Anecdotal evidence: I grew up in Australia and I had reasonably severe asthma when I was a kid, when I got older I only got wheezy when I got a cold. Moved to the UK for 8 years and immediately started getting regular asthma attacks after moving over and had to go on a preventer. Lived in London for the three quarters and Guildford for the last quarter. Moved home post COVID and a couple months after arriving home my asthma went back to only being an issue when sick. I'm confident it was pollution related.
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It's amazing how much it can help when you stop poisoning people.
One day humans will look back on living next to roads with ICE vehicles similar to how we look back on people throwing shit buckets out their front window.
Oh yeah, if we survive into the future, at some point, the people of today will be looked at with similar contempt to how we look at the Romans sharing communal sponges on sticks to wipe their asses, how we see human/animal sacrifices, Roman use of lead, the very recent use of lead that put large amounts of it in the atmosphere for everyone to breathe, recent use of asbestos, doctors prescribing cigarettes or leeches going back a bit farther.
Except we're also leaving lasting effects that will also make some of them hate us like the hate some of us feel for the people who killed the dodo to extiction, or the catholic church for destroying so much of ancient American cultural records because none of it featured their religious BS (or creating a system that protected the priests that fucked kids), or the attrocities happening today. All the plastics, micro and macro, that will be everywhere, the long term and runaway climate effects, the lost biodiversity that will take millions of years to return (assuming we don't cross any major turning points that might slow it even more or outright stop it).
“Human recovers when not exposed to dangerous chemicals and gases”
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I really dislike the reaction to research where people say, "of course".
Firstly, unexpected results happen all the time. We don't know until we check!
Secondly, a study like this in particular is important because we didn't know that children's lungs would get better necessarily, or how quickly. It wouldn't have surprised me to find that there was lifelong damage.
Thirdly, research that confirms what we know or expect is very important. Reproduction is at the heart of science! One study means little.
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