PM Pollution From Coal Shortens Lives by 5 Years in China

It's all over the place on the net, but just in case you missed it, it turns out that increasing the amount of Particulate Matter pollution results in more people getting killed or injured by that pollution. Shocking.

Sources of PM pollution include your car, your local gas well operation, cement plants, and in this particular case in Northern China, coal plants. Northern provinces that got free coal for heating had an average of 55% higher PM concentrations than those living in warmer climes and burning less coal. That resulted in a dramatic loss of life span tha averages just over 5 years, mostly due to cardio-circulatory problems.

This isn't all that hard to understand is it. You breathe air that goes into your lungs. Fill the air with soot, and you fill your lungs with it too. Fill your lungs with soot and your body has a hard time coping with extra crap in your lungs that isn't supposed to be there. When that happens your heart works overtime to compensate. Cause and effect.

Scientists keep telling us that, like lead, ANY exposure to this very fine soot that can lodge in your lungs is potentially harmful. There's no "safe" level of PM. Yet the EPA and the states still issue permits for the release of large quantities of this poison as if that weren't true. It's another depressing example of the science being far ahead of the regulations.