This doesn't seem to be true: see pages 83 and 84 of the link below, suggesting around 20% of UK PM2.5 emissions come from road transport - this is not negligible.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

That isn't refuting my statement. Road transport includes all vehicles on the road, and my statement is that trucks are by far the largest source of particulate matter on the road. The standards on trucks (and buses) are exponentially worse than passenger vehicles -- justified by the notion that they're doing something more worthwhile -- and many horribly polluting older models are grandfathered in. The average age of a passenger car on the road is much, much newer than the average age of a transport truck.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.8b01914

The crux of that is that particulate pollution had a low correlation with passenger car volume, and a high correlation with trucks. Indeed, they found low utilization trucking routes had worse pollution than the busiest highway in North America (which would have been much more pronounced if the latter didn't also have significant truck volume).

Though it is worth noting that there are a number of worse sources of particulate pollution. Wood burning fires, for instance, or home gardening equipment with virtually no pollution control.

> The standards on trucks (and buses) are exponentially worse than passenger vehicles

How can one group be 'exponentially worse' than just one other group? How can you see an exponential relationship between two data points? That doesn't make any sense. You'd need to be looking at a relationship between at least three data points to say it was exponential.

You’re not wrong, but colloquially it’s common for people to use “exponentially” to mean “a lot”. Just like it’s common for people to use “massive” to mean “big” (i.e. large spatial volume).

It was just an idiom as this isn't a technical discussion. I think most readers could get the idea.

Exponentially is often used to mean "10 times more". So if one date point is 10 times higher than a second data point, than the wording would hold colloquially.

Are you confusing with 'an order of magnitude'? Exponential is a rate of change, so you simply can't determine it on two data points. Order of magnitude is the relative change itself, so you can determine between two data points.

You are literally correct, and literally could not be more wrong (and I'm deliberately using both the correct and colloquial - but depressingly also dictionary defined - definition of the word 'literally' there).

Language evolves, and not always for the best.

No, but I agree that OOM is the better word choice. That's the great thing about the English language - whatever it means today, it won't tomorrow!

Also, to address the definition of "exponentially", I refer you to the second definition here [0]:

  -- "any positive constant raised to a power."

[0] - https://www.dictionary.com/browse/exponentially

That's not what that definition means in this content.

Think about it - you can express any change from A to B as a positive constant raised to a power. So if that's what you think it means then you're saying any change from A to B is rising 'exponentially'.

Well......Actually....

If I have 5 accidents and you have 25 accidents you've had exponentially more. You don't need 3 data points, x^2 is an exponent.

Why is truck regulation so substandard? To enter the metropolitan London area (600 sq miles), HGV’s have to meet stringent pollution standards for particulates and NOx or else they pay £120 a day. Under those circumstances they aren’t a dominant source of pollution.

You’re definitely right that wood burning stoves and static plant are big sources, although location of emission is very important, someone using garden machinery intermittently on their own property or a wood burning stove out in the country is mostly polluting themselves, the same can’t be said for a freeway being driven through an urban neighbourhood.

Passenger cars in North America saw incredible advances in emissions almost entirely courtesy of California, that state spearheading demands to respond to the LA smog crisis that peaked in the 1980s. Other jurisdictions, like my home province of Ontario, just went along with the giant. It's why diesel cars are so rare, and as we know often lied (quite aside from the VW thing, every single instance where a diesel vehicle has been measured under actual use has seen emissions dramatically worse than claimed).

Big trucks, however, couldn't make the transition as quickly, and for the necessary torque still rely upon diesel. And they've gotten away with much, much worse, though again California is taking the lead and in the next few years older trucks will be banned from the roads.

Regarding the location of particulate sources, I've read that even in London, England, something like 75% of the particulate matter is from outside the city, blown in from farms and rural areas.

I was just reading about pollution sources, and you’re right that 75% comes into London from outside, compared to only 20% of NOx. Although levels of PM are double the concentration along roads compared to the background, so there is a local as well as a regional effect.

Yeah, diesel cars and trucks are a menace. I remember getting black soot in my nose in London.

I read somewhere that 50% of particulate pollution comes from brake discs/pads and tyres, meaning that electric cars will still cause air pollution. But hey, half as bad is twice as good.

The existence of regenerative breaking means that the amount of pollution from the little friction breaking still necessary should be much less.

Regenerative breaking doesn't wear pads, so only emergency breaking would count towards that 50%.

> black soot in my nose in London.

That's probably dust from the London Underground, which is mostly iron (from the rails and wheels), brake dust (ceramic) and dead skin.

There are far more diesel passenger cars in the UK than in the US. Diesel is generally far worse for particulate emissions.

I still can't believe we paid for public awareness campaigns to promote turning off the water when you brush your teeth

This is known as bikeshedding.

Something like turning off water is something anybody (also the campaign agency) can comprehend. Turning off water safes water, easy.

Now think about trying to reduce exhaust pollution, you can't see it, people don't know how much pollution is generated by a car, and most importantly: there is no easy solution to reduce it. Yes, you can ask people to leave their car at home and commute to work by bike, but that does not work for everybody and reduces comfort for most people.

The campaign agency could have done an awareness for exhaust pollution, but that would have been much harder to do, and probably they won't make much friends while doing so. Where as something easy as a water saving campaign will give that loads of goodwill.

Saving a liter or two of water two times a day for every person doesn’t seem like a bad start. It’s takes very low effort and you don’t lose any functionality, the water is literally just pouring down the drain.

Or am I missing some sort of sarcasm joke?

Many people feel an obligation to take care of the environment. If they make an effort to turn off the water when they're brushing their teeth and buy LED bulbs to replace their CFLs, maybe even upgrading their 2005 Corolla with a 2015 Prius, they'll feel like they've abundantly satisfied that obligation.

If they're (hypothetically) a commercial driver, spending the day at work driving around in an 1980s diesel truck, or installing golf course sprinkler systems, they'd still feel that they're an environmentally responsible person.

If the ad campaigns instead of suggesting toothbrushing habits informed the public of the disproportionate pollution caused by old trucks or vilified inefficient agricultural watering practices, that person might have a 100x more effective impact from their personal obligation if they advocate replacement of the truck or change agricultural practices. Also, consumers of these polluters might help encourage change by, say, preferring a waste disposal company that uses newer trucks or by changing consumption to eat peanuts grown with rainwater instead of desert-grown aquifer-fed California almonds.

You're framing this as if there can only ever be one initiative, and that saving water while brushing teeth was the wrong choice.

Realistically there could be a new initiative like that 1-5 times a decade. Society rarely behaves in the most optimal way, and as I said saving water is very low effort, though it might also be low impact. The real faillure not following up with more and better initiatives.

What if none of the available waste disposal companies are using newer trucks, are you supposed to call them every week like with congress people? And how is buying a bag of peanuts branded with some promise of ecological responsibility any different from saving water brushing their teeth? A single bag of peanuts from a different brand doesn't make any impact by it self and it only serves to make people feel like they've done their part adequately.

Not at all; just that of the possible initiatives one of the least effective options was chosen.

By analogy, if you were trying to help someone get out of debt, would you advocate they take unpaid time off work to walk along the roadside collecting cans for the deposit, or work overtime hours at $50/hr?

There's limited energy and funds available for these initiatives; by advocating ineffective ones more harm than good is done.

Saving water at home is nice but it's literally a drop in the bucket compared to the water wasted by inefficient agricultural practices. It won't make a difference one way or the other.

>It won't make a difference one way or the other

Goal is not to make a difference, it is to make you feel better for yourself.

And more importantly, distract everyone from the real perpetrators with special interests.

It's a very bad start because it effectively accomplishes nothing but waste the very limited bandwidth we have to convince the population to do anything. It also makes people feel like they're "doing their part", which isn't really true at all.

In some rural parts of Germany that are losing population that is actually not helpful at all. The sewer system is built for a certain amount of water and if less than that is used the utility company has to flush it with - more water.

So it really depends on the situation as well.

The story is pretty clear that the villains are ODOT who built a highway right next to a school.

Only the article is incorrect as pointed out in my other comments down voted comments. And this does matter because it changes a lot of the tone and basis of the article.

Sure there was some building of some sort there back in their 1962 photo. But that isn’t Harriet Tubman school we are talking about today. The school was only opened in 1982. Built after pressure by community activists who wanted a school in their neighborhood. Further it was actually closed in 2012 and then reopened in 2018. With much written at the time of reopening about the pollution problem.

So really the “villain” (if there should be one) would have to be Portland Public Schools that built, closed, then reopened a school next to an existing traffic sewer. In 1980s it is somewhat forgivable mistake, we weren’t as aware then. But in 2018 they knew full damn well the pollution problem. Nobody can deny that.

This school shouldn't be there. Is pollution bad? Yes. Was Robert Moses and his cohorts a disaster for urban environments? Yes. Do cities need to be greener and have better transit? Yes. But still, the school simply shouldn’t be there. So the article really falls apart on a number of levels.

In this case I think people using the existence of the school to campaign against this freeway project are doing a selfish disservice to the students. I'm generally anti-freeway, very pro-transit, very pro-urban. But let's be clear: the current levels of pollution are unacceptable as is, regardless of widening. The school shouldn't stay where it is even if the freeway doesn't get widened. So the people using it as a prop in their campaign to prevent widening are essentially arguing it is fine to stay where it is. This is sad and IMO a selfish use of this bad situation for the students of this school by the anti-freeway campaigners.

If that were the case, the title would have been, "Why do poor school kids have to clean up ODOT’s pollution?" But that wouldn't have gotten as many clicks, as OP stated.

The title is poor, yes. The content of the article is pretty clear that ODOT is the problem, though. I don't think the title was claiming that "rich commuters" should pay for it, so much as it was trying to emphasize that the children are in no way responsible for it. The author could have chosen better, though.

Likewise in Seattle they built i5 straight though the city cutting it in half.

I’m not actually actually sure that’s the case, as long the regulation is in place HGV’s have the weight and cost margin to include really solid filters, so particulate pollution at least from the engine is equivalent to passenger cars. Tyre and break wear would be more, but then the numbers of vehicles would also be a lot lower. Do you have any evidence that passengers cars have a nominal effect? I wouldn’t expect that to be the case.

Exhaust processing of current trucks basically doesn't work with a city driving profile (~high idle fraction, very low loads, average speed 15-25 km/h).

They need periodic runs on decent speed roads, I’d have thought this road itself would do the trick. Presumably it doesn’t run at 20kmph.

For several hours a day the people using this road would be ecstatic if it were that fast.

The I5 does often run at those speeds in this location, which is why they want to add lanes here.

Since it has been several years since dieselgate, how much pollution does the average car create during freeway speeds?

This is easier to know for new cars than old, because it's only been measured consistently since 2008.

fueleconomy.gov will let you look up cars, and the "Energy and Environment" tab will show you CO2 emissions and greenhouse gas emissions, each on a grams/mile driven scale.

A 2019 Volve V90 station wagon emits 328g/mile of CO2 and 444g/mile of GHG.

A 2019 Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid emits 51g/mile of CO2 at the tailpipe and 140g/mile total including the upstream electricity production, assuming you live in Beverly Hills.

A 2019 Tesla S P100D emits nothing at the tailpipe and 120g/mile.

A 2019 Honda Accord Sport/Touring is 345g/mile CO2 and 410g/mile total GHG.

Does that help?

So who should then pay for the pollution reduction in the non-interesting version of the story?

The regulations on trucks (and diesel service vehicles in general) needs to be much more stringent, especially those that pass through urban centers. That is an industry that has pushed back at every turn and people just get misdirected to blaming Sally Suburban. The same thing happens regarding roads in general where we often imagine that industry and goods still appear at their destinations and the world rolls on if all of the roads were turned into parks.

That's the general case, though. This school might be dealing with other particulate sources, as another comment mentioned a large number of industrial sources nearby (e.g. cement plants are a big source). In which case maybe the school just isn't in the best place.

And it's worth noting that we now measure and pay attention to this but it was much worse in the past. Smelling the wonderful smell of a wood burning fire is usually an indication that you're in a dangerous particulate zone.

Does that analysis to apply to the area immediately adjacent to the freeway, before particles disperse over a wider area? Even when trucks are absent, traffic smells bad.

Also the passenger cars contain the people who own houses and pay the city and county property taxes that fund the schools. So the passenger cars are the ones paying for the pollution controls. Those that don't drive, to a much higher extent than those who do, don't have jobs and don't pay property taxes.

TFA makes it clear that the people using the highway at peak times are not local residents, they are just passing thru.

Also, there's no "unemployed exemption" to property tax, that I know of.

If you live in Clark County and work in Oregon, you get to pay Oregon income tax.

To a much greater extent than those who do, those who do not own cars do not have jobs or own real estate. Those who own real estate are the ones who pay property taxes and that, plus the state lottery, plus federal subsidies, pay for the schools.

Of course there are retirees who don't work but own real estate. These folks generally own cars, but don't drive them as much as those who work, yet they generally don't have children or even grandchildren in the schools and yet have to pay for the schools. Which is fine.

The category of people who don't have cars is largely comprised of people who don't have jobs because if you don't have a car you can't get to work. These people don't own real estate. They generally live with others who do, or in subsidized housing and live off government benefits of some kind or another such as disability or aid for people with dependents.