how nature responds to us. It is common to think that climate is dependent on factors outside of us-whether it be balances between heat and cold in the environment, or the effects of various kinds of pollution we emit-because we lack a complete picture of how our attitudes to each other bring about the strongest responses from nature toward us. No creature distorts nature the way that we people do. And it is not simply a matter of switching to renewable energy sources, electric cars and the like; it is a matter of how we relate to each other. If we truly wish to witness more balance throughout nature and not have to deal with all kinds of cold waves and other natural disasters, then similarly to how we have electricity, water and gas meters in our homes, we should also have meters that count how much evil we emit into the world from our negative attitudes to each other. What I mean is that if we could feel the extent to which we emit negative forces into the world, which negatively ricochet back to us, then we would wish to change this negative driver within us. We would want to switch it to a drive that makes our human connections positive, and which harmonizes us with nature. In simple terms, when we get up in the morning, we should first and foremost consider what we need to do in order for all people to have it good. Developing such an attitude is not so simple, yet we will need to seriously work on it as we head into the future. A life of increasing blows from nature or a life of peace and harmony depends on the extent to which we impact a shift in our attitudes to each other-from negative to positive.

[@kolliwanne964]

The answer is probably that we will create a heavier division in poor and roch countries, by exploiting the poor who are fleeing their destroyed homes to keep afloat the more wealthy countries (East Asia, EU, USA). If mass migration threatens these boarders they will ramp up their concentration camps (yes, those basically already exist) and will start killing people simply on a bigger scale than before. If a pond has too many fish in it it will die. You solve it by either killing some of the fish, or by getting more ressources into the pond. It is not what I want to happen, but whatI believe WILL happen.

[@jacobmcdonald8911]

An argument that finally made me feel uncomfortable enough to seriously decide i should be vegan.

[@slevinchannel7589]

Going Vegan is nice, but 'Not Just Bikes' and 'UpisnotJump' have way more constructive Proposals for you, Jacob.

[@katiem.3109]

Personally, I'm not convinced that going vegan provides any reduced emissions vs a vegetarian diet, or even some omnivorous diets (ex, a pescetarian diet with heavy consumption of bivalves and small pelagic fish). I've searched google scholar on this and I was only able to find one study that compared the global warming impact of the diets of vegetarians, vegans, and omnivores, and that study, published in Nature, found that there was no statistically significant difference between the vegans and vegetarians, and that there was significant overlap between the vegetarians and omnivores (though vegetarian diets had a lower carbon footprint on average). Actually, you might be better off giving up meat and alcohol over giving up all animal products, as I did find a Swedish study that found that people who drink more have higher dietary (including drinks) carbon footprints than those who drink less or don't drink at all.

[@jacobmcdonald8911]

I've watched the Upisnotjump video, and you both don't have the context of my life which made me make this comment. Vegetarianism could possibly be marginally better for carbon emissions, but that's not the only reason I've considered veganism.

[@katiem.3109]

@@jacobmcdonald8911 So you're going vegan for animal welfare reasons? That's valid. Personally I have different views on that topic, but that's okay, and I have respect for anyone who strives to live according to their own morals.

[@slevinchannel7589]

@@katiem.3109 Oh, thee IS a differenc,e its just iniscule compared to what a Politician could do with a single Stroke of their Pen.

[@Psychol-Snooper]

Why call me for living in a rural area? Why not let me live in my little safe bubble, even if it's not real. Also the ozone average here is 0.064 PPM, which is pretty good. More seriously: You should do a video on the fact that negative ion generators produce ozone.

[@dimitriusjulius497]

We all gonna DIE!

[@1DangerMouse1]

That why we need nuclear power.

[@Praisethesunson]

The only difference between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is how long you spend enriching the fuel.

[@jimfarmer7811]

Instead of letting the forests burn we should manage the forests by cutting down fire breaks and burning the remains in power plants. The same amount of CO2 would still go into the environment but at least we could get useful energy and eliminate all the particulates in the air.