| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Air pollution on Chiswick High Road | |
| Posted by: | Michael Robinson | |
| Date/Time: | 07/11/15 14:29:00 |
| "I seem OK, therefore everyone else should be OK" isn't really a good basis for determining public health policy. You'll find plenty of individuals who have smoked their entire life with little apparent ill effects and have lived to a ripe old age but there is no doubt of the harm caused by smoking when measured across a large sample of the population The problem with pollution is that risk will be expressed in terms of probabilities, it is impossible to predict with certainty what will happen to an individual and people are notoriously bad at dealing with concepts like "15% chance of life expectancy being shortened by 10 years" as everyone thinks they will be lucky. But take a street full of people and clearly everyone won't be lucky. The study cited did urine tests and measured inflammation in the children's lungs caused by pollution so the conclusions weren't purely based upon the children's decreased lung capacity. |