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submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world

The ambient air pollution by particulate matter (PM) has strong negative effects on human health. Recent studies have found correlations between pollution and mortality due to Covid-19. We present here an analysis of such correlation for 32 locations in 6 countries of the Western Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom), for the 2020–2022 period. The data are weekly averaged, and the mortality values were normalized considering the population of the locations. A correlation is qualitatively found for the time-series of PM2.5 pollution and Covid-19 mortality.

The higher mortality values occurred during the pollutions peaks, as presented for the city of Paris (France) and the Lombardy regions (Italia), one of the more polluted locations in Western Europe. An almost linear trend with a factor 5.5 ± 1.0 increase in mortality when the pollution increases to ~45 μg.m−3 is found when considering all data.

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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

When train carriages were returned to Poland’s state-owned railway company, it emerged that five pallets of mines were missing.

Onet reported that the missing mines were carried on a civilian carriage through several Polish cities, including Szczecin, Poznań, Warsaw and Białystok, over the course of nearly two weeks. They were eventually located near Orla, a village in northeastern Poland, inside a warehouse belonging to furniture giant IKEA.

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For more than a half-century, there has been a widespread and largely unmonitored practice of spreading wastewater from oil and conventional gas drilling, by the millions of gallons, onto dirt and gravel roads in rural Pennsylvania.

The practice has found itself awash in controversy in recent years as a number of scientific studies have found that the wastewater brine contains unhealthy levels of radiation from naturally occurring radium as well as toxic chemicals such as benzene, iron, manganese, strontium, barium, aluminum, zinc, lithium, copper and lead.

In addition to being a hazard to human health, runoff of the wastewater can harm nearby streams, killing aquatic life and over time making streams too salty for trout, the studies found.

A recent study by Penn State found the brine is no more effective than plain water for dust control and in some cases can damage roads.

The oil and gas industry has fought back, saying the brine is a free and effective tool for municipalities and does not cause any harm to people or the environment when spread in the right places and the right times.

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The head of the Big Apple’s most powerful teachers’ union flunked Gov. Kathy Hochul and “tone deaf” Democrats Thursday for socking working class New Yorkers with a $9 congestion toll — a week after the election where the party took a drubbing.

“It’s not what I expected to see Democrats doing a week after the election. It’s insane! Stop screwing the working class!” United Federation of Teachers President Mike Mulgrew told The Post, saying he will continue to press his active lawsuit to stop the congestion pricing plan.

It also puts Mulgrew on the same page as President-elect Donald Trump, who slammed the “congestion tax” as “massive” and “regressive” in exclusive comments to The Post earlier Thursday.

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On November 15, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) into law. The IIJA included a five-year transportation authorization for U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) programs, plus a standalone infrastructure law representing the largest-ever infusion ($643 billion over five years) of federal funding for surface transportation, including highways, roads, and bridges. The White House hailed the IIJA as “a once-in-a-generation investment in our nation’s infrastructure and competitiveness,” along with making lofty promises that it would “repair and rebuild our roads and bridges with a focus on climate change mitigation, resilience, equity, and safety for all users.”

But the lion’s share of IIJA funding flows into what’s known as “formula” programs that are controlled by states and their departments of transportation, and they decide what to build, where, and how.

Unless these patterns change, we extrapolate that states’ federal formula-funded investments made over the course of the IIJA could cumulatively increase emissions by nearly 190 million metric tonnes of emissions over baseline levels through 2040 from added driving. This is the emission equivalent of 500 natural gas-fired power plants or nearly 50 coal-fired power plants running for a year.

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The California Academy of Sciences abruptly dissolved a youth group for climate change and fired its staff coordinator earlier this year after several teenage members distributed flyers in solidarity with the museum workers’ union.

The museum created Youth Action for the Planet in October 2023 as “an environmental action hub” for young people who care about the natural world to sharpen leadership and advocacy skills.

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submitted 2 months ago by DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
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“Together we’re advancing initiatives focused on creating safer, more efficient travel options for all modes of transportation, from vehicles to bicycles to pedestrians,” Dave Ambuehl, the chief deputy district director of Caltrans, said in a news release.

https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/new-intersection-project-first-kind-bay-area-19901199.php

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[-] DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago

While I know things are generally more expensive in Switzerland, $685,000 is crazy expensive for just 18 kW (48 panels).

[-] DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago

There is no contradiction. Just because the vehicle is licensed for street use doesn't give the owner permission to operate it in ways that violates the law.

[-] DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world 73 points 5 months ago

Actually, the law does just say "above 85db" is not allowed. Doesn't matter if the car is stock or not.

[-] DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

NYC has never been interested in making parking efficient. The parking meter rates are ridiculously cheap, with many streets not charging anything for parking (or even having time limits). And yes, giving away valuable parking makes driving much more complicated -- but apparently the Governor was in a diner and overheard some voters from NJ complaining about increased costs....

[-] DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world 16 points 5 months ago

The space will be used for a parking lot (originally was supposed to have a cycletrack, but that was deleted as well).

The project cost is $25 million. There will be long-term pavement maintenance costs that comes with the wider highway, not to mention the giant parking lot that is going in. There will be lost property tax revenue, and more death/injury. So it is highly doubtful the refurb costs of the buildings on that block would have been remotely close to all that.

[-] DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world 30 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

For those interested in this topic, there are better sources of info than a NJB youtube video. In my experience, NJB is more interested in clicks than accuracy, and this video is no exception.

In particular, the complaints about oversized firetrucks is a bit overblown because any halfway competent bike planner can work around that when designing bike facilities. When cities say they can't do a bike project because of FD concerns, it usually means they just don't want to do an otherwise popular project, and are using flimsy FD excuses as a convenient way to kill a project.

[-] DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world 42 points 6 months ago

No, it's gotten worse over the past 30 years.

[-] DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world 52 points 6 months ago

Not mentioned in the article is that these systems are still illegal in the US.

[-] DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world 17 points 6 months ago

"I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and it melts your skin off."

[-] DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world 16 points 7 months ago

That $50 billion is over a 10 year period.

[-] DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world 20 points 8 months ago

Then the DMV better start cracking down on large trucks (F250, etc) as well. NHTSA "safety" standards have had all kinds of loopholes exempting large trucks and SUV from basic safety features including rollover protection, head restraint, and various impact protection systems.

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