Minibuses and lorries belched black and white smoke. Gases from roadside rubbish dumps and nearby factories mixed with traffic fumes from the clogged eight-lane highway, and the hot evening air was filled with a dense photochemical smog making nearby buildings barely visible.

It could have been New Delhi, Jakarta, La Paz or any one of 100 Asian or Latin American megacities, but this was the Mombasa road in Nairobi, Kenya, a city where the number of vehicles doubles every six years and where air pollution is always at hazardous or dangerous levels.

Even in a car, the eyes hurt and the breath came short. Just recently, I was travelling to the airport with a friend who had lived in the city for years but was thinking of returning to Britain because of the pollution: “It is mind-boggling and getting worse,” she said, “people use charcoal, paraffin and wood to heat their homes. You can see the haze of pollution building up from the early morning. I never used to wheeze. But what can you do — stop breathing?”

However, bad or illegal the urban air may be in London or Birmingham, it is unimaginably worse in fast-growing developing countries. According to the UN’s World Health Organization, air pollution is the new tobacco, a modern plague of toxic chemicals and minute particles of unburned soot prematurely killing over seven million people worldwide every year, and causing profound and long-lasting damage to tens of millions more.

Polluted air above WHO recommended levels plagues the UK but it mostly affects cities in places where coal and wood are widely used to heat homes, where cars, plastic and any other waste is mostly burned in the open.

For much of the world, it is a toxic time bomb. Because air pollution accumulates in the body and its impact is mostly considered to be irreversible, children and infants are the most affected. Asthma, strokes, cancers, lung and cardiac diseases linked to air pollution already stretch health services in cities like Tehran, Lahore, Bangkok and Lagos; but in years to come, they are likely to overwhelm them.

Until about 2014, China was the undisputed pollution capital of the world. When I first went to Beijing in the 1990s, you could see blue skies and the streets were free of traffic with most people riding bicycles. I returned 20 years later to find the streets were jammed with cars and people feared to venture into the billowing winter smog, which could linger for weeks at a time.

Pollution got so bad that the government was forced to close or relocate factories, ban old cars, and make people switch to gas heating rather than coal. China now has by far the world’s biggest fleet of electric cars and buses.

But despite over $150 billion having been spent on cleaning up the Chinese air, the cold winter weather often traps the dry, dirty air and there is little anyone can do. Over one million people a year are still said to die prematurely from China’s pollution.

But the world’s biggest country by population has now passed its pollution crown to India. A new report put out by the Centre for Science and Development in New Delhi paints a bleak picture, saying air pollution is now responsible for one in eight of India’s deaths, including 100,000 children aged under 5 every year. Nine of the world’s 10 most polluted cities are now Indian.

A major study has found that Delhi’s air pollution has ranked officially “severe” for 398 out of the last 703 days. In Dhaka, the massive capital of neighbouring Bangladesh, uncontrolled car emissions, constant road repairs and construction works makes breathing hard at all times.

I talked to Faruk Ahmed, an air pollution researcher there: “We analysed the dust in the air from traffic hotspots in Dhaka. We found it contained arsenic, zinc, nickel and levels of cadmium 200 times more than is considered acceptable in soil.”

Pollution affects life in unexpected ways in poor countries. Farms downwind of major cities record smaller harvests, education suffers because schools must close for days at a time, and tourists increasingly avoid pollution hotspots. Some of India’s iconic monuments have been damaged beyond recognition: The Taj Mahal is turning a brownish yellow, the marble Lotus Temple in Delhi has gone grey and the Golden Temple in Amritsar has lost its shine.

My fear is that Africa is going the same way as China and India. Half the world’s population growth over the next 30 years is predicted to occur there and the number of cars is rising dramatically as people flock to burgeoning cities.

There is little monitoring done for African air, but we do know the continent has become the dumping ground for the world’s most polluting vehicles. Most of the millions of cars and trucks exported to Africa every year from Japan, the US or Europe, are not just old but have also had their catalytic converters removed and will be run on contaminated fuel. The average age of cars driving around cities like Kampala in Uganda and Kinshasa in Congo DRC can be over 18 years old. Dirty air, say the analysts, could be killing 712,000 Africans, and costing over $175 billion a year.

I talked to Matt Evans, professor of atmospheric chemistry at York University, who leads research into urban air pollution in West Africa and who recently collected air samples by flying over cities in Nigeria, Ghana and Togo.

He was shocked by what he found. “It’s not just the cars. There is the burning of rubbish, cooking with inefficient solid fuel stoves, millions of small diesel electricity generators, cars which have had the catalytic converters removed and petrochemical plants all pushing pollutants into the air. Chemicals like sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide that have not been a problem in western cities for decades are a significant factor in African cities,” he said.

The most polluted city I have ever been to was probably Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. At the height of the war, I visited the main hospital expecting to hear the stories of wounded people. Instead, I found many of the patients were there because of respiratory, pulmonary or cardiac conditions that the doctors said were directly linked to the clouds of filthy air that people were breathing.

An official in the public health ministry listed the reasons. The city’s growth was uncontrolled; cars were running on contaminated fuel illegally imported from Iran; most of Kabul’s roads were unpaved, creating more dust; households relied on diesel generators and people burned anything to keep warm in the bitterly cold winters — including old tyres and plastic.

He estimated that one in four of all deaths in the war-ravaged country were actually caused by air pollution. “The war?”, he said. “It’s nothing. Air pollution kills far people than war. But no one wants to do anything about it.”

Words: John Vidal was environment editor of The Guardian for 27 years and has reported from over 100 countries.

Read more stories from on: at on.dyson.co.uk and follow on: @dyson_on

Why we shouldn’t forget that “elsewhere’s air” is our problem… was originally published in Dyson on: on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In 2013, Ella Kissi-Debrah died of a fatal asthma attack. The nine-year-old, who lived near the South Circular Road in Lewisham, south-east London, had been suffering from poor respiratory health for 28 months, and was admitted to hospital 28 times. An inquest into her death found that Ella had died from acute respiratory failure and severe asthma.

But in 2018, as the BBC writes: “[a recent] report said it was likely unlawful levels of pollution, which were detected at a monitoring station one mile from Ella’s home, contributed to her fatal asthma attack”.

As a result Judge Mark Lucraft QC, quashed the 2014 inquest and said: “In our judgment, the discovery of new evidence makes it necessary in the interests of justice that a fresh inquest be held.” If high pollution levels are deemed to have played a role in her death, Ella may become the first person in the UK for whom air pollution is listed as the cause of death.

For those studying the health impacts of air quality, much of the focus is still on better understanding the impact pollution has on our bodies. But what if we could say that some people had certain genetic traits or conditions that might make them more susceptible to air pollution?

Genetic testing has been in use for decades, and can today be used to diagnose or predict more than 2000 medical conditions — including cystic fibrosis, Down’s syndrome, Huntington’s disease, and certain types of cancer.

Since 2003, thanks to the Human Genome Project, we’ve had a complete and accurate sequence of the three billion DNA base pairs that make up the human genome, and understanding how our individual genetic codes work is an area of scientific discovery that’s fascinating to researchers, patients and consumers alike.

As the growing market for genetic tests like AncestryDNA and 23andMe demonstrates, we all want to know more about who we are. As researchers continue to build up the base of knowledge about exactly how our genes interact with our environment, this holds exciting possibilities for personalised medicine.

But what could genetic testing tell us about the complex issue of air pollution and its potential impacts on our health? Currently, “there’s not been a huge amount of study in the genetics of air pollution per se,” says John Holloway, Professor of Allergy and Respiratory Genetics at the University of Southampton.

But, he adds, “where people have looked, they’ve identified genetic factors that you can put into two classes: those that mean we’re better able to deal with or detoxify exposures, and those that mean we make a different type of response once we’ve been exposed.”

From this existing research, Professor Holloway explains, “it’s clear that there’s a range of different genetic effects, and some people will respond differently to the same level of exposure — so some people are genetically more susceptible to experiencing the adverse effects of air pollution.”

Where this gets complicated, he explains, is that: “of course, air pollution is a complex mix of different chemicals and particles, so you’ve got to tease apart precisely what an individual will be susceptible to.”

If you take air pollution from diesel, for example, you need to work out if an individual is responding to the particles within it, or the heavy metals, or the organic compounds. “All of those responses are going to vary from individual to individual,” Professor Holloway says. “Equally, for those who are exposed, some will be more likely than others to develop disease as a result.”

In other words, adverse health effects from air pollution are caused by a combination of different factors working together. While some people may be genetically more predisposed to asthma, for example, they still require the right environmental trigger to cause the disease to develop.

Another complexity presented by air pollution is the range of adverse health impacts it’s associated with. “As a geneticist, one of the things you think about is how the effects of exposure to, say, ozone or particulate matter, elicits a number of different responses, so it’s not just one response you’d be interested in,” explains Steven Kleeberger, Director of the Environmental Genetics Group at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the US.

“Ozone, for instance, causes inflammation, yet also causes effects on the cardiovascular systems. Each of these phenotypes (an observable physical property) is likely controlled by a separate set of genes, so you’re looking at multiple genes for multiple phenotypes,” he explains.

Compare this to genetic testing for a BRCA gene mutation, for example, which increases the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. BRCA testing involves looking at one or two genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2) to identify someone’s predisposition to one or two responses (breast and/or ovarian cancer).

Genetic testing for air pollution would involve looking at a whole range of genes to identify a predisposition to a whole range of responses, which could be triggered by a whole range of different pollutants. It’s no wonder, as Dr Kleeberger says, that there are still more clinical studies and more epidemiology research needed in this area.

Despite this, he says, “I think it’s absolutely probably that, in the future, genetic testing could be used to determine someone’s susceptibility to the effects of air pollution. Maybe in the next decade.”

Outlining how this could work, Dr Kleeberger explains: “Ideally what we would have is a diagnostic tool, or a panel of genes that would give you information on all of these different phenotypes or responses. Then a clinician could use this as a means of identifying people who are susceptible, and come up with a plan.”

In effect, he adds, this could be used to offer tailored advice to individuals who are otherwise healthy but, because of their genetic background, could be susceptible to the effects of air pollution. “What we’re talking about is really personalised medicine. If people can be identified as being susceptible, ideally you could act early to extend that person’s lifetime.”

One example might be using drugs like an anti-TNF therapy to reduce the effects of the gene TNF (tumour necrosis factor), which is associated with inflammatory conditions like asthma.

Like Dr Kleeberger, Professor Holloway believes genetic testing for air pollution susceptibility will be conceptually possible in the next decade or so. “The technology enables us to sequence someone’s genome now. Once you know all someone’s genetic variants, you need to match that to knowledge about how it relates to risks from different exposures,” he explains.

“On the air pollution side, we haven’t got as much of that because it’s often very difficult to assess an individual’s exposure. Theoretically, as we understand more and more about the genetic factors that drive responses to air pollution, it would be possible in the future to classify people like that.”

At an individual level though, Professor Holloway believes the effects are likely to be much smaller. “Like any common disease — whether that’s heart disease or asthma — a response to air pollution is going to be the effect of hundreds of different genetic variants within each individual’s genome,” he explains.

“It may be possible to identify those that are at higher risk and those that are at lower risk. But whether that would happen routinely in a healthcare setting, and whether it would affect behaviours, I don’t know. We can tell people they’re at risk of heart disease now, but convincing them to change their lifestyles is more difficult,” Professor Holloway adds.

Beyond personalised medicine, he believes genetic testing around air pollution susceptibility could have broader implications for public health. “I think the most likely impact in public health terms will be to actually identify the level of pollution that will trigger disease in a susceptible individual,” he says.

“At the moment, when governments try to work out what is a safe level of exposure, of course they’re doing that based on the average population. Within that, some people will be more susceptible than others,” Professor Holloway explains. “If we can identify those susceptible individuals, and know what level of air pollution exposure is safe for them, that could help inform policy about what we should really be setting as a safe limit.”

Words: Sarah Graham, freelance science journalist

Read more stories from on: at on.dyson.co.uk and follow on: @dyson_on

Could genetic testing kits help to diagnose our “air health” in the future? was originally published in Dyson on: on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Unknown to most, the millennial language of emojis contains many hints and clues about the sources of air pollution around you. We investigate some of their causes…

The quality of the air you breathe during your day depends on the choices you make. If you cycle to work you may encounter less pollution than if you take a cab. If you live on a farm you may be breathing in different pollutants to those which people living in cities are exposed to. Your everyday life can include hundreds of different “pollution events” depending on the decisions you make — from playing with their pets to going on holiday to visiting a salon for a blowdry.

One of the most diverse sources of indoor pollution are volatile organic chemical compounds (VOCs) whose composition makes it possible for them to evaporate under normal indoor room temperatures and pressure. This makes them particularly harmful indoors, as once released, they can spread throughout the atmosphere and pollute the environment. Poor ventilation within buildings, something often associated with newer ones, heightens the issue, as the pollutants become trapped inside and cannot escape.

Very few of us realise just how many different sources there are for our indoor VOC air pollution events — and what is actually causing them.

But one curious insight into how many of us are exposed to VOC pollution could be seen in an unusual place: our use of emojis.

Emojis have quickly become a quick way of explaining to others what we are doing. By investigating some of the most commonly used ones we can learn a lot about what people are doing.

The most popular emoji used on Twitter in 2018 was the crying with laughter face, according to the real-time emojitracker.com. But some of the next most used on the list include everyday objects like roses, coffee, cats, cars, and candles. And it is worth considering that these are all sources of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emissions.

Below are some of the most popular emojis which show just how common air pollution is in our everyday lives…

Beauty Products💄

The products that we use to keep ourselves looking and smelling clean could actually be dirtying the air around us. Soaps, deodorant, hair spray and nail polish remover all emit VOCs.

In fact, research has indicated that some beauty products might actually be worse for air quality than the commonly vilified car. In a study published in Environmental Science and Technology, a significant portion of emissions recorded during rush-hour traffic came from the people inside the vehicles- more specifically the personal care products they use on their body and hair.

High levels of the pollutant siloxane were detected, a VOC which is not present in auto emissions, but which is added to shampoos, lotions and deodorants to give them a smooth, silky texture.

Cooking 🍆

Researchers have found that cooking a Sunday roast releases a surge of fine particles that could make the air inside dirtier than the air in Delhi.

When using a gas hob, gas flames, vegetables, oils and fat combine to emit harmful PM 2.5 particulates which are small enough to be absorbed inside the lungs.

This can have significant health impacts, and each year, close to 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to household air pollution from inefficient cooking practices.

Exercise 💪

Instagramming about setting a PB during your last outdoor run? Don’t celebrate just yet. According to the Guardian, depending on where you are you are exercising in, it could be doing you more hard than good, especially if you live in a busy city.

By the end of January last year, London had already reached its legal air pollution limit for the entire year, with high levels of Nitrogen Dioxide detected throughout the city.

When running, your cardiovascular activity amplifies and you take in up to 6 times the litres of air per minute. The uptake of oxygen provides you with energy, but nasty pollutants are breathed in greater volumes.

Flowers 🌷

Flowers are used by many to help rooms to smell better. However, pollen, which the flowers release is a form of air pollution — and one which can have a severe impact on those suffering from Pollen allergies (the most typical form of allergic diseases).

Allergy sufferers already feel the impact of the small, light and dry pollen grains that travel through the air, causing symptoms which include a runny nose, sneezing and itchy eyes.

But as poor air quality in cities continues to be a problem, keeping tabs on our surrounding air quality as well as pollen counts might be necessary to mitigate the effect of these particulates.

Flying ✈️

Posting about an upcoming holiday retreat? According to one 2010 study, plane exhaust kills more people than plane crashes, with their toxic pollutants contributing to at least 8000 deaths annually.

Like cars, aeroplane exhausts contain pollutants like sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which are tiny particulates that can enter the bloodstream once they’ve been breathed into the lungs.

Previously it was assumed that people were only harmed by the emissions released during take-off and landing, yet the study revealed that it was actually unregulated emissions from planes flying above 3000 feet that are responsible for most of the deaths.

Furniture 🛏️

Formaldehyde is a chemical that is used to produce household products, usually found in the glue we use for home construction and renovations.

It is one of the most common household VOCs and is particularly prominent in new household products, with pressed-wood products being a major contributing source.

It can remain in the atmosphere for several months and its levels peak in areas with high indoor temperatures and poor ventilation. Newer homes are particularly susceptible, due to their newer furnishings and more modern, airtight designs.

Paint 🎨

That ‘fresh paint smell’ may actually be a sign of VOCs like Benzene and Formaldehyde, which can linger in the air for up to six months after application .

When paint is drying, indoor VOC levels can be as much as 1000 times higher than outdoor levels.

Paint is usually applied over a large surface area, increasing the amount of nasty VOCs emitted into the atmosphere and contributing to poor indoor air quality within the home.

Pets 🐶

When your pet sheds, it leaves behind pet dander which are tiny pieces of skin that float in the air and can carry allergens.

These allergens are very lightweight and small, so can remain suspended in the air for a long time. Their jagged shape causes them to stick to furniture, bedding and clothing, and they are easily carried in and out of the home.

In the United States, roughly twice as many people report allergies to cats when compared to dogs, despite there being more dog owners overall.

Waste💩

It’s an emoji crowd-pleaser, yet flushing your toilet to get rid of an odor can releases VOCs into the atmosphere, dirtying the surrounding air.

Levels of formaldehyde in the air increase as you flush the toilet with toilet cleaner, according to one study. Other cleaning products, such as air freshener, detergent and bleach are also thought to be responsible for releasing VOC emissions.

Recent research has found that even natural fragrances in cleaning products may react with high levels of ozone inside to form formaldehyde, negatively impacting the air quality inside your home.

Words: Elise Metcalf, Staff writer

Read more stories from on: at on.dyson.co.uk and follow on: @dyson_on

Do you know about the hidden pollution messages in you emojis? was originally published in Dyson on: on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

CLEAN DIESEL?

In the 1980s at Audi, a young Ferdinand Piëch, later Volkswagen’s chief executive, was working on a technological innovation that would have far-reaching consequences for VW, Audi’s parent company. It was one of the initiatives Piëch was later most proud of: diesel engines designed for passenger cars. Invented in the 1800s by Rudolf Diesel, diesel has long been in widespread use in trucks and ships, here it provided superior fuel economy and longer engine life. But it was much more difficult to deploy diesel in smaller vehicles.

In all automobile engines, much of the potential energy is wasted because the fuel does not burn completely. In a diesel engine, the fuel — distilled from petroleum in a process different from that for gasoline — is compressed with oxygen inside the cylinders until it becomes so hot from the pressure that it ignites. In a gasoline engine, by contrast, spark plugs cause the fuel to ignite. Diesel engines are less wasteful because the dense, highly compressed fuel and air mixture burns more thoroughly than in a gasoline engine. As a result, diesel engines go farther on a gallon of fuel than a gasoline motor. The disadvantage of diesels, at least until Volkswagen and other automobile makers began civilising them in the 1970s, was that they tended to be louder and smellier than gasoline engines, and they vibrated more, making the cars less comfortable to drive. In addition, the diesel combustion process produces more torque and places more strain on the moving parts inside an engine. The components of a diesel engine have to take the punishment, which means they are also heavier. All of these problems needed to be solved in order to make diesel practical for passenger cars.

Even in those days, when regulations were much less strict, Piëch worried about how to get a handle on diesel emissions. That was another of the downsides of diesel engines. Diesel emitted several nasty pollutants, in particular, nitrogen oxides that promoted the formation of smog and could cause or exacerbate health problems. Diesel also produced fine soot particles that could penetrate deep into human lungs and cause cancer.

But it became possible to reduce, though not eliminate, these alarming drawbacks by deploying a combination of technical innovations. Chief among them were advanced injection systems that could more precisely control the timing and volume of fuel being delivered to the cylinders. Combined with an electronic motor control system, which drew on advances in computer technology, the turbocharger and fuel injector could tailor the combustible mixture of air and fuel to whatever demands were being placed on the engine. Whether the car was idling, climbing a hill, or speeding on a highway, the fuel-air cocktail could be mixed and burned for the best result. The improved motor still had a bit of a growl, but it was no longer prone to blowing clouds of black exhaust like the diesels of old.

Volkswagen called the result TDI, or turbocharged direct injection. It took 11 years to perfect. Audi unveiled its first TDI model, an Audi 100 sedan, at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 1989, a few weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Piëch was proud of the innovation, which used an onboard computer to manage the engine, then a novelty. The five-cylinder engine in the Audi 100 used 2 litres less fuel per 100 kilometres of driving than the competition, he bragged. At the same time, the car accelerated more quickly and ran more cleanly. Emissions were 30 per cent less, according to Piëch. (He did not define which emissions he was referring to, however.) In his view, TDI had revolutionised the image of diesel in the world, and Audi enjoyed a big head start in bringing it to market. As the man who had driven the development of TDI, Piëch could take much of the credit. For him, it was a professional milestone, one that gave him a personal stake in diesel technology. Piëch would continue to be a forceful advocate of diesel for the rest of his career.

Nearly 30 years later, diesel was one of the biggest financial successes of Volkswagen (and European car-making in general). But it was also about to become the industry’s single biggest problem…

DEFEAT DEVICES

By the 1990s, Volkswagen, now under Ferdinand Piëch, was conquering Europe with its fuel-saving diesels.

Meanwhile, a few engineers in the US and Europe were preoccupied with a related but inverse problem: how to make sure the increasing numbers of diesel vehicles on the road were clean? In 1990, sweeping revisions of the US Clean Air Act passed both houses of Congress with large majorities and support from the Republicans as well as Democrats.

The legislation was an ambitious effort to radically improve air quality in the US, particularly in urban areas where cars and trucks were the main source of pollution.

But while it was easy for Congress to say that cars should produce fewer harmful emissions, it was not so easy to determine whether carmakers were complying.

What comes out of the tailpipe of an automobile can vary radically, depending on many factors: the speed of the vehicle, the outside air temperature, whether the engine is warm or cold, whether the driver is cautious or lead footed. The challenge for regulators was to measure emissions in a way that was consistent and would produce fair comparisons among the dozens of makes and models on the market.

The standard approach was to test cars in the lab on rollers. That made sense in a lot of ways. A great deal of equipment was required to capture engine exhaust and measure its chemical components. It was obviously easier to bring cars into a lab than to put a lab inside an automobile.

The risk with all those finely tuned parameters, though, was that a lab test would be artificial. It would do a fine job at showing how much a car polluted under controlled conditions, but say little about the vehicle’s performance on the road.

One of the people who had doubts about the testing methodology was a young engineer in the EPA’s compliance division named Leo Breton. “Seeing a number of tests over a few years,” Breton said, “I would scratch my head, not having been there forever, really wondering if this had anything to do at all with what vehicles were emitting in the real world.”

Breton was involved in uncovering one earliest emissions defeat devices. In 1993, EPA testers discovered that cars made by General Motors’ Cadillac division emitted almost three times as much carbon monoxide with the air-conditioning or heating systems on than when climate control was off. It turned out that, following customer complaints that ’91 Cadillacs tended to stall, GM installed a computer chip in the cars that increased the ratio of gasoline to air inside the cylinders when the climate control system was on. The chip fixed the stalling problem, but worked only by overriding the emissions control system. The result was higher output of carbon monoxide. In legal terms, the computer chip qualified as a defeat device — a mechanism designed to reduce the effectiveness of the emissions system when the official testers weren’t looking.

With the climate control system on, the cars emitted up to 10 grams of carbon monoxide per mile, compared with the legal limit of 3.4 grams per mile. A US Justice Department investigation later concluded that 470,000 Cadillacs from 1991 to 1995 had defeat devices. The cars had released an additional 100,000 tonnes of carbon monoxide into the atmosphere, the Justice Department calculated. GM agreed to pay $45 million to cover penalties, the cost of recalling and fixing the cars, and measures to offset the emissions, such as buying school buses that polluted less than older models. At the time, the settlements were the largest ever for violations of the Clean Air Act by a vehicle manufacturer.

THE CHEAT

In mid-2006, the VW engine developers realised they had a big problem. Tests in VW’s own labs revealed that the exhaust gas recirculation system in the newly developed EA 189 diesel motor would place an unacceptable burden on the particle filter and cause it to wear out prematurely. As a result, the cars would not be able to pass emissions tests, especially in the US, with its stricter limits on nitrogen oxides. VW’s global ambitions had bumped up against the laws of physics. As VW later admitted in court documents, its specialists were not able to reconcile the conflicting goals of fuel economy and emissions “within the allocated time frame and budget.” An engineer who was involved in the development of the new motor put it more bluntly. “It was a bad plan,” he said.

VW was not without choices. For example, it could have put a special warranty on the particle filter, entitling customers to a free replacement when it wore out. That would have made it easier for the pollution control equipment to operate at capacity. Or VW could have built cars with better emissions technology. Faced with a similar quandary, BMW equipped diesel SUVs sold in the US with more robust equipment adequate to meet US pollution standards legally. But for VW cars aimed at a less affluent customer, the extra gear would have added hundreds of dollars to the vehicles’ costs and taken up space.

VW chose another route to solve the problem. In mid-2006, engineers in Wolfsburg were working on adapting software used by Audi in its diesel motors for VW engines. Audi already had motors that used common rail systems, so it made sense to borrow the software rather than start from scratch. As the engineers explored the software, which contained thousands of functions used to control engine parameters, they noticed something labelled in English as a “noise function”, also referred to as an “acoustic function”. It allowed the car to recognise when it was being tested in a lab on rollers. If the computer under the hood sensed that the car was being observed, it could adjust the engine’s behaviour to deliver optimal results. The software, the engineers realised, was a defeat device.

Someone — it’s not clear who — mentioned that Volkswagen could use the function to solve its emissions problem with the new diesel motor. The comment might have been meant only half seriously, but it gained traction. In November 2006, according to class-action complaints later filed by VW owners, which in turn were based on internal company documents, an engineer who was responsible for the software that would be used in the US diesel motors was asked by his superiors to formulate a way for the Audi acoustic function to be used in VW. The engineer was profoundly uneasy about the assignment. But he did as he was told.

That same month about 15 people responsible for diesel engine development and engine electronics gathered in a conference room, close to the offices of the top R&D executives. The PowerPoint presentation that the software engineer had reluctantly prepared was beamed onto a screen — it was just three pages long (tediously long PowerPoints were taboo in R&D). It explained how code embedded in the engine-control software could recognise the pattern of the agency’s so-called test cycle, which was public knowledge, activating equipment to reduce emissions whenever a test was underway. In other words, the car would behave lawfully only when the emissions police were watching. The program described in the PowerPoint fit the definition of a defeat device, and it was illegal both in the US and the European Union.

The meeting lasted less than an hour. The consequences would be felt for years.

AFTERMATH

If you were a German concerned about your country’s future, the worst-case outcome of the VW emissions scandal would be that the taint would spread to the other carmakers and threaten one of the pillars of the economy, perhaps even undercutting Germany’s reputation for engineering excellence. Two years after the scandal came to light, that is exactly what happened. Gradually, it dawned on the European public how fundamentally the automakers had deluded them about the risks to human health from diesel and the chasm between emissions as advertised and emissions in practice.

The vast majority of VWs with tainted software were in Europe, but the company’s biggest legal problems were in the US. Once the scandal was discovered the American system moved pretty quickly and came up with a settlement that compensated owners. They also fined Volkswagen and indicted people responsible. Most of those people were in Germany, out of reach of the US justice system.

The initial settlement for owners in the US was $15 billion. The actual fine was much smaller, but when you add it all up together, for Volkswagen, fines and settlements have reached above $30 billion — mostly from the US. Some in Germany feel it was too harsh but regardless it sent a very clear signal.

Whereas in Europe the story is quite different. Germany fined Volkswagen €1 billion, Audi was another €800 million. Aside from the reputational damage and the damage to diesel sales, there haven’t really been that many consequences for Volkswagen in Europe. If it hadn’t been for the US, this could’ve been a minor issue for Volkswagen.

That’s the biggest takeaway from the whole dieselgate scandal: on paper, the European Union had pretty strong emissions rules. But we found out from the Volkswagen case that there was virtually no enforcement. Big loopholes basically led carmakers to believe they didn’t really have to follow the rules as long as they could get somebody to say that the car was compliant when it was at a garage being tested. It revealed how things work in Brussels and what a sham their emissions testing programme really was. Everything was just on paper, it had almost no meaning in the real world.

Since then, environmental emissions tests have supposedly got tougher. They’re now doing road testing of diesels and the regulators are seemingly much more alert than they were because they know it will make them look bad if there’s another case like this.

But, environmentally, it’s still too early to say whether enough has been done to improve the testing standards. There are obviously still some flaws in the system. For example, a car company gets to pick which country they can get their car tested by — it could be Slovakia, Estonia, or a lot of people go to Germany because the officials are known to be very friendly to the car industry there for obvious reasons. And once it’s approved in that country then every other European Union country has to accept it. And yet, there’s no European level enforcement mechanism, or enforcement agency, like you have with the Environmental Protection Agency in the US. Even in Germany, enforcement is done by the Motor Vehicles Agency, not by the Environment Agency. They naturally have very close ties to the car industry.

In Brussels, there are cases (which are referred to in my book) where the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, intervened in European lawmaking to try to weaken the regulations. There’s even an anecdote about Merkel visiting California and complaining to the person in charge of air quality about diesel standards being too strict and hurting German carmakers. That’s an extraordinary level of involvement by a head of state in the concerns of a specific industry.

But a year ago, I reported about Volkswagen testing on monkeys to try to show that the new diesels were clean. The stories caused a big furore in Germany and even prompted a debate at the Bundestag. Today, as a result, the German government are being less openly cosy with the car industry.

But the damage is already done; cars were polluting a lot more than they were supposed to. There’s even a study by the UK government where they tested a range of diesel cars, not just VWs, and almost all of them were polluting more than they were supposed to. It was just a matter of to what extent? Some were three or four times above the limit others were more like 20 times.

It made people realise how much nitrogen oxide they were being exposed to and wonder what the health effects of that might be?

One of the difficult things about this whole case is that it’s very hard to identify the victims of the air pollution dieselgate caused. It’s well established that nitrogen oxide is harmful. We know that many cities, including London, have much higher levels of nitrogen oxide than are healthy. But we can’t follow nitrogen oxide molecules out of a tailpipe into somebody’s lungs and then say that they got asthma or lung cancer because of it.

It’s almost abstract, but we know that it’s very real. I was just reading a piece in The Guardian not too long ago about a young girl in London who died of asthma. Her parents are trying to amend her death certificate to say that she was killed by the effects of air pollution. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of someone claiming directly that air pollution was the cause of death.

Maybe the silver lining is that now you see the European car companies seriously producing electric cars and making serious investments in electric cars because that’s really the only way they can meet the CO2 standards that regulations require. The car companies have marketing people who’ll try to make themselves look virtuous. But I don’t think they’re making electric cars now out of the goodness of their hearts, they’re doing it because they have regulations they need to meet.

In Volkswagen’s case, they are making a big investment in electric cars and partly because they realise that’s the only way they’re going to get past the scandal long-term. They have to come up with some other technology and they acknowledge that diesel is dead. And so, they seem to be making a serious attempt to build decent electric cars that people want to buy and that will be available for a reasonable price.

There’s still a lot of institutional resistance at the carmakers and that’s the big question over the next couple of years. You have companies who’ve made cars with internal combustion engines for 100 years. It’s challenging for them to change their orientation in such a short period of time, getting all the engineers on board, winning over the sceptics, and sending the message: “This is real, this is what we’re doing now.” For big companies that’s a very, very difficult task.

Then there are the new challengers like Dyson or Tesla that have no internal combustion history at all.

They’re totally focused on electric cars. That gives them a certain advantage because electric is their whole raison d’être.

They may be in a position to be more innovative. From a journalist’s point of view, it’s a very exciting time to be writing about the car industry.

Words: Jack Ewing, author of Faster, Higher, Farther; The Inside Story of the Volkswagen Scandal (published by Penguin, 2017)

Read more stories from on: at on.dyson.co.uk and follow on: @dyson_on

Dieselgate: Inside the air pollution scandal of the century was originally published in Dyson on: on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We all know that our homes can reveal a lot about the people who live in them and their unique lifestyles — from the photos on the walls to the food in the fridge, down to the toiletries in our bathrooms, a quick snoop around tells you a great deal about the inhabitants of a house.

But what we might not know is that the air around us can also tell its own tales about our lives. The bacteria that you bring in from the street on your shoes, the tiny fibres from your furniture, the volatile gases given off by your deodorant — particles many times smaller than the size of a human hair can create a detailed picture of an environment, and it’s the job of an elite team of “air pollution detectives” to piece that story together and better understand how pollution can spread around a home.

Gem McLuckie, an advanced research scientist at Dyson’s lab in Malmesbury, UK, is one of those detectives. Along with a small team, she and her counterparts at Dyson’s facility in South Korea, spend their days analysing the pollutants that have collected on their air purifiers’ filters.

“Some of the filters come from employees’ homes,” she explains. “And sometimes, if we’re interested in studying a certain area, we will contact customers in that area and ask if they’d be willing to swap their old filters for new ones and let us analyse them.”

1. RUBBER — Rubber can come from different sources — you might
get rubber from car tyres in the filter, but the presence of rubber doesn’t automatically mean the air purifier was in the city, it’s just as possible that the owner was a keen runner, as trainers can also produce rubber particles like this.

2. COOKING OILS — The presence of oil particles shows that the filter probably comes from a device that was located in a kitchen. The concentrations of oil can indicate whether the user was a fan of a regular fry-up, or only cooked with oil occasionally, while further analysis could probably tell you whether they favoured olive oil or sunflower oil.

3. TAR DEPOSITS — If a house were surrounded by dirt tracks, you’d be less likely to find tar deposits on a filter so this generally indicates an urban environment. Hotter climates can mean more tar is likely to be picked up from the roads outside so you might expect to find a higher concentration of tar on the filter.

This isn’t just professional nosiness. “If we can get a better idea of the sort of pollutants that our customers are exposed to, and can understand the different problems in different environments, we can ensure we’re creating products that best serve the needs of the people using them,” says Gem whose work focuses on the small particles — everything from plastic to pollen — found in HEPA filters.

Before you can begin to identify a particle, you have to be able to see it, and to do that these detectives use Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), an imaging technology many times more powerful than your average magnifying glass.

“We fire electrons at the surface of something and when they bounce off it, we pick up the pattern that the scattered electrons make to create a 3D image of the particle that we’re looking at,” explains Gem.

To analyse an entire filter in this way would take weeks. Instead, the scientists take representative samples from different areas of the filter. Even then the process can still take several days. “I recently spent three days having ‘a quick look’ at a filter,” laughs Gem.

Sometimes it’s apparent just from looking at the particle exactly what it is — a grain of pollen, for example, has a very characteristic shape. But at other times, chemical analysis is needed.

“At first glance, an organic particle and a rubber particle can look similar,” says Gem.

And while some particles might be easier to identify than others, to date, they’ve not stumbled across anything that’s been a total mystery.

“You might need to do more tests, or look into more literature, but you normally figure it out eventually.”

1. INORGANIC MATERIAL — It’s hard to say for sure what this particular organic particle is, but it is most likely a tiny piece of bark. Even in cities we live in the presence of a lot of organic matter which is small enough for us to breathe in, including: bark, plants, leaves. Their presence may also suggest that the filter has come from a more rural environment.

2. POLLEN — Dyson’s “pollution detectives” can actually tell what season it is from the pollen present — tree pollen is around from March to May, while weed pollen occurs between June and September. If there’s more pollen it also generally means a more rural area, while high concentrations of a certain pollen can tell you what plants can be found in the garden.

3. SILICON BALL — The presence of a lot of silicon balls in a filter shows that it has probably come from a home where a lot of synthetic products are used — these types of particles are carrier molecules and so are often found in scented products like household cleaners, make-up and other toiletries, such as deodorant and hairspray.

Each particle helps to build a picture of the environment where the filter was used. And while sometimes the pollution detectives will be aware of the provenance of the filter, at other times they may have no information whatsoever, gradually pulling together an idea of where the filter has come from, like a combination of Jilly Goolden doing a blind wine tasting and Keith Lemon peering Through The Keyhole.

“You can quickly work out whether it’s from an urban environment or a rural one,” says Gem. “Filters from towns and cities have a lot of particles from cars — particles from tyres and brakes — and industrial activity. While in the countryside you’ll find more organic and plant matter.”

Once they’ve established a rough location, it’s not hard to identify a room.

“Those in the kitchen tend to have a lot of natural and vegetative fibres from chopping food and you’ll also see particles from cooking oils. In the bedroom, you see a lot of skin cells from when people change the bedding, and we also find dead dust mites, excretions from dust mites, and lots of silica balls which tend to come from spraying hairspray, perfume, or deodorant. Then filters from the living room tend to have more plants and pollen in there, as well as residue from burning candles and fibres from the furnishings. We’ll know if you have a red sofa or a red cushion on your sofa, and whether it’s made from natural or synthetic material.”

And it doesn’t stop there.

1. BACTERIA — All filters will contain bacteria — from humans (we’re covered in the stuff), pets, the soil nearby — and a separate analysis can identify precisely which bacteria are present. The exact strains can give information on where the filter comes from as the bacteria found in a hospital environment, for example, would be different to those found in a home.

2. MOULD — The presence of a lot of mould in the filter indicates that it has come from a damp environment — the more moisture in the air, the more mould you’re likely to find. Further analysis can tell you more about the environment as certain moulds are common to damp dark areas, while others are wood or brick-based.

“We can tell if you have a pet, whether there’s damp in your home which is causing mould, whether you spend a lot of time outside and bring in a lot of mud, whether you buy cheap silicone-soled trainers, what type of flowers you like…” the list goes on.

After two years in the job, I wonder if anything she’s discovered has shocked or surprised Gem.

“I’ve started spraying deodorant in the bathroom with the window open to try to improve the air quality in the house,” she admits. “But most of all I’m shocked at how much of the urban world can get into our houses when we think it’s behind our front door. And that’s not something we as individuals can do much about. It would be lovely if some of the data we’ve found could influence emissions targets at a higher level.”

Words: Claire Coleman, freelance journalist

Read more stories from on: at on.dyson.co.uk and follow on: @dyson_on

Meet Dyson’s “air pollution detectives” was originally published in Dyson on: on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Increasingly, “smart” devices seem to be adding voguish technologies like voice assistants, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality. Fewer companies, however, would consider the benefit of adding barometers, a now over 350-year-old piece of technology, to a product that cost millions to research and develop.

Fewer companies still would consider attaching this ancient technology to a vacuum cleaner. Nevertheless, this is exactly what Dyson has done with its latest cleaning product and, what’s more, they say the addition is going to be “game-changing”.

Barometers probably bring to mind images of antique wall ornaments with ornately painted faces offering whimsical meteorological advice like: “bring a brolly”. But, as Dyson has discovered, barometric sensors offer more modern applications than just ensuring you dress for the weather.

Simply put, barometers measure air pressure. This is essentially the force exerted by the weight of air and gases in the atmosphere. At a lower altitude, there is more air pushing down so the pressure is greater, whereas at 35,000ft less air above you equals less pressure, which is also why it’s harder to breathe the higher one gets. Barometers measure this phenomenon using the liquid in a vacuum-sealed tube. As pressure increases or decreases, the liquid rises or falls.

In 1640 the Italian physicist, Evangelista Torricelli, developed the first working barometer prototype. His invention attempted to solve a problem irking the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He’d employed local pump makers to draw water up to his new fountain but, try as they might, they couldn’t suck it higher than 10 meters. Torricelli believed something with a counteracting weight was pushing down and limiting water suction leaving the fountain dry.

He devised a meter-long tube, sealed at one end which stood vertically in a basin of mercury, which he knew was 14 times heavier than the Tuscan engineer’s water. When the mercury level fell by the same amount the pump makers observed, Torricelli realised that the counterpoise must be the weight of air acting on the tube’s vacuum.

“We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of elementary air, which is known by incontestable experiments to have weight,” he wrote describing his hefty discovery.

His work was refined by other scientists, including the French mathematician, Blaise Pascal, who undertook a hazardous 4,803ft trek carrying a metre-tall tube of mercury up an extinct volcano in Auvergne to investigate Torricelli’s invention at altitude.

Soon after, barometers became common domestic devices thanks to their ability to predict approaching weather fronts and protect drying laundry from imminent thunderstorms.

But, the rise of personal computing has replaced barometers with devices that digitally monitor air pressure — including Dyson’s latest vacuum cleaners.

The unusual decision to include this came about after, as Dyson happily admit, their devices “weren’t performing well enough at extreme altitudes.” As Matt Childe, global head of motor development at Dyson explains, “when we started to sell more globally in 2006 we found people used our motors in unexpected places and machines were reacting differently region by region.”

Expanding into geographically diverse places, from the top of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado to the Caspian cities of Russia 92ft below sea level, suddenly made altitude a genuine concern.”

Matt continues: “motor impellers push a certain amount of air at a time and if it’s very thin you need more revolutions to create the same effect. In the previous motor, the only source of intelligence we got from the motor was how fast it was spinning. If it wasn’t working properly, we couldn’t tell whether it was blocked or whether people were using it at the top of a mountain.” This led to a total overhaul of the motor in their cord-free vacuums.

In order to overcome their machine’s altitude sickness, engineers turned to the humble barometer. “Now when you pull the trigger, before the motor even starts, it takes a reading of your altitude,” explains Matt.

“Because you get high-pressure days and low-pressure days, weather affects ambient air pressure which we measure too. As a result, we’re able to determine roughly where you are and then adjust the motor to fit the machine performance to the demands.

“Suddenly, this one additional piece of information means we’re able to tell what altitude you’re at and how to adjust your machine for peak performance. But, we’re also able to tell if you’ve blocked your machine with a sock, a piece of Lego or whether you really need to wash your filter. It all just helps to maintain your machine at absolutely peak performance levels.”

The degree to which engineers went during testing stages was almost as extreme as the altitudes to which they were catering. While home testing the barometer in the latest vacuum cleaner, they found that the altitude sensor they’d added was so accurate that it was actually differentiating between whether testers were using it to clean the floor, a tabletop or the ceiling.

By maintaining these high standards of testing, Dyson engineers can now ensure that every new V10 vacuum cleaner will work as well in homes around the world as it does in rural Britain where the machine was designed.

Regardless of where you live (and vacuum), one thing’s certain; finding a new application for this old technology promises to elevate spring cleaning to new heights.

Words: Henry Tobias Jones, Editor

Read more stories from on: at on.dyson.co.uk and follow on: @dyson_on

Introducing the Baro-Motor was originally published in Dyson on: on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last year, between August and September you contributed to all the pollution recorded. If you were in a car, bus or train with a combustion engine — in fact, if you did virtually anything using electricity you produced nitrogen dioxide, a nasty-smelling, gaseous pollutant. In cities, almost all of it comes from vehicle exhausts. But it can also be produced by power plants, factories and anything else that burns things.

With people increasingly worried about the impact of burning fossil fuels, the scientific community is investing more money into studying its effects. One experiment is the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 5P environmental monitoring satellite. Using state-of-the-art photo-optic equipment it can create images of real-time NO2 pollution anywhere on the planet. These eerie black and white images are a ghostly echo of all the NO2 we produce.

The Americas

In The U.S. annual average ambient NO2 concentrations, as measured at area-wide monitors, have decreased by more than 40% since 1980.

Wildfires across North America have made headline news for the past few years. But the NO2 produced by these fires barely registers when compared with the huge fires in Africa. Instead, North America’s NO2 map looks not unlike a population density map. New York City, Los Angeles and Mexico City produced some of the highest concentrations of NO2 in August and September 2018. But there are also a few anomalies including smaller cities, like Fort McMurray in Canada and Monterrey in Mexico, which also produced an uncharacteristically large amount of pollution. While this may make the continent’s output look bad, according to the EPA, NO2 emissions have fallen 60 per cent in the US since the 1980s. We will just have to imagine how much worse things were 30 years ago.

Asia

India’s primary source of energy is coal. Coal mining started 1774 in Raniganj under the British rule, but has continued to grow after Independence. The coal mines of Jharia, near Dhanbad in Jharkhand, actually caught fire and have been burning uninterrupted since 1916.

Sadly, if we want a picture of what things may have looked like in North America 30 years ago, the small town of Korba in India might be a place to start. One of the dots on the map of Asian NO2 is Korba. Its population is roughly 360,000, but the highest recorded concentrations of NO2 levels near the town were higher than all but two American cities — and they were New York and Los Angeles. The reason for this concentration is Korba’s many power plants, mines and factories. In this region industrialisation is the major source of NO2, however, it is telling that many Chinese cities, which were once the worst sources of this pollution, have vastly improved.

Europe and the Middle East

Data from 1st June to 31st August 2018 showed that Mpumalanga in South Africa produced the most NO2 anywhere in the world. Emissions from coal-fired powerplants in one of the region’s largest towns, eMalahleni (meaning place of coal) were said to be responsible for more than half of hospital admissions and deaths due to respiratory illness in 2014.

Like in North America, the NO2 atlas of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East highlights big cities. But one of the more interesting facets is the clear Mediterranean shipping routes — drawn out across the sea as black lines connecting the Rock of Gibraltar with Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and across the Indian Ocean. It also shows the patterned geography of Europe with dark, uninhabited mountain regions contrasting bright port cities, industrial towns, and metropolises. In Northern Europe in particular, the popularity of diesel vehicles makes spotting urban environments sadly easy. Huge clouds of NO2 can be here seen blowing from continental Europe across to the UK.

European Space Agency’s air quality monitoring Sentinel-5P satellite

The images above were all created by the European Space Agency’s state-of-the-art air quality monitoring satellite. Sentinel-5P was launched by the ESA in October 2017. It’s mission: to perform atmospheric monitoring of the world’s air pollution. Since its arrival Sentinel-5P has been orbiting around our Earth at a height of about 824 km using its TROPOMI instrument, an ultraviolet, visible, near and short-wavelength infrared spectrometer to monitor the scale of our air quality problem. During its seven-year lifespan, Sentinel-5P will monitor atmospheric levels of Ozone, Nitrogen Dioxide, Sulphur Dioxide, Formaldehyde, Aerosol, Carbon Monoxide, Methane, and even clouds.

Words: Henry Tobias Jones, Editor

Read more stories from on: at on.dyson.co.uk and follow on: @dyson_on

A problem so bad, you can see it from space… was originally published in Dyson on: on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Chances are you’re now up to date on HBO’s Chernobyl (incidentally IMDB’s highest-rated show of all time). Detailing the fallout from the 1986 explosion of reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat in what was the Ukrainian SSR, the show offers a bleak and apocalyptic insight into the raw power of nuclear energy and its devastating and unprecedented impact on the lives of those called upon to help contain the disaster. From firefighters being broken down at a cellular level to villages full of infected dogs being exterminated, it’s grim viewing, to say the least. Warning, unless you are a history or air pollution nut; there are spoilers ahead.

But one aspect HBO’s limited series doesn’t quite have the scope to explore fully is how the spread of airborne radioactive particles actually made the Chernobyl disaster one of the worst air pollution incidents in history.

Naturally, while our concern about air pollution is relatively modern, the problem itself has been building for a long time with over a century of industrialisation, deforestation and population booms across the globe adding to the issue.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 91% of us breathe in polluted air on a daily basis, leading to the premature deaths of 7 million people per year. Meanwhile, a UK-based study published in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters attributes one in 20 deaths to pollution-related causes — costing £40 billion per year.

Throw a nuclear reactor explosion into the mix, and you’re lighting the fuse on a deadly series of events…

The Spread Of Radiation

There’s a brief mention in the HBO show that the Chernobyl Disaster first became known to the outside world three days after the disaster when a spike in airborne radiation levels was detected by researchers at Sweden’s Forsmark power station almost 1,000 miles away.

Research since the incident suggests that the radioactive particles not only spread northward across Scandinavia, but eastward across Russia, before eventually encompassing the entirety of Europe. With radioactive particles borne by air currents, researchers estimate the radioactive plume released from the reactor explosion eventually contributed to over 16,000 deaths across Europe — raising concerns about the low official death toll of just 31.

And the effects are still being felt; with researchers at Sweden’s Linköping University attributing over 1,000 cancer-related deaths in Northern Sweden to the direct effects of the Chernobyl Disaster between 1986 and 1999. According to lead scientist Martin Tondel, northern cities such as Gävle and Umeå were particularly afflicted.

“This is a follow up to our previous studies, which showed that out of 22,400 cases of cancer, 849 were directly related to radiation until 1996,” he said.

Data for the rest of Europe is hard to come by, but one thing experts can agree on is that the former Soviet Union is the area worst affected by the Chernobyl fallout. According to a WHO study, around five million people lived in areas of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine with dangerous levels of radioactive particles (as of 2006). Among them, about 270 000 people continue to live in particularly dangerous areas classified by Soviet authorities as ‘Strictly Controlled Zones’.

The report goes on to say that while many people in the infected areas received low doses, many people ingested radioactive particles through infected milk, which had a particularly significant effect on their thyroid glands leading to a large increase in the incidence — up to 4,000 new cases — of thyroid cancer among those who were children or adolescents at the time of the accident. The good news is to date the thyroid cancer survival rate among these people is 99% (according to a UN report).

The Bridge Of Death

One of the most desolate scenes of the HBO series is the residents of Pripyat watching the power plant fire from a nearby bridge. As the graphite fire rages against the night, the citizens look up in awe and children play in the snow-like ash floating down from the heavens. This bridge became known as The Bridge of Death and while those watching the fire from it certainly exposed themselves to huge levels of radiation, there is little evidence that they all died — as per the HBO show.

“People talk about the “bridge of death,” about the idea that a load of residents of Pripyat went out to stand on this railway bridge, which stood at the top of Lenina Prospekt, the main boulevard into the city, and watched the burning reactor from that standpoint. And that, in the subsequent years, every person who stood on that bridge died,” explains author Adam Higginbotham in an interview with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to promote his new book Midnight in Chernobyl.

But, in Higginbotham’s extensive research, he didn’t find a single scrap of evidence that the residents had gone out to the bridge, or that any of them had died as a result. “I could find no evidence of that…I spoke to a guy who was seven or eight at the time, who did indeed cycle over to the bridge to see what he could see at the reactor, which was only three kilometres away. But he’s not dead. He’s apparently perfectly healthy,” Higginbotham explains.

The majority of the 28 people who died in the immediate aftermath of the plant explosion were fire and rescue workers, not civilians. Over 50,000 people were excavated from Pripyat, but there is little information on how many later developed serious illnesses or died as a result of their exposure on the night of the fire.

Another person who was actually there on the night was Pasha Kondratiev who watched the fire from the bridge with his wife and daughters. Speaking to The Guardian in 2016, Kondratiev had this to say:

“I could see the ruins of the reactor. It was completely destroyed and there was a cloud of smoke coming from it. Nobody gave us any information, but we knew it was serious. We knew it was something terrifying.”

Seven years later one of Kondratiev’s daughters collapsed and died in the street from complications related to asthma, which Kondratiev’s wife Natasha links to Chernobyl, although, she acknowledges with what must be acute frustration, that “no one can say for sure.”

Animal Kingdom

As mentioned, one of the most touching episodes of the HBO show dealt with the round-up and extermination of contaminated animals, from an old woman’s milking cow to thousands of pet dogs left abandoned post evacuation.

Animals weren’t the only victims. A 10km ring of forest around Chernobyl was killed by acute radiant poisoning carried on the air. Known as the Red Forest, the trees were bulldozed and buried along with animal carcasses.

Meanwhile, many animals born in the area in the decades since the disaster have displayed numerous physical abnormalities, while invertebrate populations have significantly decreased. As most of the remaining radioactivity is located in the top layer of the soil — where invertebrates live and lay their eggs — many have died off, with negative implications for the entire ecosystem around Chernobyl.

Elsewhere in Europe, air-born radiation had a knock-on effect on health and the local economy. In Sweden and Finland fish from deepwater lakes were banned from resale. Also in Sweden, several areas of countryside around Gävle were cordoned off in the Eighties with residents evacuated and unable to sell their assets. Martina Krüger, a Greenpeace specialist on energy and climate explained that in recent years hunters around Gävle have caught moose carrying an exceptionally high amount of radiation.

As of 2019, animals in 37 Norwegian municipalities are subject to radiation testing before being deemed safe for slaughter. And, in the UK, radiation leached into the soil through rainfall is thought to have affected 10,000 Welsh farms and four million sheep with similar restrictions across Cumbria and Scotland. Ten years after the disaster, in 1996, Welsh sheep were still failing radiation tests.

Much like the human cost of Chernobyl, it is unclear when animals and plant life across Europe will be free of radiation. What is clear is that the impact of the Chernobyl Disaster is going to impact European life for the next few decades at least, making it one of the most significant — and harmful — air pollution incidences in modern history.

Words: Tom Ward, freelance journalist

Read more stories from on: at on.dyson.co.uk and follow on: @dyson_on

What HBO’s Chernobyl didn’t show you about air pollution was originally published in Dyson on: on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Burned toast and the see-through toaster. That’s the image that springs to mind for most people they picture an ‘invention’. It’s usually a gizmo or gadget cooked up in garden sheds or Silicon Valley garages by messy haired oddballs.

Between the 18th and 20th centuries this “clutter-bug inventor” mythology was well-deserved.

On the day Albert Einstein died, a Time magazine photographer, Ralph Morse, snuck into the physicist’s office in Princeton, New Jersey. His famous picture shows the desk of one of history’s greatest minds — and it’s a complete and utter mess. While he was still alive, Einstein was even quoted as saying: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk?” In lots of ways, this isn’t baseless — making anything new usually requires people who are willing to first make a mess.

And the public likes this story of lightning strike genius, a different thinker leaping out of the bath naked and running about yelling “Eureka!” after having an epiphany.

The idea of an ordered, industrialised source of inventions is harder for most people to picture. This is because of the cultural depiction of machines during the Industrial Revolution, like the cotton spinning jenny, steam locomotive engine, or Henry Ford’s manufacturing line. All were initially lampooned by the public, who didn’t quite understand them because they just looked like more complex ways of making things a human hand already could.

Perhaps the greatest example of this public misunderstanding of the role industry plays in invention comes from the absurd complexity of the English illustrator William Heath Robinson’s cartoon contraptions. Their needlessly complex mechanical processes to produce relatively simple results — including trivial tasks like potato peeling, wart removal, and pancake making — amusing as they may be, didn’t paint industrial processes in a positive light.

Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of technological advancements today are being made inside large companies and institutions who can afford the eye-watering costs of developing new technologies. Moreover, the Heath Robinson contraption age is over. Rapid advances made in information technology have entirely changed the modern inventor’s story — moving it out of the shed and into the lab.

Here is a telling example: any aspiring inventors searching the internet for help making their idea a reality will stumble across one of many inventor’s starter kits being advertised by companies like Innovate Product Design.

They include everything would-be inventors need to get going. But inside you won’t find the sketching paper, D-I-Y electronics equipment, and the keys to a tool shed. Instead, there is C.A.D. design software, 3D printer-prototyping tutorials, and an intellectual property patent application form.

Ingredients that appear to be at odds with the fabled “light bulb moment”, replacing noble tinkering with staring at a computer screen.

But this is precisely the point; invention has modernised. Today, as well as wrong-thinking, experimentation, and luck, you’ll also need research, planning, and manufacturing skill.

To many Sir James Dyson is the quintessential self-made inventor. But, as he explains in our exclusive interview, he’s also an advocate for all the “industrial invention” needed to take your idea to the next level.

“Sometimes just having a good idea isn’t enough,” he explains. “The public focuses on inventors, and famous inventors’ stories, about serendipity and struggles. You know the inventor-in-the-garden-shed syndrome. Whereas 99.99999% of inventions are done by very creative people within companies. But the shame is that the public seems to like the garden shed man — the James Dyson or Trevor Baylis story, which is a bit of a pity. It undermines the testing and rigour of bringing an invention to life, of people working together to achieve something.”

The type of industrial invention being practised at Dyson shows the huge gulf that forms between big companies and start-ups who are both trying to create new technologies.

One clear distinction is the ability big companies, but not start-ups, have to innovate.

In the introduction to her 2016 book Inventology, Pagan Kennedy writes “people tend to use the words invention and innovation interchangeably which causes confusion.” She calls on the words of Art Fry, inventor of the Post-it note, used himself to distinguish between the two:

“Invention, according to Fry, is what happens when you translate a thought into a thing. More specifically, Fry points out that an invention usually involves creating a prototype that lets you test your concept and demonstrate that it works. The process may require dreaming, drawing observation, idea generation, discovery, tinkering, and engineering. But it should end with the proof.

Innovation is what happens afterwards. It ‘is the act of working through all of the obstacles and problems in the path of turning a creative idea into a business.’ According to Fry. Indeed, the term innovation is often used as a catchall word to describe the challenges companies must overcome in order to mass-produce a product — like streamlining, shaving costs, managing supply chains, and assembling teams of collaborators.”

Mark Taylor is Dyson’s head of research. He is on the frontline of Dyson’s efforts to both invent and innovate. The problem is there is no knowing where the next great idea is really going to come from.

“It can begin in lots of different ways,” Mark explains. “We’ll suddenly make a leap and realise we can extend a technology that we’re already familiar with into a different area. For example, we didn’t start out by trying to invent our hand dryers. We were looking at the technology to see if you could smooth and iron clothing with high-pressure air. It can be quite Edisonian in that way. You start down one path, and then you realise that another opportunity can be more attractive.”

“But we also have known problems which we’re trying to tackle,” he continues. “We know that batteries are a limiting factor and that we definitely want to develop new battery technology. When we can identify a big problem like that we have to be very decisive to go deep into researching it. Issues around batteries today are well-known: they have a limited amount of stored energy in them, they’re heavy, their volumetric and gravimetric energy density is poor relative to how people want to use cord-free products. There’s a whole bunch of problems — not necessarily with products — but actually with the core technology.”

The result of this deeper search for the next big invention led Mark and his team to invest in teams of battery research scientists. “But,” as Mark explains “it also took us down a path of acquiring Sakti3, a solid-state battery start-up.”

HyonCheol Kim, is the VP of Satki 3 and was working there when Dyson acquired the company (it is still the only company Dyson has ever acquired in this way). He and his team have been working on solid-state batteries since 2007. They made news in 2014 after one of their prototype solid-state lithium battery cells reached a record energy density of 1,143 Watt-hours per litre — more than double the energy density of best lithium-ion batteries at the time. Dyson acquired the company a year later.

HyonCheol explains the process: “I was aware that we were talking to many different large companies. I’m sure some of them didn’t work out because of differences in expectations, but we rejected others because of vision misfit. We knew we were taking on a really big challenge, and we wanted to be working with people who understand the challenge of the project with a long-term view and ambition — like Dyson,” HyonCheol says.

During this long process (which is still ongoing) both sides of this partnership started to see the interplay between a small company’s ability to invent and break the rules, and a larger company’s ability to take any idea to the next level.

As HyonCheol says: “The scale definitely helped to upgrade research tools and expanding our scope of the project. We now have facilities in three different time zones working on the solid-state battery project. The immediate value definitely comes from having both money and experience. Dyson’s successful experience in the development of the digital motor provides clear guidance in planning scale-up of any potential new technologies.

“But there is one more important thing that came with Dyson’s scale, probably the most important. We now see an order more (10X), highly qualified applicants from all over the world for every position we post for hiring. I believe this is a direct impact enabled by the global recognition of Dyson’s brand.”

This has helped both Dyson and Satki 3 to push right up to the edge of what is possible in battery technology. As Mark Taylor explains, “some of the advancements made by Dyson are about improving the do-able. For example, we know it’s possible to make an electric car because people have already done it. But if you take solid-state batteries, you’re at the unknown; the bleeding edge of science. And you don’t know whether it’s possible to do something until you’ve experimented and got there. We don’t know it’s possible to make some other things yet, because nobody’s done it.”

In many ways, this is a unique situation in the modern technology landscape. As Mark says, “new inventor’s technologies are being acquired by larger companies all the time. What the public observe is the larger company coming out with the innovation. But, a lot of the technology that goes into familiar products like Amazon Alexa was bought in. They acquired the speech to natural language processing elements from a start-up and then developed them internally. Likewise, Apple’s Siri was bought in from a start-up.

“But,” he continues “Dyson and James are a little unique because he kept it all privately owned for such a long time. Because the business scaled itself it developed from a start-up into a big company and kept the technology development in-house. So over 25 years, a business developed around our ability to develop core technologies. It meant that Dyson could always retain the ability to do both: invent and innovate. That’s rare to be both the start-up inventor and the big innovative tech company.”

Words: Henry Tobias Jones

Read more stories from on: at on.dyson.co.uk and follow on: @dyson_on

Sir James Dyson: “Sometimes just having a good idea isn’t enough” was originally published in Dyson on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Burned toast and the see-through toaster. That’s the image that springs to mind for most people they picture an ‘invention’. It’s usually a gizmo or gadget cooked up in garden sheds or Silicon Valley garages by messy haired oddballs.

Between the 18th and 20th centuries this “clutter-bug inventor” mythology was well-deserved.

On the day Albert Einstein died, a Time magazine photographer, Ralph Morse, snuck into the physicist’s office in Princeton, New Jersey. His famous picture shows the desk of one of history’s greatest minds — and it’s a complete and utter mess. While he was still alive, Einstein was even quoted as saying: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk?” In lots of ways, this isn’t baseless — making anything new usually requires people who are willing to first make a mess.

And the public likes this story of lightning strike genius, a different thinker leaping out of the bath naked and running about yelling “Eureka!” after having an epiphany.

The idea of an ordered, industrialised source of inventions is harder for most people to picture. This is because of the cultural depiction of machines during the Industrial Revolution, like the cotton spinning jenny, steam locomotive engine, or Henry Ford’s manufacturing line. All were initially lampooned by the public, who didn’t quite understand them because they just looked like more complex ways of making things a human hand already could.

Perhaps the greatest example of this public misunderstanding of the role industry plays in invention comes from the absurd complexity of the English illustrator William Heath Robinson’s cartoon contraptions. Their needlessly complex mechanical processes to produce relatively simple results — including trivial tasks like potato peeling, wart removal, and pancake making — amusing as they may be, didn’t paint industrial processes in a positive light.

Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of technological advancements today are being made inside large companies and institutions who can afford the eye-watering costs of developing new technologies. Moreover, the Heath Robinson contraption age is over. Rapid advances made in information technology have entirely changed the modern inventor’s story — moving it out of the shed and into the lab.

Here is a telling example: any aspiring inventors searching the internet for help making their idea a reality will stumble across one of many inventor’s starter kits being advertised by companies like Innovate Product Design.

They include everything would-be inventors need to get going. But inside you won’t find the sketching paper, D-I-Y electronics equipment, and the keys to a tool shed. Instead, there is C.A.D. design software, 3D printer-prototyping tutorials, and an intellectual property patent application form.

Ingredients that appear to be at odds with the fabled “light bulb moment”, replacing noble tinkering with staring at a computer screen.

But this is precisely the point; invention has modernised. Today, as well as wrong-thinking, experimentation, and luck, you’ll also need research, planning, and manufacturing skill.

To many Sir James Dyson is the quintessential self-made inventor. But, as he explains in our exclusive interview, he’s also an advocate for all the “industrial invention” needed to take your idea to the next level.

“Sometimes just having a good idea isn’t enough,” he explains. “The public focuses on inventors, and famous inventors’ stories, about serendipity and struggles. You know the inventor-in-the-garden-shed syndrome. Whereas 99.99999% of inventions are done by very creative people within companies. But the shame is that the public seems to like the garden shed man — the James Dyson or Trevor Baylis story, which is a bit of a pity. It undermines the testing and rigour of bringing an invention to life, of people working together to achieve something.”

The type of industrial invention being practised at Dyson shows the huge gulf that forms between big companies and start-ups who are both trying to create new technologies.

One clear distinction is the ability big companies, but not start-ups, have to innovate.

In the introduction to her 2016 book Inventology, Pagan Kennedy writes “people tend to use the words invention and innovation interchangeably which causes confusion.” She calls on the words of Art Fry, inventor of the Post-it note, used himself to distinguish between the two:

“Invention, according to Fry, is what happens when you translate a thought into a thing. More specifically, Fry points out that an invention usually involves creating a prototype that lets you test your concept and demonstrate that it works. The process may require dreaming, drawing observation, idea generation, discovery, tinkering, and engineering. But it should end with the proof.

Innovation is what happens afterwards. It ‘is the act of working through all of the obstacles and problems in the path of turning a creative idea into a business.’ According to Fry. Indeed, the term innovation is often used as a catchall word to describe the challenges companies must overcome in order to mass-produce a product — like streamlining, shaving costs, managing supply chains, and assembling teams of collaborators.”

Mark Taylor is Dyson’s head of research. He is on the frontline of Dyson’s efforts to both invent and innovate. The problem is there is no knowing where the next great idea is really going to come from.

“It can begin in lots of different ways,” Mark explains. “We’ll suddenly make a leap and realise we can extend a technology that we’re already familiar with into a different area. For example, we didn’t start out by trying to invent our hand dryers. We were looking at the technology to see if you could smooth and iron clothing with high-pressure air. It can be quite Edisonian in that way. You start down one path, and then you realise that another opportunity can be more attractive.”

“But we also have known problems which we’re trying to tackle,” he continues. “We know that batteries are a limiting factor and that we definitely want to develop new battery technology. When we can identify a big problem like that we have to be very decisive to go deep into researching it. Issues around batteries today are well-known: they have a limited amount of stored energy in them, they’re heavy, their volumetric and gravimetric energy density is poor relative to how people want to use cord-free products. There’s a whole bunch of problems — not necessarily with products — but actually with the core technology.”

The result of this deeper search for the next big invention led Mark and his team to invest in teams of battery research scientists. “But,” as Mark explains “it also took us down a path of acquiring Sakti3, a solid-state battery start-up.”

HyonCheol Kim, is the VP of Satki 3 and was working there when Dyson acquired the company (it is still the only company Dyson has ever acquired in this way). He and his team have been working on solid-state batteries since 2007. They made news in 2014 after one of their prototype solid-state lithium battery cells reached a record energy density of 1,143 Watt-hours per litre — more than double the energy density of best lithium-ion batteries at the time. Dyson acquired the company a year later.

HyonCheol explains the process: “I was aware that we were talking to many different large companies. I’m sure some of them didn’t work out because of differences in expectations, but we rejected others because of vision misfit. We knew we were taking on a really big challenge, and we wanted to be working with people who understand the challenge of the project with a long-term view and ambition — like Dyson,” HyonCheol says.

During this long process (which is still ongoing) both sides of this partnership started to see the interplay between a small company’s ability to invent and break the rules, and a larger company’s ability to take any idea to the next level.

As HyonCheol says: “The scale definitely helped to upgrade research tools and expanding our scope of the project. We now have facilities in three different time zones working on the solid-state battery project. The immediate value definitely comes from having both money and experience. Dyson’s successful experience in the development of the digital motor provides clear guidance in planning scale-up of any potential new technologies.

“But there is one more important thing that came with Dyson’s scale, probably the most important. We now see an order more (10X), highly qualified applicants from all over the world for every position we post for hiring. I believe this is a direct impact enabled by the global recognition of Dyson’s brand.”

This has helped both Dyson and Satki 3 to push right up to the edge of what is possible in battery technology. As Mark Taylor explains, “some of the advancements made by Dyson are about improving the do-able. For example, we know it’s possible to make an electric car because people have already done it. But if you take solid-state batteries, you’re at the unknown; the bleeding edge of science. And you don’t know whether it’s possible to do something until you’ve experimented and got there. We don’t know it’s possible to make some other things yet, because nobody’s done it.”

In many ways, this is a unique situation in the modern technology landscape. As Mark says, “new inventor’s technologies are being acquired by larger companies all the time. What the public observe is the larger company coming out with the innovation. But, a lot of the technology that goes into familiar products like Amazon Alexa was bought in. They acquired the speech to natural language processing elements from a start-up and then developed them internally. Likewise, Apple’s Siri was bought in from a start-up.

“But,” he continues “Dyson and James are a little unique because he kept it all privately owned for such a long time. Because the business scaled itself it developed from a start-up into a big company and kept the technology development in-house. So over 25 years, a business developed around our ability to develop core technologies. It meant that Dyson could always retain the ability to do both: invent and innovate. That’s rare to be both the start-up inventor and the big innovative tech company.”

Words: Henry Tobias Jones

Read more stories from on: at on.dyson.co.uk and follow on: @dyson_on

Sir James Dyson: “Sometimes just having a good idea isn’t enough” was originally published in Dyson on: on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.