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Inhalers drive carbon emissions equivalent to 530,000 cars each year, study shows (phys.org)

submitted 3 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/publichealth@mander.xyz

43 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Inhalers are the frontline treatment for asthma and COPD, but they come with a steep environmental cost, according to a new UCLA Health study—the largest to date quantifying inhaler-related emissions in the United States.

Researchers found that inhalers have generated over 2 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually over the past decade, equivalent to the emissions of roughly 530,000 gas-powered cars on the road each year.

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[–] lorski@sopuli.xyz 65 points 3 months ago (3 children)

wtf? people have no choice to use an inhaler. people gave a choice to drive a gas guzzling truck.

[–] treesquid@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

So, because people need them, we can't make them more responsibly?

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[–] ech@lemmy.ca 43 points 3 months ago

And one of the biggest (if not the biggest) irritants to asthmatics? Car pollution. Cut down emissions and the inhalers won't be as necessary.

[+] finitebanjo@piefed.world 39 points 3 months ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 14 points 3 months ago

Its also incorrect because this clearly only considers fuel consumption which is much much less than the carbon created in the production of the car and all the other infrastructure

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Kind of seems dumb to compare an entire industry to equivalent number of cars.

Why? Its more equivalent emissions than several states total vehicle emissions. CO2e is a consistent measure when looking at greenhouse gas emissions and cars are something people are familiar with.

From the articles page:

Results A total of 1.6 billion inhalers were dispensed in the US from 2014 to 2024, generating an estimated 24.9 million metric tons of CO2e (mtCO2e). Annual emissions increased by 24% from 1.9 million mtCO2e in 2014 to 2.3 million mtCO2e in 2024. Metered-dose inhalers were responsible for 98% of all emissions during the study period, and emissions were heavily concentrated among short-acting β-agonist, inhaled corticosteroid–long-acting β-agonist, and inhaled corticosteroid classes. Albuterol, budesonide-formoterol, and fluticasone propionate inhalers accounted for 87% of total emissions. The estimated social costs of emissions were $5.7 billion (lower bound, $3.5 billion; upper bound, $10.0 billion).

Its an enormous amount of emissions.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's also only 5% of the new cars registered in California alone, by your own data.

And that's why it's bad to compare things to cars. Framing is an argument. Comparing something to the equivalent car emissions frames the issue a certain way. By providing an absolute number of cars it makes it seem like it impacts emissions the same as a significant chunk of the car industry (it does not, it is, again by your count, 0.1% of the total).

The headline "Inhalers drive carbon emissions equivalent to 530,000 cars each year, study shows" reads very differently to "Inhalers drive carbon emissions equivalent to 0.1% of the cars sold each year, study shows", which in turn doesn't read the same as "Inhalers emit 2.5 million tons of CO2 each year". All of which don't cover the main takeaway from the study, which is that specifically metered dose inhalers are surprisingly pollutant and more research should be done on how to effectively replace them.

I can't tell you how easily they could switch to low emission inhalers, but I can tell you what a bad headline looks like, and this is one.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world -2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

It’s also only 5% of the new cars registered in California alone, by your own data.

That's literally an insane number of cars. Its literally more vehicular emissions than 60 countries.

At this point I'm genuinely interested in why this headline is breaking peoples brains. It seems like people are mostly having an emotional reaction to the fact that the study is critical of inhalers, and then, its a circle jerking/ dog-piling, what-about-ism, or the relative privation fallacy.

Its a bad thing that oil-tankers exist. We should all probably move on past internal combustion engines. It doesn't change the fact that, apparently, inhalers represent a quite substantial source of emissions.

Its not at all additive to dogpile on a headline that makes that point. Two things can be true at once.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

This is a very weird post, in that my only recourse is to point you back to the post I already made. Did you only read the first line and posted the rest of it without reading anything else? The argument of the post you're responding to isn't about the number of cars being high or low, it's why reporting the number in relation to the number of cars at all isn't good practice.

Seriously, go back and treat the previous post as your response. It will do wonders to understanding why its "breaking my brain" (it's not) and why I'm "dogpiling" (I'm not).

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world -1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

First off, you, finite: this is the definition of dog-piling. There is obviously an emotional reaction people are having to this headline and people are trying to find a way to take fault in it.

The headline as reads perfectly fine and if it weren't for peoples clearly reactionary response, this wouldn't even be a thread.

Reporting something like emissions in a count of vehicles is a perfectly reasonable way to do so, at least something people can their heads around. Elsewhere in the thread people have made it about the number, or that we shouldn't care because oil tankers, or the phrasing of the headline. But none of that takes away from the point the headline makes, which is immediately understandable.

Again, I don't understand your issue with the headline and why it offends so. A car is probably the most relevant thing a person who isn't in the specific sciences of carbon estimation would have. If not cars what should they have done it in?

I think finite criticism is pretty emotional and reactionary: they don't like the conclusion so they take issue with the phrasing. And you, are here, as part of the dog pile, pushing back on that.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

OK, so for a start, it's one thing for multiple people to disagree with you and another for them to be dogpiling. Given that the original poster is not hostile to the headline, I'd say the reaction is... fairly genuine? I can definitely tell you I'm not particularly emotional about it... you're just wrong on the technicalities of the headline, so people telling you that isn't that surprising. I'd argue the framing of the headline is actively seeking that outcome, it's arguably ragebaiting.

Also, I get that you don't understand why the headline is problematic, but I'm telling you that's you not understanding how to make a good headline. I'm trying to explain how framing shapes the message, particularly with a headline and particularly online. This isn't some esoteric thing, it's something journalists actually study and train about. This headline is meant to cause a reaction and frame the issue a certain way by providing a misleading comparison. That's bad form.

The conclusion of the paper being reported on is neutral: inhalers emit some amount of pollutants, most of those emisions are caused by a specific type of inhaler, there's some incentive to find a less pollutant alternative. All good so far, as often with these problems the study itself is fine.

The headline takes that neutral takeaway and frames it a certain way. I actually would believe that the journalist that messed it up did so because they thought "cars are understandable to most Americans" and didn't think it through. Mistakes happen. Being less charitable, but likely more realistic, the journalist probably thought framing it in terms of "your asthma is as bad for the environment as road traffic" was a deliberate way of increasing impact by providing an out-of-context statistic to generate more traffic. Either way, if I were an editor here I would have asked for a revision to avoid causing that bit of friction and misinformation.

It's okay to not get that because... well, the flipside of that being a bit of a technicality is that it's fine to not be cued in enough to know. But it's weird to double down on how the undesirable outcome they are causing (people are mad at the framing) is what justifies the mistake in the first place. After a few goes around the loop that just comes across as willfully ignorant.

Also, it's weird that you are asking how they should have phrased it when my first post already provided alternatives. You keep coming across as not having read the stuff you're responding to, which doesn't help with the whole "willfully ignorant" thing.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

You’ve said the headline is “misleading,” but you haven’t identified how. Misleading would mean one of:

a) the number is wrong,

b) the unit conversion is wrong, or

c) essential context is omitted that would change the conclusion.

Which is it?

Using “annual vehicle emissions” as a proxy is a standard way to translate CO2e for lay readers. The headline maps the study’s quantified impact into a familiar unit. That’s not a "mistake". You claiming it to be a mistake is an emotional response, exampled by:

Being less charitable, but likely more realistic, the journalist probably thought framing it in terms of “your asthma is as bad for the environment as road traffic” was a deliberate way of increasing impact by providing an out-of-context statistic to generate more traffic.

What I’m seeing in this thread isn’t a technical objection so much as an emotional one: people who like inhalers don’t like that the impact, when expressed in familiar terms, sounds big. If you think the framing is sensationalist, point to the clause or number that creates a false impression and show the correct one.

If the issue is grammar, name the rule or ambiguity. If it’s sensationalism, show the exaggeration. If it’s “phrasing,” specify the alternative phrasing that would be more accurate and why.

Otherwise, the headline remains both technically accurate and reasonable, and your response is largely an emotional one. Disliking something because it make you feel a way isn’t a rebuttal.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

OK, I'll give you one more go around this loop because the self contradiction is too obvious and I want to see how you parse it, then I'm calling it.

So... why did you say "sounds big"?

Here:

What I’m seeing in this thread isn’t a technical objection so much as an emotional one: people who like inhalers don’t like that the impact, when expressed in familiar terms, sounds big.

Why do you think people are mad that the number "sounds big"?

Is the number big or small?

The headline makes it sound big, we both agree on that. A lot of the response is putting it in perspective: actually, 530000 cars is a small part of the new cars sold in one year (about 5%) and a tiny part of the total car pool (about 0.2%). So why does it sound big? If the implied comparison is with car emissions, shouldn't it sound small?

The reality is the number isn't big or small, it is some amount. And the study's big takeaway isn't that the emissions are big, so much as that, of the multiple models of inhalers one generates signficant emissions and others don't, so the emissions from one type may be unnecessary.

So why does the headline make the number sound big?

You spend a lot of time setting arbitrary rules for what is or isn't misleading, and all of that is entirely fallacious bullshit. Misleading means what it means, you don't set the parameters for what is misleading.

But the interesting part is you accidentally, explicitly explained why the headline is misleading (i.e. it creates an emotional response about the scope of the problem that is disproportionate to its own unit of measurement, presumably to deliberately generate more engagement with the content). That is a technical objection, not to the number being reported but to how its being reported. It's an objection on the headline writing technique, which is what people are complaining about.

Now, you won't acknowledge this, because you're in too deep and arguing with multiple people about this and you're not going to just go "huh, I guess that's a thing" and move on with your day, so there'll be some mental gymnastics about it. But come on, you do get it, right? At this point it's not that hard and you have implied that you get it already.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

You still haven’t answered the core question. You called the headline “misleading,” but you have not shown:

a) the number is wrong b) the CO2e to cars conversion is wrong c) missing context that would change the conclusion

Your replies keep circling the same move: you dislike that the article points out something bad about inhalers, so you attack the framing. That is an emotional reaction, not a technical critique.

Shifting denominators after the fact, tone policing, and guessing intent, ad hominem about the author or myself: None of that shows a defect in the headline.

If you think it is sensationalist, quote the exact clause that creates a false impression and provide the corrected wording and denominator. If you cannot do that, then you have not supported “misleading.” Dislike is not an argument, which is all you've offered so far.

And "in too deep" bit: Bruh. Its like two days later. You can't have it both ways.

[+] finitebanjo@piefed.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Cool.

How much is a megagram of carbon? or of CO2? How many trees is that?

What do you picture when you think of that? Is it something you have an intuitive reference for? Almost assuredly you don't. Very few people do could tell you about how many hectares of a typical temperate first would be required to be set aside annually to store or sequester that 500k megagrams of carbon (hint: alot).

Hand wringing because they didn't use a unit even, likely, that you would likely have no clue how to understand it's interpretation, is misguided at best.

It's appropriate to communicate through units people understand; the real problem is their use of a number which is also practically incomprehensible. Using cars is fine, using 500k is problematic, because few if any human has a context for what 500k cars looks like.

A more appropriate units conversion might have been that the inhalers have emissions equivalent to all the vehicle emissions of states A, B and C

[+] finitebanjo@piefed.world 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

but even then it doesn’t represent one industry to another

Like.. Yes it absolutely does. Thats why we move EVERYTHING to CO2e for papers like this. CO2e is the lingua franca of discussing global warming. Its how we can compare cows to cars to trees to inhalers.

If Carbon Emissions were a Pie then this would be just one incredibly tiny sliver.

So that's a totally different argument, and if it represents more emissions (from vehicles) than 15 US states, I would hardly agree with you.

If Nebraska, or New Mexico, or Idaho, announced "We're going to outlaw all internal combustion vehicles to curb greenhouse gas emissions", would you dismiss that like you are dismissing this?

At the low end, typical northwest forest pulls in almost 6 megagrams per hectare in biomass annually. To just offset just these emissions, we would need to set aside about 321 sq miles of forest. That's hardly a trivial amount.

[–] ZeroGravitas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is way up there with "smokers have a smaller impact on the environment than non smokers".

Fuck right off. Decommission one oil tanker, problem solved.

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Tbf if we weren’t shipping that stuff with one big ship it would be like 2000 planes.

I’m not saying there aren’t ways to improve cargo ships, like trying to build ones that are “greener”, or simply trying to reduce how much stuff we ship overseas.

But that’s the difficult thing in trying to point out “one thing to kill to have the biggest impact”. It’s complicated.

One bus pollutes a lot more than one car, but 100 fewer cars are on the road because of that bus, the bus is “greener” overall.

[–] ZeroGravitas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 months ago

There was that bit about the oil tanker, but you're not wrong in general, sea shipping is one of the most efficient means of transport we got.

How about this: more efficient cars on the road, more WFH, increased use of public transport etc. lead to less demand for oil, which puts that tanker out of business. Win-win?

[–] Lumidaub@feddit.org 25 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's okay. Just means we need to reduce emissions even more elsewhere, in things that don't keep people alive.

[–] dontsayaword@piefed.social 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The article says there are alternatives to the polluting inhalers that the industry can shift towards. So its kind of a win, because now we have an easy way to reduce current emissions.

[–] bizarroland@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

But also a kind reminder that if individual peoples' carbon emissions were completely eliminated from the planet, that would only decrease the amount of pollution being pumped into the air by like 10 to 20% at the very most.

80 to 90% of the carbon pumped in the air is done by corporations, and regulating the corporations would do more to decrease the CO2 emissions and pollution in the atmosphere than every single human on the planet being perfect, carbon negative saints.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/since-2016-80-percent-of-global-co2-emissions-come-from-just-57-companies-report-shows-180984118/

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I really dislike that argument. Because these companies are producing products that on turn get used by individuals

Oil companies aren't burning oil because it looks pretty, and coal power plants aren't burning coal because it smells so nice. Cement production isn't being used because it's fun to make liquid rocks. Sooner it later they are being used by individuals

[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 5 points 3 months ago

Yes, but then they do everything from lobbying to spreading misinformation to make sure their products keep being used. When you focus on corporations, you can start implementing regulations and reform to tackle emissions at the macro scale. Want people to eat less meat? Stop subsidizing it. Want people to use less oil? Invest in renewable energy. Etc.

[–] Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 months ago

Those companies have many choices in the way they choose to manufacture things, and often choose the most polluting method legally available, and often try to sneak over that line a bit until they're caught

[–] bizarroland@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

The thing is, like, I don't expect anyone to be perfect, but we could do the equivalent of removing every single human being's carbon footprint off of the planet by regulating industry to reduce their output by 25%.

There's 57 companies that are doing 80% of the total, so you address those 57 companies and, through taxes and legislation, and regulation, get them to reduce their carbon output by 25%, and that would be the same as removing every human being from the planet.

[–] BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca 19 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

If you add 530,000 cars to the worlds total of ~1.5 billion cars that's a drop in the bucket.

https://www.thedrive.com/guides-and-gear/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world

Edit: what I'm trying to say let's focus on replacing them with EVs and improve public transportation. And let the asthmatics have their inhalers.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

On top of that, we have that automobiles are less than a quarter of total emissions.

[–] 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is the dumbest thing I've read all day.

[–] Maxxie@piefed.blahaj.zone 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Title is dumb, the article itself is fine

It found that metered-dose inhalers were the most harmful to the environment, accounting for 98% of emissions over the 10-year period. Metered-dose inhalers contain hydrofluoroalkane (HFA) propellants, which are potent greenhouse gases that were widely used in products such as aerosol sprays.

"On the upside, there is a tremendous opportunity to make changes that protect both patients and the planet by utilizing lower-emission alternatives."

"A key first step to driving change is understanding the true scale of the problem," Feldman said. "From there, we can identify what's fueling these emissions and develop targeted strategies to reduce them—benefiting both patients and the environment."

[–] bizarroland@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

I mean, they could do stuff like stop putting those dangerous hydrofluorocarbons into the inhalers.

I mean, it kinda seems like the solution suggests itself.

If you wanted to get really fancy, I'm sure that there's some sort of lithium battery powered motor pump contraption that could easily compress air and use that as the accelerator for the medicine.

Then all you would need to do is deploy a new medicine cartridge for your inhaler, and you get rid of the hydrofluorocarbons completely.

[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 6 points 3 months ago

I knew it! It was those Asthma people!

[–] omgboom@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 months ago

Well I hope all these asthmatics feel really fucking bad, ruining the planet with their selfish breathing.

[–] nothingcorporate@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

Or 1 billionaire

[–] Reality_Suit@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

I knew it was the athmatics this whole time.

[–] _bac@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

Time for another redesign ith new patents!

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

I went full ape brain on that title for a moment. I was like, "aren't we all inhalers?" 🤦

[–] chickenf622@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

It's important to know the side effects of life saving items so we can see if there's a better alternative. Not the most important fight in climate change, but if there's improvements that can be made I don't see why not, as long as it's just as effective for the people that rely on it.