Air quality

OK, it would only be incompetent if whoever is organising recyling depots was intending them NOT to burn. The law obviously is inadequate to deal with the reality.

For example, there was yet another recycling fire in Dewsbury last month, not the first they've had there. It's only huge recycling fires make the national news. There are many and regular recyling dump fires only reported in local news, usually toxic and in populated areas.

The whole idea of recycling is negated by allowing the collected materials, especially plastics, to burn and pollute the atmosphere.

If it was a one off accident it would be acceptable, but it isn't, it's regular and frequent.

I think you missed the point I was making. Storage -. If the law allows bulk storage knowing the dangers of malicious (arson) or natural destruction (internal combustion) then the firms are working 'within' the law. If the storage requires special measures and those measures have not be adhered to then there is a case for incompetence. As for my opinion the whole re-cycling measures are fruitless given the man-made and natural pollutions across the planet. From a usage of the planets natural resources re-cycling can eke out what there still remains and from that point of view it may have a use for prolonging man's existence - but not forever. It is of course man's propensity for short-term measures that gives us the present inadequate methods of 'preservation' of the species.

Sad to say, looking at the facts about the number, size, and frequency of recycling depot fires in the UK, both domestic and industrial, UK recycling probably does more harm than good to the environment. If it was done properly and safely, it would be a different story.

You have to weigh up the pro's and con's. Does recycling create thousands of jobs and fill 10's of thousands of bellies or does recycling, in the way it is done, lessen our species future, by virtue of carbon-dioxide emissions? That's what man is left with as we proliferate the planet at an ever expanding rate. That's the decision you have to make as a government. That's the function of governments - to safeguard their populations as best they can. Work and food for the masses -. It was never an easy question. The more we try to protect our species the worse we make it -.

Our recycling industry has developed under E.U. regulations and targets, councils have been obliged to meet targets, despite ludicrous examples such as householders sorting materials into different boxes and recycling firms putting them all in the same wagon.

Businesses see the opportunity, when local councils are obliged to meet targets and requirements, firms are set up promising to meet those conditions, but not doing. It's a well established process that absolves local councils of their responsibilities.

Recycling, like other services local councils are obliged to provide, has been done and organised in that cynical way, and yes, provided lots of jobs in the wasted time and effort industry.

As long as it's more profitable for firms to bend the rules than follow them, and the public obediently breathe in the fumes from the resulting toxic fires, it will be so.

Weighing up the pros and cons becomes a different calculation post-brexit. It will be up to our own government to structure industries such as recycling and 'green technology'. It may take years for attitudes to change, the idea of social responsibility and of doing something well and sucessfully may be slow to catch on.

p.s. If, the topic of recycling fires fails to hold it's entertainment value, we could move on to fires of non-recyclable waste tips, of which there are many nauseating examples near and far, thoughout the British isles, on a regular basis.

http://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2016-10-27/averies-recycling-brothers-sentenced-over-tip-fire-which-burned-for-two-months/
http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/whats-happening-now-ten-weeks-12080929
http://www.letsrecycle.com/news/latest-news/waste-site-fires-erupt-in-cornwall-and-hampshire/

Tyre dumps going up in flames and toxic smoke is also fairly routine, and remarkably damaging to health.https://lisakintaipei.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/mask1.jpg
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/huge-tyre-fire-sends-plumes-11953411

And again I have to say 'what laws are being broken' and if so 'what actions are being taken'?

As a boy we played every day on the mill cinder tips around Rochdale all of which were perpetually burning underground and indeed not just dangerous to breathe but dangerous to play on (as they had a habit of suddenly collapsing and dumping the unwary into a hot cauldron of red-hot ash). Nothing was done or said then any more than it would appear is being said or done now. We live with an avalanche of legalities from spitting in the street to high-jacking atomic waste. We have neither the courts nor the constables to police it all and never will have. Ergo - we will have to live with a broken rule on the corruption of the planet and considering what will happen over the next 100 years in the burgeoning Eastern nations our flaws will seem as gnats on the elephants arse.

A childhood spent playing in the version of hell you describe may have conditioned you to accept the birds being burned out of the air, butterflies incinerated, earthworms cooked to death and all living things including humans being poisoned, as the natural or at least inevitable course of events. Maybe so; but later rather than sooner would suit.

We were educated into a world that taught us that 'life' was a risky business with no guarantees, other than at some time hence you will die, and that to survive one needed to watch out for oneself, trust no-one only oneself and then only half trust oneself. That will do me. To expect more is laudable to get more laughable. To get back to the subject matter - there are laws giving a modicum of protection. Instead of moaning sue the laws. If after that very little difference is the outcome blame man for his own stupidities and inadequacies and move on - otherwise you will end up topping yourself in sheer manic frustration.

I expect you are right, air pollution only kills about 40 thousand people a year in the UK, so, not too bad compared to some places. It's still a bit annoying that many of the big toxic fires we have are avoidable. When we were kids, there was still clean air coming in from the atlantic, but the air pollution goes all round the world now.

cyfrifia wrote:I expect you are right, air pollution only kills about 40 thousand people a year in the UK, so, not too bad compared to some places. It's still a bit annoying that many of the big toxic fires we have are avoidable. When we were kids, there was still clean air coming in from the atlantic, but the air pollution goes all round the world now.

pollution does not kill directly - it is not like the flying anvil that lands on Wiley T Coyote.

The 40000 deaths per year are an estimation of lives shortened by pollution, not in most cases direct attribution. As such this is a wholesale estimate not a retail survey.

I assume johnb that your estimate of 40,000 is for the UK only? World-wide it goes into millions and with the coming-on-line of the Third World that will increase ex-potentially as those nations modernise. It's laughable to talk of pollution reduction which is being outstripped ten fold by the year. Instead we in the West should be talking 'capture' and 'eradication' or 'storage' technologies which the Third World will require in spades over the next century. We have the intelligence. We have the resources. We have the answers. We just need to apply ourselves in the right direction.

Good to see you taking an interest Johnb. Statistics available to the public are generally out of date and curiously calculated. Hence my use of the word 'about'.

Statistics are a wonderland to themselves. A rough guide for a statistics enthusiast might be to add up the estimated weight of all materials that have gone up in smoke in all the fires at waste tips, recycling centres, domestic and industrial, tyre dump fires and other large industrial fires over the last 12 months. However many thousands of tons that adds up to, went up in the air, polluting the atmosphere, just from the UK.

We might hope strong prevailing winds will carry that chemical soup of smoke, particles and ash out to sea. As long as it's not in my back yard where I'm sitting with my lemon-scented air freshener.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_freshener

A rather naive view point on pollution and its distribution. Over a period of a decade you will receive the same percentage of pollution on you personally as all others on the planet. The distribution is evened out by the planets natural capacities to level to the points of its own survival as it utilises the weather which reduces the pollutions to the lowest possible denominator in order for it to be processed. Not many people know that - and you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off -.

As you point out , it's not a lot of use trying to escape, unless you are in a particulaly bad place. Pollution is planetary. Whenever I see a big plume of toxic smoke rising into the sky though, my natural instinct is to want to get away from and up-wind of it.

Naturally if you live in the path of some pollution clouds on a permanent basis you will become affected very quickly and die as a result of 'excessive' contamination - but in the main we are all being slowly poisoned for the greater good of globalisation, prosperity (whilst it lasts) and modernisation. T'is the way of things. T'was ever that way and t'will ever be so - until we produce the technology to eradicate our dirty little goings-on as we go along our merry way.

Children only know the world they grow up in, history is something they might hear about later, but experiencing the world of the past is impossible really.
So, as nature disappears, species dwindle, and pollutants of all kinds, from nano-particles and pesticides through to billowing clouds of chemicals increasingly fill the environent, those born into that world think it normal.

"Looks perfectly normal to me, bit of grass over there and a tree not far away, what are you on about?"

Pollution from industry at least has some logic to it, pollution from 'accidental' fires of recycling materials, tyres, plastics, chemicals etc is entirely negative. Is there a causal connection between a polluted environment and high rates of cancer etc? I think so.

Yes. Without the slightest doubt. Cancers have always been around. T'is the natural way of things. However - our additions of food mixtures and chemicals and chemical usage around the home and industry are undoubtedly massively increasing the cancer outcomes in many millions. The sad part of that is that it is almost impossible to prove and is being kept under wraps by the globalist's of the planet in order to improve their massive profits. It's a lose-lose situation for the minority that will succumb and who are considered expendable for the greater good - a loose term to encompass man's urge for progress and profit - regardless of the pain, grief and lasting damage it does. It's a sad world but one we have to live with until the day dawns when we will manage to extinguish our species totally. - - - When that might be is anyone's guess.

The 'authorities' are concerned about pollution from diesel vehicles and are talking about bans, restrictions, etc.

It is demonstrable that diesels produce most pollution when accelerating hard (black smoke) or idling (NOX). To discourage use (encourage the long suffering public to use inadequate public transport) many authorities have designed traffic schemes to slow traffic flow rather than improve it.

The simplest way to minimize vehicular pollution is to design traffic management schemes to keep traffic moving at a uniform speed. This is what automatic traffic signals were designed to do in the 1930s.

Amazing how we regress.

Also amazing how ignoring your history leads to making the same mistakes. Instrumental in making the powers that be believe that diesel was becoming less a problem were the globalists who's minions acquired the wherewithal to 'scam' emission tests. (As an aside these people are guilty of criminal activities and should have been exposed and tried as such).
And so we are left with the transition from fossil fuels to other less harmful fuels (to the environment that is) most of which have been shelved or delayed or hidden over the past 75 years in deference to the great God Oil and the race is on across the globe towards 'cleaner products'. Will the racers reach their goal before the residue of the 'spoilers' despoils everything and the whole planet becomes a bread-basket case? Who knows. Tune in again in 70 years time and watch our thrilling finale of _ Homo-Sapien V Homo-Sapien. The Final Battle.

As Johnb says "Amazing how we regress".

True in many aspects of life and society, particularly relevant when it comes to our understanding of what's left of the natural world, and how to manage it and technology etc to make the best of things.

Things, ideas, understandings etc that once seemed plain , etc are quickly forgotten.

Because the vast majority of our species have the ATTENTION SPAN OF A GNAT.

Not surprising as each generation (say25 years) are barely educated to breathe properly before being bombarded with commercial crap from head to toe, given mobile televisions before they are able to walk and taught nothing of relevance as regards their parents history before being cast to the jaws of spin and rip-off and the disingenuous prattle of the main-chancers. Not much hope for rationale or logical progressions based upon previously known facts. It's a race to the bottom and nobody knows how to stop it or even slow it down sufficiently to give 'time' for re-grouping and re-claiming the future.

Insects are the most sucessful creatures on the planet. Gnats will probably still be around when humans have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Atlas wrote:Also amazing how ignoring your history leads to making the same mistakes. Instrumental in making the powers that be believe that diesel was becoming less a problem were the globalists who's minions acquired the wherewithal to 'scam' emission tests. (As an aside these people are guilty of criminal activities and should have been exposed and tried as such).

I don't believe the emission tests were scammed - merely subject to German logic and process efficiency:

The test imposes a common operation sequence on the vehicle to be tested. That sequence must be common for any vehicle that might be put through the test, therefore compared with the real-world performance attainable is very, very lightly loaded.

Modern computer mapped engines can be mapped to run only within those parameters when under test, and it is impeccable logic to do so - especially when the test conditions can be detected automatically.

The test the environmentalists would like would be to rag each and every car to within one inch of its life. This would indeed represent real-world conditions, but would not allow comparisons - tests have to be carried out under controlled, uniform conditions.

They knew they were cheating. They knew that 'controlled' testing wasn't the 'normal' traffic volumes of emissions. Again - disingenuous and although not actually criminal virtually so. You can wrap it up in engineering speak as much as you want they 'knew' what they were doing.

Industry makes the goods that suit it's own interests, not those of the consumer, although of course there has to be an overlap, or goods wouldn't sell. Where there is obvious mismatch, such as planned obsolesence, the 'persuaders', including the advertising industry, tell their 'narratives' and imaginative stories.

The idea that an emmisions test to represent real driving conditions would "rag each and every car to within one inch of it's life" makes no sense.

The manufacturers obscure the facts with smoke, mirrors and techno-garble, but that's normal, all part of their job.

Old people crossing the road is ridiculous, holding up traffic. They should decide which side of the road they want to live on and stay there. Not good for them crossing the road, but the fumes will kill them off, so that will sort that out.

Mothers can be seen trying to 'toughten up' their babies to traffic fumes by putting them in low pushchairs at exhaust pipe height. This won't work. Living as we do on an island swept by winds, we can pretend the air pollution we make doesn't matter, but anyone aware of the global impact of pollution on the atmosphere now would not be complacent about so many large 'accidental' recycling fires of toxic plastic, tyres, chemicals, electronics etc.

Live long and prosper.