Study: Air Pollution Increases Chances Of Breast Cancer By 45%, Prostate Cancer By Up To 28%
GIGO: Garbage in garbage out. This is just a meta analysis and the conclusions of such are only as good as the research reports surveyed. And air pollution studies are notorious for poor design leading to unsafe conclusions. I have critiqued many of them. The claims below can safely be regarded as not proven
Long-term exposure to air pollution significantly increases the chances of developing various forms of cancer, a study has claimed.
The findings of the study, which are yet to be published, have been accessed by the Daily Mail. It claims that air pollution can enhance the risk of getting breast cancer by 45 per cent and prostate cancer by between 20 and 28 per cent.
The experts reviewed as many as 27 studies for their analysis, and found that the risk of dying from breast cancer also increases by 80 per cent among people who are exposed to air pollution as opposed to those who are not.
The study said that long-term exposure to PM 2.5 can cause damage to the DNA, thereby, increasing the risk of getting cancer.
PM 2.5 are tiny particles in the air that can enter the lungs and bloodstream. The PM 2.5 limit set by the World Health Organization is 5 μg/m3. However, most countries have failed to meet the WHO-prescribed limits.
"PM 2.5 also disrupts glands throughout the body that produce hormones. This is a particular concern for breast and prostate cancer which can be driven by hormones," per an excerpt from the study.
Air pollution was also found to be linked with a more aggressive disease and a poorer prognosis.
What do other studies claim?
The finding is mirrored by similar studies conducted over the years. A study published in the Lancet revealed that pollution caused approximately 9 million premature deaths worldwide in 2019. It included countries like China, the US, and many African and European countries.
While another study claimed that air pollution caused by fossil fuels is killing 5 million people every year across the world.
According to the World Health Organization, air pollution is responsible for about 7 million premature deaths every year. It adds that the disease burden due to air pollution is now estimated to be on par with other major global health risks.
In some cases, extremely tiny air pollution particles can even cross the blood-brain barrier and damage the neurons directly. However, Particulate Matter (PM) 2.5 has especially become a major cause of concern for authorities across the globe since it is so small that it can penetrate deep into the lungs.
Air pollution can even affect your sleep. In 2017, a study was conducted in the United States to assess if it is linked with bad sleep. It was measured at one year and five years into the study. The participants also wore a wrist monitor to measure their movements during sleep.
It looked at the effects of nitrogen dioxide and PM2.5 on sleep and found that people who were exposed to the most nitrogen dioxide in the past five years had a 60% increased risk of sleeping poorly. People exposed to the most PM 2.5 had an almost 50% increased risk of sleeping poorly.
Various forms of cancer continue to claim millions of lives globally every year. It is the second leading cause of death globally, accounting for an estimated 9.6 million deaths in 2018.
Between 2016 and 2018 in the UK, more than half of new cases of cancer were breast, prostate, lung or bowel cancer. Every two minutes someone in the UK is diagnosed with cancer, says the data provided by Cancer Research UK.
However, breast cancer is the most common form of cancer, with around 47,000 people being diagnosed with the disease each year in England alone. Every year, around 56,000 women are diagnosed with the disease in the UK—around 150 women a day. Some 400 men in the UK are also diagnosed with breast cancer each year.
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The Next Big Climate Scare: Counting Climate Change Deaths
The next big climate scare is on the way. Advocates of measures to control the climate now propose that we begin counting deaths from climate change. They appear to believe that if people see a daily announcement of climate deaths, they will be more inclined to accept climate change policies. But it’s not even clear that the current gentle rise in global temperatures is causing more people to die.
In December, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at COP28, the 28th United Nations Climate Conference, and mentioned climate-related deaths.
“We are seeing and beginning to pay attention and to count and record the deaths that are related to climate,” she said. “And by far the biggest killer is extreme heat.”
According to Ms. Clinton, Europe recorded 61,000 deaths from extreme heat in 2023, and she estimated that about 500,000 people died from heat across the world last year.
Global temperatures have been gently rising for the last 300 years. Temperature metrics from NASA, NOAA, and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom estimate that Earth’s surface temperatures have risen a little more than one degree Celsius, or about two degrees Fahrenheit, over the last 140 years. But are these warmer temperatures harmful to people?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most cases of influenza occur during December to March, the cold months in the United States. Influenza season in the southern hemisphere takes place during the cold months there, April through September. The peak months for COVID-19 infections tended to be the cold periods of the year. More people usually get sick during cold months than in warm months.
More people also die during winter months than summer months, according to many peer-reviewed studies. For example, Dr. Matthew Falagas of the Alfa Institute of Medical Sciences and five other researchers studied seasonal mortality in 11 nations. The research showed that the average number of deaths peaked in the coldest months of the year in all of them.
The late Dr. William Keating studied temperature-related deaths in six European countries for people aged 65 to 74. He concluded that deaths related to cold temperatures were nine times greater than those related to hot temperatures. Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, has pointed out that moderate global warming will likely reduce human mortality.
Yet, on January 30, Dr. Colin J. Carlson of Georgetown University published a paper in Nature Medicine titled, “After millions of preventable deaths, climate change must be treated like a health emergency.” Carlson claims that climate change has caused about 166,000 deaths per year since the year 2000, or almost four million cumulative deaths.
Carlson admits that most of these deaths have been due to malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, or malnutrition and diarrheal diseases in south Asia. But he goes on to claim that deaths due to natural disasters and even cardiovascular disease should also be attributed to climate change. If death from cardiovascular disease can be counted as a climate death, almost any death can be counted.
The evidence doesn’t support these climate death claims. Malarial disease has plagued humanity throughout history, even when temperatures were colder than today. Dr. Paul Reiter, medical entomologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, points out that malaria was endemic to England 400 years ago during the colder climate of the Little Ice Age. The Soviet Union experienced an estimated 13 million cases of malaria during the 1920s, with 30,000 cases occurring in Archangel, a city located close to the frozen Arctic Circle.
Malnutrition has been declining during the gentle warming of the last century. During the early 1900s, as many as 10 million people would die from famine each decade globally. Today, world famine deaths have been reduced to under 500,000 people per decade. About 10% of the world’s people are malnourished today, but this is down from about 25% in 1970.
The number of deaths from natural disasters has also been falling during the warming over the last century. According to EM-DAT, the International Disaster Database, the deaths from disasters, including storms, famines, earthquakes, droughts, and floods, are down more than 90 percent over the last 100 years.
With deaths from natural disasters and famine declining, and since fewer people die in warmer temperatures, the case for counting deaths from global warming is poor at best. But don’t underestimate the ability of climate alarmists to create fear by exaggerating the data.
https://heartland.org/opinion/the-next-big-climate-scare-counting-climate-change-deaths/
*******************************************************No, BNN, Climate Change Will Not Leave 200 Million Africans Hungry by 2050
An article published in BNN Breaking News by author Aqsa Younas Rana, titled “Climate Change to Plunge 200 Million Africans into Severe Hunger by 2050” asserts that climate change will result in widespread hunger, starvation, and agricultural revenue decline in Africa by 2050. The claims are unsubstantiated and contrary to real world data and trends on food production and revenue.
The article opens describing a dystopian future in Africa:
Imagine waking up one day to find that the very ground under your feet, once fertile and life-giving, has turned barren. The streams that meandered through your village, brimming with life, now barely whisper. The crops that danced in the wind, promising a bountiful harvest, stand withered. This isn’t a scene from a dystopian novel; it’s a looming reality for millions in Africa, as recent studies project a grim future where 200 million Africans could face severe hunger by 2050 due to the impacts of climate change.
The story doesn’t reference any data or a single study as basis for its prediction of the future, rather it issues a one sentence warning, “[a]ccording to recent findings, agricultural productivity is expected to plummet, with crop revenue forecasted to decrease by 30%.
There is no reference or citation given for the predicted 30 percent decline that Rana warns of, and the evidence that does exist actually indicates that during the recent modest warming, African crops and agricultural revenue have been regularly setting records.
Climate Realism has pointed out across multiple articles that crop production and yields have improved dramatically in most places in Africa during the recent period of modest warming. One recent article by Linnea Lueken, Wrong, Washington Post, Warming Hasn’t Harmed African Crop Production, shows the extent to which climate change has benefitted African farmers:
Data clearly show that the IMF’s claims about warming causing a decline in African crop production is patently and obviously false. Crop production in Africa in general, and Ethiopia in particular increased dramatically over recent decades, even as the planet has experienced a warming of more than 1℃. To reiterate the point, as warming has occurred, crop production and yields have increased, not decreased. Also, real world data and peer reviewed agronomy research provides no reason for believing these trends will change in the future, absent political interference in to use of fossil fuels to plant, fertilize, harvest, and deliver crops.
This graph showing agricultural yields and production for primary cereal grains dramatically increased since 1990 at the same time that climate change was supposedly warming the continent of Africa:
Rana mentions Ethiopia, Kenya, and Malawi as specifically threatened by crop losses, yet since 1990 foundational cereal crops and roots and tubers have increased dramatically in each of those countries. Since 1990 (1993 Ethiopia), the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reports that:
In Ethiopia, despite civil strife, cereal crop production grew by approximately 496 percent, and root and tuber production increased by a little over 176 percent;
In Kenya, cereal crop production expanded by about 35 percent, and root and tuber production enlarged by almost 97 percent;
In Malawi, cereal crop production expanded by about nearly 185 percent, and root and tuber production grew by an astonishing 3,082 percent. (see the figure below)
Africa in general has seen dramatic increases in agriculture, as demonstrated in numerous other Climate Realism posts, like, here, here, here, and here. Clearly, climate change is not causing a decline in African crop production or harming African farmers.
Agriculture is the top source of income in most of the countries on the African continent with a few exceptions, and economic growth in Africa has been strong in recent decades. “Growth has been present throughout the continent, with over one-third of African countries posting 6% or higher growth rates, and another 40% growing between 4% and 6% per year, reports the World Bank.
With these facts in evidence, the obvious question is: where is the damage to agriculture from climate change claimed by BNN?
The BNN article misses the most obvious factor that has restrained crop production in recent years in some African countries, and caused dramatic fluctuations in others, namely political and civil unrest. According to the website African business, civil unrest is at a six-year high:
A surge in civil unrest in Africa, fueled by political tensions, food insecurity, and government inefficiencies threatens stability, disrupts businesses, and stirs up social and economic crises in the region, new report finds.
…
36 African countries experienced a surge in risk between 2022-Q2 and 2023-Q2, marking the continent’s largest annual increase since the dataset’s inception in 2017, Verisk Maplecroft’s Civil Unrest Index reveals.
The number of African countries now categorized as high or extreme risk for civil unrest has also risen to 37, a significant jump from 28 just six years ago.
Civil unrest threatens farmers’ livelihoods. Even when farms and farmers themselves aren’t in a war zone, such unrest and political fighting often limits farmers access fuel, fertilizer, seeds, and makes it hard, if not impossible, to transport their crops to market. War, rebellion, and civil unrest presents a far more immediate and disruptive danger to agricultural production in Africa, than the gradual warming of the climate over the past 100 years, or any potential warming one might realistically expect by 2050.
None of these facts stopped BNN from writing a poorly researched and unreferenced opinion piece claiming that climate change was the primary problem threatening agricultural production in Africa. Facts just get in the way when the media source wishes to push an alarming climate change narrative.
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Australian ex-PM eyes pumped hydro opportunity in the Upper Hunter
Pumped hydro requires TWO dams. What does Mal think the dam-hating Greens will say about that? He's dreaming
Acompany owned by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and his wife Lucy has won a tender to develop plans for two pumped hydro projects in the Upper Hunter.
WaterNSW has awarded a development agreement to Upper Hunter Hydro (UHH) to explore the feasibility of the projects using WaterNSW land and reservoirs in the Hunter Valley.
The company was registered in early 2022 under the ownership of Wilcrow Pty Ltd - a Turnbull family entity that has traditionally held its pastoral properties in the Upper Hunter.
The pumped hydro projects, which would deliver long duration storage totalling more than 1.4 gigawatts for eight to 12 hours, could power a million homes.
Upper Hunter Hydro has been granted access to the Glenbawn Dam and Glennies Creek Dam as part of its investigation.
WaterNSW said the company would seek to secure all necessary approvals and consent for their projects.
Elsewhere in the region, AGL and Idemitsu are exploring the feasibility of establishing a $450 million pumped hydro project at the former Muswellbrook Coal site at Bells Mountain.
Mr Turnbull said pumped hydro projects would provide important support for industry and employment in the Hunter.
"Australia has abundant wind and solar generation, some of the best in the world. But the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Pumped hydro provides the long duration energy storage we need to make renewables available 24/7 and secure our clean energy future," he said.
"Renewables development is not for those wanting instant gratification .... but it is dawning on the market that we are going to need a lot more long duration storage than we thought."
Mr Turnbull said the Upper Hunter Pumped Hydro would proceed to a detailed design phase that incorporates "wide ranging community and stakeholder engagement" as well as "thorough environmental assessment," to secure planning approvals and backing from investors.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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