Smog

[Wowbagger]

Bad today, apparently. Here's wishing well to all our asthma sufferers. Meanwhile, here's some advice I found on a train a few years ago:-

[Jacomus]

Not an asthma sufferer, but I've certainly noticed my chest feeling tight over the last couple of days. Same as the last smog cloud too.

[Ningishzidda]

With most diesels now having deNox catalysts, smog levels aren’t as bad as they were twenty years ago.

On electric powered subway trains, ground level ozone is being created anyway. Ozone reacts with exhaled breath to form a disgusting smelling vapour, so breathe shallowly on the underground   

[clarion]

It's not smog, exactly, but the air quality is bad, and I'm feeling it.

The Mayor of London is advising people to stay inside, when he should be banning cars from the capital, the idiot!

[Basil]

As an asthma sufferer I paid heed to the dire warnings on the Toady program on R4 this morning and seriously considered commuting by train today.  However, being on auto-pilot when I get up, I found myself downstairs in the kitchen dressed in cycling kit.  So I rode in.
I didn't notice any deterioration in the air quality at all.  No deterioration from the usual poor quality in Brum, that is.
Maybe it hasn't worked its way north yet.
Perhaps I'd better be careful tonight if it's heading this way.  I know, I'll only ride as far as the pub and take a couple of breathers there. 
Yes, I think that would be best. 

[T42]

Bad today, apparently. Here's wishing well to all our asthma sufferers. Meanwhile, here's some advice I found on a train a few years ago:-

Reminds me of inadvertently hopping into a non-smoking compartment at Stanmore Common for the first train of the day in the mid-70s, after the thing had been standing in a siding all night with the doors shut.  The air was so corrosively vile and the O2 content so low I thought it was a smoker.

[simonp]

Looked very hazy on the M5 this morning and my throat is feeling ticklish.

[Jaded]

Just walked back up the incline to the house. Definitely feel it.

[PaulF]

Definitely looked hazy across the Thames Valley last night

[Kim]

I've been wheezing on and off for the last week or so.  That's probably a combination of dust kicked up by vehicles and the hayfever season getting going in earnest, rather than pollution, but the air in Birmingham still tastes as awful as ever.

[Ruthie]

Oh so that's what it is!  I thought my inhaler must be faulty 

[pcolbeck]

Surprisingly York has terrible air quality. Its a quirk of geography basically the air just gets trapped over it. You can see the haze from the top of Whitwell somedays. Luckily here up on the Wolds we don't have that problem, mind you the rape can get a bit overpowering sometimes.

[Ningishzidda]

I've been wheezing on and off for the last week or so.  That's probably a combination of dust kicked up by vehicles and the hayfever season getting going in earnest, rather than pollution, but the air in Birmingham still tastes as awful as ever.

The air over Birmingham formerly tasted of HP sauce. It now tastes of Greggs Bakery. Bloody awful.
The air in York formerly tasted of Terry's Chocolates. It now tastes of The Red Chilli restaurant.

The air over Hobs Moat, Solihull formerly tasted of fish glue used at Land Rover. Seagulls smelt it, stopped and stayed. They are now Larus Argentatus Landrovii. A subspecies of Herring Gull.

The air in Bourneville still smells of Cadburys, and long may it continue.

[Wowbagger]

I was walking and cycling about for a good deal of today. Even I felt a little wheezy and I don't normally have any asthmatic symptoms at all.

[spesh]

I've been wheezing on and off for the last week or so.  That's probably a combination of dust kicked up by vehicles and the hayfever season getting going in earnest, rather than pollution, but the air in Birmingham still tastes as awful as ever.

So no change from when I was a PSO at Birmingham University in the early 90s then. 

The view of the city centre from what was the 13th floor of the now-demolished High Chamberlain Hall could be slightly disconcerting when there was an inversion layer.

[rogerzilla]

With most diesels now having deNox catalysts, smog levels aren’t as bad as they were twenty years ago.

If only it were true.  Diesels usually do have catalysts (my Pikey Old Beemer had two!) but they are two-way simple oxidation catalysts which clean up CO and HC only, using the excess air present in diesel exhaust.  To eliminate NOx you need a 3-way catalyst and that's only possible with careful control of the mixture, and the correct catalyst conditions. to ensure there is enough CO to reduce the NOx back to nitrogen.  Only works for petrol engines.

Diesels manage some NOx avoidance through exhaust gas recirculation and engine management settings (NOx is formed when you get very high temperatures in the cylinder) but it's not totally effective.  NOx is going up and up because the increase in diesel cars on the road outweighs the gradual tightening of Euro emissions standards.  And don't start me on particulates, although allegedly direct-injection petrol engines could be far worse in that respect (or at least as bad as a diesel engine with the DPF removed by the owner/operator, which happens a lot).

[Kim]

So no change from when I was a PSO at Birmingham University in the early 90s then. 

The view of the city centre from what was the 13th floor of the now-demolished High Chamberlain Hall could be slightly disconcerting when there was an inversion layer.

That's a view that's best appreciated from a traffic jam on the M6(south)->A38(westbound) up-and-over bit of Spaghetti Junction.  The setting sun glistening through the petrochemical smog against the distinctive Birmingham skyline is enough to make you wish you were pretty much anywhere else.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I didn't notice a thing, even when I was playing football. Maybe that was because of local weather patterns or maybe it was my incredible fitness levels. Ok, it must have been the local weather patterns. I remember one occasion back in Poland though when there were huge forest fires in Ukraine, and that made me feel like there wasn't any oxygen in the air, even though nothing was visible. Apparently this today is caused by Saharan dust?

[hellymedic]

It's not smog, exactly, but the air quality is bad, and I'm feeling it.

The Mayor of London is advising people to stay inside, when he should be banning cars from the capital, the idiot!

Would my opinion that this could be political 'idiocy' belong in POBI?

Methinks his unwillingness to apply any more than 'sticking plaster' type solutions is quite deliberate.

[Polar Bear]

Out cycling on Thursday evening there was a gorgeous huge orange sunset apparently caused by the smog effect over Coventry / Birmingham way from where we were.   

Wish I'd had a camera with me.   

[Basil]

Glad we could help.   

[Feline]

I had to get up in the night to take an extra anti histamine and use my inhalers- so it must be fairly bad (although I can't see it here). I'm usually able to stop using my steroid inhaler around this time of year since I'm only severely asthmatic in the winter.
Today looks much windier so maybe it will all blow away .....

[simonp]

Modern diesels clean? Not so much.

http://www.autoblog.com/2015/04/11/clean-diesel-not-clean/

[simonp]

Meanwhile the government's lack of action is being challenged in the courts.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/supreme-court-to-rule-on-illegal-pollution-levels-10170233.html

I don't know if it's related but I had copious quantities of green snot on Saturday morning.

[Jacomus]

Smog is back again today. Can feel it in the chest.