Calculating Air Pollution’s Death Toll, Across State Lines - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/climate/air-pollution-hea... | https://archive.today/HEapE - February 12th, 2020

Premature mortality related to United States cross-state air pollution - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1983-8 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-1983-8

> I thought that smoking and bad dietary/exercise habits were the main factors

While that is true, PM2.5 is still a major cause of lung cancer in non smokers, see e.g.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11729863/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11969995/

I see from your sources that lung cancer in non-smokers is still one of the top causes of death, and of course air-pollution is a primary cause of that. Good to know.

Air pollution is pretty clearly correlated with reduced life expectancy, even if you don't directly die from it

Also noise pollution, and above ground trains are hella loud. (Or at least CalTrain and BART are...)

This is a widely debunked bad faith NIMBY talking point. A train, even at high frequencies, is less noise pollution than a highway or major road.

In the house I lived it was not debunked. It was fact. The caltrain blasted it's horn hourly (or more) 24/7 within earshot of my house. I could not sleep with my window open and often slept with ear plugs even with the window closed. I get you might be tempted to spout generic statistics, but I can tell you without a doubt it was ear blistering loud up close, and sleep disturbing even 2 blocks away.

Also for what it's worth you have no idea if it's good or bad faith.

So you would have preferred a roughly 12 lane freeway 2 blocks from your house to move the same number of people?

Perhaps, but more likely I would have preferred regulating the blasting of that damn horn.

There are regulations, encourage your local government to establish a quiet zone if that's truly your issue with the train.

https://railroads.dot.gov/railroad-safety/divisions/crossing...

That's only if there are no crossings. Trains are required to sound their extremely loud horns at every crossing which can be heard from miles away.

Such crossings are pretty rare in NYC, and even rarer in passenger routes there.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Level_crossings_...

State/local governments can also declare a quiet zone. https://railroads.dot.gov/railroad-safety/divisions/crossing...

Quiet zones require crossings to be up to a certain standard. If the people opposed to train noise were serious, they could pressure their local/regional gov to upgrade crossings and establish a quiet zone. This tends to be more successful than trying to prevent the train entirely.

I can choose to eat healthy and not smoke. I can't choose not to breathe.