From University of Utah Health Sciences viua Eurekalert; I suppose it’s only a matter of time where somebody will publish a study saying that a 50ppm increase in CO2 causes more suicides. I wonder how they explain Seattle, which is 8th in the nation in clean air, or those hotbeds of air pollution, Wyoming and North Dakota.
Cheyenne Wyoming has the cleanest air of any U.S. City
Study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found increased risk of suicide associated with short-term air pollution exposure
A new study from the University of Utah is adding to the small, but growing body of research that links air pollution exposure to suicide.
In research published today in The American Journal of Epidemiology, investigator Amanda Bakian, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah, and her colleagues outline chemical and meteorological variables that are risk factors for suicide. Their study, titled “Risk assessment of air pollution and suicide,” examines how those factors play out among different genders and age groups. The findings build on other research by Bakian released in April 2014, when she found that fine particulates and nitrogen dioxide in air pollution are linked with an increased risk for suicide.
In the latest study, Bakian and researchers found an increased risk of suicide associated with short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter among Salt Lake City residents who died by suicide between 2000 to 2010. In particular, men and Salt Lake City residents between 36 to 64 years of age experienced the highest risk of suicide following short-term air pollution exposure.
“We are not exactly sure why risk of suicide was higher in these two groups but suspect that it might be because these two groups were either exposed to higher levels of air pollution or that other additional factors make these two groups more susceptible to the effects of air pollution,” said Bakian.
Bakian examined the records of more than 1,500 people who died by suicide in Salt Lake County between Jan. 1, 2000, and Dec. 31, 2010, and found that the odds of completing suicide were 20 percent higher for people exposed to increased levels of nitrogen dioxide in the two to three days before their deaths. Similarly, individuals exposed to high concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the two to three days before a suicide experienced 5 percent higher odds of suicide. Research found the risk was highest during the spring and fall –not the winter months when inversions are most common.
Data from the records also revealed that men experienced a 25 percent increase in the odds of suicide following short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide and a 6 percent increase in the odds of suicide following short-term exposure to fine particulate matter. In addition, the odds of suicide in people between the ages of 36 to 64 increased by 20 percent following short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide and 7 percent following short-term exposure to fine particulate matter.
“As suicide risk was found to differ by age and gender, this suggests that vulnerability to suicide following air pollution exposure is not uniform across Salt Lake County residents and that some Salt Lake County residents are more vulnerable than others,” said Bakian. “Our next step is to determine in more detail exactly what elements–such as genetic and sociodemographic factors –are responsible for increasing one’s vulnerability to suicide following air pollution exposure.”She is careful to point out that the research doesn’t state that bad air causes suicide. While the study doesn’t prove that air pollution causes someone to commit suicide, it suggests that higher levels of pollution might interact with other factors to increase the risk for suicide, she noted.
###
Bakian’s research was funded in small part through seed grant funding distributed last year by the University of Utah’s Program for Air Quality, Health and Society. The program awarded $165,000 to six researchers to perform research aimed at understanding and addressing the consequences of Utah’s air pollution on human health and welfare. In addition to representatives from the Program for Air Quality, Health and Society, the research was conducted by investigators from the University of Utah Department of Psychiatry, the Brain Institute, the Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC), Veterans Integrated Service Network 19 (VISN 19) and Intermountain Health Care. Study co-investigators include Rebekah Huber, Hilary Coon, Douglas Gray, Phillip Wilson, William McMahon and Perry Renshaw.
thank goodness I’m no longer 64
Well played.
thank goodness you did not fly to LA or NYC, breathe deeply the gathering gloom and then fly back home.
(snarc/)
I would like to know if they ate bananas that day. I hear bananas are bad.
In other news… Living causes death. Film at 11.
Dying also causes death. They should look into that.
Life is a sexually transmitted condition that is invariably fatal.
We must ban sex.
Actually there is a paper published in the “Journal Of Irreproducible Results” entitled “Death As An Inherited Characteristic”.
Seriously?
Dredge through enough data and use R and correlations will be found, no matter how tenuous.
If correct, there should be no Chinese or East Indians over the age of 40.
Nor should there be many tobacco smokers left in the world.
Many of them are dying to quit though
The smoker you drink, the player you get!
thought the same :-0
This is absurd. How about other contributing factors like drug use, socioeconomic status, criminal behavior, prolonged unemployment, pre-existing mental conditions, and on and on. Show us the full picture of these 1,500 individuals, then give back the money used for this ridiculous study on attribution without real measurable causation. Where is the BS button when you need it!
If this were true then why do they phart?
They didn’t actually measure the exposure, did they? Couldn’t even interview. Proxies all the way down.
Exactly. I pulled the no2 levels for Utah for those years and they are far below national standards.
NO2: http://www.health.utah.gov/utahair/pollutants/NO2/
Particulates: http://www.health.utah.gov/utahair/pollutants/PM/
So, windy dusty days can do us in. Who woulda thunk it?
That’s the %change… what are the actual numbers, state population change over time etc?
eg. if a state had 1 suicide one year and two suicides the next, that’s a 100% increase in the rate of suicide… but if the state’s population increased as well, the per capita suicide rate went down.
Lies, dammed lies and statistics…
So, the 100% increase in suicides is related to population growth…..hmmmm, I see a new paper coming out!
Cold air causes full moons. I know this to be true because the only time I see full moons is when the nights are really cold. Or, maybe its the full moons making the air cold? I need a grant to study this to see which one is true.
I thought clear skies were necessary for full moons, as I’ve never seen one when it is cloudy. Could it be it requires both?
But Cheyenne has a Dyno-Nobel fertilizer/Explosives plant to the southwest, and once in a while there is a little puff of yellowish/brown smoke out of a stack in the nitric acid plant. You can see the molecules of NO2 as they whiz past on their way to Nebraska.
This can’t possibly be right. We all know that it’s always Women and Minorities that are hardest hit.
yea, I too read that on the Internet. Must be doubly true.
Just another feeble attempt to hinder petroleum production. IT WON’T WORK, you dopes.
Even OSHA, which exposes your motive by telling us
this: “Nitrogen Dioxide … Synonyms: Diesel exhaust component; … .” See fn. 1 —
— doesn’t agree with you.
Not one mention of increased suicide risk in its Exposure Limits and Health Effects table. See fn. 2.
fn. 1 https://www.osha.gov/dts/chemicalsampling/data/CH_257400.html
fn. 2 Ibid.
OK, now for some serious critique. Sample of 1500, typical risk of 20 per 100,000 per year? Anyone see an issue with error bars so big they won’t fit on a page?
Nice one, Mr. Kilty! lol You just killed that paper. Time of death: 0955 13 February 2015. We will all observe a moment of silence for its bereaved authors…. as soon as we stop laughing.
Is it too late to put a stop payment order on that check… ?
Another peer reviewed study so cherished by the alarmist crowd- with “error bars so big they won’t fit on the page”. Good catch.
Brandon Gates, here is another “peer reviewed ” for your list.
I wonder if stagnant air, one of the precursors to the build up of particulates and NO also correlates. As for winter, this year I’m either dealing with snow or catching up on stuff I’m falling behind on. No time for a well staged suicide!
Take care, back there, in Massachusetts, Ric. I’ve been praying for a friend’s Boston area family and friends and “everyone in New England.” You guys will make it (as you always do), but this is a tough one. Hang in there! “And this, too, shall pass… .”
Good to “see” you,
Janice
If the culprit truly is NO2 and PM2.5 then the suicide rate of Los Angeles ought to be skyrocketing.
The Greater LA basin should be in a state of Steady Population Decline.
In fact, Los Angelinos should be queuing up to drink the Reverend Jones Cocktail.
LA should be holding Lotteries for Cemetery Plots.
Street Gangs should be bidding for “Drive By” rights and neighborhoods paying for Street Corner standing room privileges.
/sarc
What am I saying…Los Angelinos ARE dying to commit suicide
/snark
Oxygen deprivation from altitude with reduced serotonin. Put lithium in the drinking water: it works in El Paso but I am sure Utah residents would freak.
As long as the greenists go running around in circles after fake solutions to match up to their propaganda, the real problems will continue.
If correlation = causation, then maybe the suicides are causing dirty air. And volcanoes are causing sunspots!
So NO2 is bad and causes depression leading to suicide. One solution is to fill the air with CO (carbon monoxide to reduce the NO2 to N2O – nitrous oxide – its laughing gas. I was in New Orleans 20yrs ago when breathing laughing gas was all the rage. You could buy “a hit” from vendors. I note Louisiana isn’t one of the depressed nations. Who knows maybe living in the NW is the reason.
Here is an article showing sharply elevated suicides in rural areas and among Native Americans. In Canada, remote ‘First Nations’ (we call them) settlements have the highest suicide rates (and alcohol and drug abuse and other social ills). These narrow specializations (psychiatry) appear to not know they could use some help outside of their own literature.
http://www.planetizen.com/node/40894
In Canada, Inuit youth have the world’s highest suicide rate 11 times the non-aboriginal rate and First Nations, 5 to 7 times.
I’m only a geologist but debunking this social sciences paper is kid stuff.
The best laughing gas is cannabis smoke. It does reduce suicides. You can look it up. Or start here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/04/marijuana-legalization-suicide_n_4726390.html
Laugh — out — loud, sure, once the dopes who smoke dope stop coughing they may laugh, in a sort of raspy way… .
Another symptom of pot smoking: egomania. Have you ever met a pothead who didn’t talk about his or her habit in a pompous, arrogant, tone?
Well, shoot. In all seriousness, if they can only find the courage to keep on living by filling their lungs with brain-impairing smoke, I’m just glad they are still here. It would be nice, HOWEVER, if the pot industry didn’t enable their sad habit. These self-medicating (usually for anxiety and or depression) folks might, then, learn that they could be happy AND pot-free. Nope. Sigh. Won’t happen. The arrogance pot engenders, that built in, keep ’em-comin’-back-for-more, feature of the pot industry’s product dooms its devotees to a life of being half-witted much of the time. Sad.
{Addendum: to ward off one of the pot use defenders’ favorite arguments: alcohol can be used in a healthful way, i.e., damage to health varies with quantity consumed; pot use in any quantity is inherently and always damaging to one’s health (even if it also has the side-effect of keeping some poor soul alive because he or she didn’t kill him or herself).}
Nice one Janice. I don’t use the stuff. Thing is I’m no fan of Prohibition.
And Janice,
Pot smoking reduces the risk of cancer. Several studies out on that one including a study by former prohibitionist Donal Tashkin. So if reducing your cancer risk is likely to impair your health by all means avoid the stuff.
And there are more than a few anecdotes out and about that indicate very high doses of the oil cure cancer. For a very interesting one look up “Dr. William Courtney brain tumor”.
And Janice – do you get your global warming news from the popular press? Of course not. Well I wouldn’t get my cannabis information from there either. The NIH is a good resource – if you stick to actual studies. Try “NIH cannabis diabetes” for one. I’m sure you can think of others.
“Have you ever met a pothead who didn’t talk about his or her habit in a pompous, arrogant, tone?”
I have. Does that cancel out your anecdotal report?
“Well, shoot. In all seriousness,”
That’s probably the most contradictory introduction to a thought that I’ve ever read.
“if they can only find the courage to keep on living by filling their lungs with brain-impairing smoke,”
Did you know that the brain is where feelings of depression and anxiety are more than likely to occur? I understand that a few people such as yourself might find these feelings occurring in your butt, but the rest of us experience them in our heads. Therefore, while an enema might work fine and dandy in your case, depression and anxiety relief for most of us will come from altering brain function.
“I’m just glad they are still here. It would be nice, HOWEVER, if the pot industry didn’t enable their sad habit.”
Is the use of any form of antidepressant a habit in your view?
“These self-medicating (usually for anxiety and or depression) folks might, then, learn that they could be happy AND pot-free. Nope. Sigh. Won’t happen.”
So they were not anxious or depressed before they started smoking pot? Can you show me a study (or anything) that shows that happy, well-adjusted people sought psychiatric treatment for depression and anxiety, did not respond to standard psychiatric treatments, then were put on pot and became anxious and depressed?
“The arrogance pot engenders”
Your writing betrays an ounce a day habit.
Oops, Canadian Link on native Canadian suicide.
http://hc-sc.gc.ca/fniah-spnia/promotion/suicide/index-eng.php
“I wonder how they explain Seattle, which is 8th in the nation in clean air, or those hotbeds of air pollution, Wyoming and North Dakota.”
Haven’t read the paper, but I’m guessing because there are many factors that affect suicide rate and air pollution is one of them.
If you’ve ever been to Wyo. you know that it is all empty space because of the mass suicide because the stinking wind never quits blowing.
Mm, hm. (nod, nod, nod) “…. because the stinking wind never quits blowing” they all hung out in the tavern. Where they drank and drank and drank and some called it “suicide.”
😉
And the coffee drinkers all high-tailed it out of there and went to live in Seattle.
YES (lol) this comment is just plain silly, i.e., right — on — topic!
What wind?
lol. Mark Hladik: Last Man Standing in Wyoming #(:))
100 miles east of Seattle visitors often ask “Does the wind always blow this hard?”
The townsfolk always respond “No. Sometimes it blows harder.”
A local grocery store installed a wind gauge: Wind gauge at the Safeway Store
That’s what I heard 40+ years ago when I moved to Colorado. From Boulder, CO into southern Wyoming during April and October mostly, but anytime a high sets up west of the Rockies with a low to the east, 90+ MPH winds are not uncommon, and the main north/south highways are often shut down for high profile loads and tractor-trailers during these times.
http://www.glenviewproducts.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/wyoming_windsock1.jpg
akian’s research was funded in small part through seed grant funding distributed last year by the University of Utah’s Program for Air Quality, Health and Society. The program awarded $165,000 to six researchers to perform research aimed at (FINDING PROBLEMS) understanding and addressing the consequences of Utah’s air pollution on human health and welfare.
Good news, people found what they were paid to find (make up).
Cannabis use reduces the risk of suicide. You can look it up. So to combat bad air – toke up. The irony.
Low population and winter v summer?
What is driving me towards suicide is the fact that people are paid big bucks to come up with one ridiculous studiy such as this after another. Eighteen trillion in debt and growing here in the good ol’ USA.
And the beat goes on …….
*study
Stupidity?
How many of the Utah suicides were Morman? How many suicides were Liberals?
Seems like a study that Matt Briggs could really get his teeth into.
So no real “cause and effect” analysis here, simply a statistical correlation.
Based on this “study”, I’m expecting to hear Bejing is waist-deep in dead Chinese.
Good point. Talk about low air quality!
Also, think of the air quality that bar patrons or poker players had to face before smoking was banned in most places.
Our (UK) last government decided that CO2 was a huge threat and to mitigate it they gave road tax discounts to motorists who owned cars that produced less CO2. My Jaguar cost £400 a year to tax (4.2 litre supercharged V8) a smaller under-performing (boring!) car £zero. Most of the cheap-to-tax cars were diesel fueled, because 50 -70 mpg can be easily attained.
The problem was that these cars produce PM10’s which are 10 micron particles of carbon coated with un-burnt fuel, which are highly carcinogenic. If anyone has driven behind a vehicle producing clouds of these particles, they will know how unpleasant and dangerous it is. The Labour Party who were in government at the time have no admitted that CO2 is a lot less dangerous. Legislation to ban these monstrosities is sadly lacking.
I got rid of the Jaguar a long time ago and drive a 1994 Ford Mustang (5.0 litre V8) and my wife has a 2000 (3.2 lite V6) Mercedes. These cars cost £225 a year to tax because they are over 5 years old, losses due to depreciation saves even more,they are a joy to drive and I enjoy tinkering on with them at weekends! Neither produces any smoke from the exhausts.
After reading this article, I’m feeling a little suicidal. I’m wondering if the suicide rate is higher for people who have been exposed to college professors.
Just for giggles, I looked up the suicide rate of American farmers. It’s two times the national average! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/terezia-farkas/why-farmer-suicide-rates-_1_b_5610279.html Guess what sex and race American farmers happen to land in. Guess what farmers deal with a lot: dust, odor, and diesel exhaust.
Of course, farming is a very financially stable, worry-free, way to make a living, too.
You are so funny, Spetzer86.
Still, funny coinkydink
spetzer86
Your source (Newsweek) was not exactly highly documented, so I went out on the internet (YEA!) and copied the 1st URL I could find (http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/the-biggest/the-10-professions-with-the-highest-suicide-rates/?view=all). Guess what? the top-10 suicide occupations are claimed to be:
1 doctors (1.67 x average)
2 dentist
3 financial workers
4 lawyers
5 police
6 real estate agents
7 electricians
8 farm workers (1.32 x average)
9 pharmacists
10 scientists (1.28 x average)
My conclusion: (with a couple exceptions) education appears to be highly collelated to suicide.
Strangely, no mention of farmers (assuming they are not rolled into “farm workers”)
Just want to note I’m neither one way or the other on the original topic. My only interest was to do what you did and Google the topic. In my search, an article about farmers came up, which I was not suspecting and did have some association with the original article. In yours, it was an article with doctors at the top. Just an observation, I work in the health field and most articles I’ve seen put dentists higher than doctors. Be interesting to see the methodology used in these cases.
Ah, yes… Ye ol’ post hoc ergo propter hoc is still alive and well in the race to jump on the CAGW gravy train while it continues to chug along towards the cliff…
How anyone can still take CAGW seriously is a sad commentary on this clueless generation.
Whew, dodged that bullet. It’s nice to know that thoughts of suicide I had in middle age had nothing to do with bankruptcy due to a stock market crash, the resultant home foreclosure I experienced, the girlfriend who told me to take a hike (and that all her orgasms were fake), getting dumped by my employer of 20 years, the onset of male pattern baldness, the loss of a testicle, the botched rhinoplasty, the horribly botched prostate exam, the confiscation of my computer by the FBI, the loss of my big toe due to an accidental discharge from my holstered gun, my car getting totaled out by an uninsured motorist (I wasn’t insured either), getting cut-off at every neighborhood bar, identity theft, or the torment visited upon me for 40 years by my sister – my older sister. It’s so very nice to know that the only thing making me, or anybody else, unhappy in the presence of adversity had nothing whatsoever to do with misfortune. No, it was just a little bit of extra nitrogen, or perhaps O3, all those years ago.
Anybody feel depressed after the person you were in love with told you they never wanted to see you again? Don’t fret, that’s not the problem. It’s really that diesel truck on the corner.
Lost that job of 30 years and can’t meet the mortgage? Don’t sweat it. The only thing that’s got you freaked out is really that coal fired power plant.
Just got home early and found your best friend in bed with your wife (or husband)? Remember, the only thing making you feel bad are those jet aircraft contrails.
Well done, Tom J! Yes, indeed. (ugh, just reading that list made me sick to my stomach, however … creepy stuff like that happens… every day)
So, of COURSE we must shut down whatever puts nitrous oxide into the air. Yeah, I know, I know, Envirostalinists usually are all for whatever reduces the “surplus population,” but the power force here is the Enviroprofiteers trying to push windmills and solar and their other non-petroleum or non-nuclear power junk.
Is your nickname Lucky?
So why do dentists have a high suicide rate? Perhaps being exposed to all that bad breath from their patients’ rotting teeth.
Rates are dropping for dentists. The mercury done it. (I have no idea if this is true).
What’s the suicide rate for CAGW chicken little’s when their predictions are wrong….again & again & again ???
OK, the only way you would know about the exposure was toxicology from the corpse, did anyone bother to control for the fact that middle aged men are more likely to commit suicide in a garage, where all levels of oxides are much higher. Each age-gender group has it’s own “preference” in method and location to leave their cares behind, a psychiatrist should know that.
If your wondering how I know that it’s from the EMT and Volunteer Firefighter training I went through so I could get those fancy emergency flashers and a police scanner for my truck.
Anyway, that’s the kind of crap you get when you hook up a psychiatrist with a computer, and 3 hours of training on SPSS
Hey, Mark (from the Midwest),
Good for you to be ready to come to the rescue of the many who will need it. You have seen things no person should ever have to see. Thank you for being there for us, man.
And your comment was RIGHT on. The sad-but-true fact is: men are “better” at suicide. Women are more often “crying for help.”
Take care of yourself, too.
Janice
Actually I don’t see too much, the pros handle the nasty stuff. I usually end up directing traffic, or some other unheroic but useful task. But I still get to use those cool red and blue strobe flashers on my truck, so it’s all good.
Mark from the Midwest (replying to Janice Moore)
I’m jealous. We only got the green reflective vests, backbacks, and helmets after our emergency responder certification and testing. Flashlights, safety gear, first aid and the like to kit out the backpack …. BUT Darn!! You got bells and whistles and flashy lights! Man! What a bummer! Getting depressed here ….. Going down….. Feeling gloomy! WE didn’t get bells and lights …. We only got a backpack. Misery!
getting hit by the ole country song…. Gloom, Despair and Agony on me! If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all …
@ Mark (and R. A., too) — Still, thank you. Getting up at 3am to go direct traffic so someone’s life can be saved IS heroic (and you are WILLINGLY VOLUNTEERING FOR THE NASTY STUFF if it happened to come your way, too).
Any talk of “poor air” or polluted air in the U.S. is simply balderdash from the word, “Go.”
Beginning with the Clean Air Act back in 1970, U.S. industry has had NO CHOICE but to clean its effluent – its pollution coming out of its smokestacks.
PERIOD.
PERIOD.
PERIOD.
The U.S. air quality is basically 90%+ improved over the 1960s and the first half of the 20th century.
ANY – I repeat, ANY! – effort to characterize the U.S. air as polluted is simply wrong-headed lies or, at best, uninformed people who simply do not know their anal fistulas from their oral fissures.
How do I know? I spent the first half of my career in mechanical design engineering (now retired) coming up with various forms of air pollution control for industry. From scrubbers to catalytic to various other forms of pollution removal, these pieces of equipment were designed to – and DID – remove well over 90% of all forms of pollution.
Hell, we even did them for BAKERIES, of all things – because the Liberals (of whom I am one – MOST of the time) – decreed that we should not have to smell baked goods on the street. Akkk!
Did we eliminate ALL of the pollution? No. But the air in most of our cities is cleaner than at any time since probably 1860.
These people have NO idea of the BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS spent BY INDUSTRY to celan up the air. And did they do so out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course not. These improvements were MANDATED BY LAW, and they were ENFORCED by regulatory agencies, namely the EPA.
So this is one time that liberals did something that benefited the entire country, when regulation did its job, and we have better lives therefrom. Industry opposed this with great vehemence at the time, but n the end what we got was a better country to live in. Anyone who REALLY wants to see what pollution in the U.S. was like back then should simply fly to any of the 100+ cities in China over 1,000,000 people and see what kind of air industry produces without regulations. Industry will not spend a DIME on pollution controls unless the government points a gun at them. Literally, no industry lifted a finger until they HAD TO. But when the gun was pointed at them, they capitulated. And we – and them, too – are better off for it.
London fog, where is that good old London Fog??
Most people applauded the EPA when that evil earth hating republican Richard Nixon made it law. Initially, the pollution removed from our lands and waterways was the right thing to do and has provided a much improved environment. Then, the progressives made the EPA the bad guy through overreach by stealing taxpayer money and offering only lies and distorted facts.
Okay so next, will we shortly see that homicide rates,are driven by pollution? I mean if you’re driven to off yourself because of it, you could just as easily opt to off the source of you’re problem, the person polluting. See good Sir, that follow did hunt down his supervisor on account that he gave them a bad review, held back his bonus . No it was because he didn’t drive a environmentally friendly car.
oops, see good Sir that fellow didn’t .. (must proof read) Gave him – not them. thankfully the only thing I have to worry about is pollution, and not the utter humiliation and embarrassment due to my reprehensible grammar and spelling
michael
Mike. It takes quite a prideful person, actally, to wok very har at miking shure that no typeos (that’s all yours wree, you know — your spelling and grammar are GREAT) EVERY TIME in one’s comment. Keep on posting with your head high!
#(:))
And, yeah….. I can hear the criminal defense bar, now: “And, so, you see, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Ms. Wacko was pushed beyond the limits of what any reasonable person could be expected to resist: she HAD to save the world from the likes of Mr. Brown and his GAS GUZZLING pick-up truck. SHE IS YOUR SAVIOR! Can you sentence her to death??!!!”
lololololol ….. hm.
It’s only a matter of time before some enterprising attorney hits on it.
And no Janice I’m not to bothered by my spelling, its the not taking the time to check it that annoys me. laughing
michael
this whole article is just primed with “gallows humor”
This study is the definition of what stoned dumb ass stupid is.
Feminism is a more likely cause (for the sharp, dramatic increase of the male female suicide rate relative to the female suicide rate)..
So…., you are saying….
that now that women can vote and own property and get a good education and have a satisfying career as a medical doctor and the like… they are happier… so they kill themselves less often …
so the man suicide:woman suicide ratio is greater than it was?
Sounds like your undercover agent work with the IPCC gang may be getting to you…. they are REALLY big on post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
Sounds like you’re big on straw manning and pulling alleged facts out your arse.
The female suicide rate is near what it used to be. The male suicide rate has doubled to tripled in countries around the world since the advent of second wave feminism.
And from your crude way of talking to me, a lady, it is obvious that you support a the more extreme end of the feminist movement wholeheartedly.
#(:))
Point of order:
Which is the most extreme end of a feminist?Just asking….
Why do married men die before their wives? Because they want to!
That bad, huh? You have my sympathy (I know two fine men who I have no doubt would agree with you… but not out loud….. SHE might find out! …. and boy howdy, they do not want to make her mad — why don’t they leave??? well… it usually has a lot to do with money, sadly.).
There ARE a lot of Toms in Florida, huh? 😉 — or maybe… you just don’t care if she knows… . Couldn’t get much worse, huh? Hang in there.
It’s not the air, polluted or otherwise, that causes suicides. It’s DHMO.
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
I think cross-indexing with cities with Professional sports teams, regional GDP and number of email ids per city resident and they would really have something there.
“Bakian examined the records of more than 1,500 people who died by suicide in Salt Lake County…” I could not find Utah in the list of states with a greatest suicide rate increase. Then, I have no idea what these increases mean; maybe a jump from 1 to 2 in Wyoming? The graph is of “anomalies”, not of the real thing.
I would also appreciate a link to the source.
“Bakian examined the records of more than 1,500 people who died by suicide in Salt Lake County between Jan. 1, 2000, and Dec. 31, 2010 and found that the odds of completing suicide were 20 percent higher for people exposed to increased levels of nitrogen dioxide in the two to three days before their deaths. Similarly, individuals exposed to high concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the two to three days before a suicide experienced 5 percent higher odds of suicide”
Just another example of why most published research findings are false:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/
I weep for science!
I remember reading back in the ’70’s that the profession with the highest suicide was psychiatry. (I don’t know which profession it is now.) Maybe they only practiced near coal-fired power plants?
Well someone has to say it; I think the guy (Author) needs to see a “shrink”
“She” is unlikely to thank you for your ad-hoc gender reassignment. Unless “Amanda” is just another boy named Sue.
She might just be drawing attention away from women being a major stimulus factor in many suicides among men…
Oops I goofed again Thanks for setting me straight.
michael
On the other hand, this reportjust out from the National Health Service (Britain) reveals that regular sex reduces risks of heart disease, strokes, and several kinds of cancer:
I do not know if this is a peer reviewed study, but it is from the National Health Service, so only anti-science deniers could possibly doubt its conclusions.
Since many more people die of the above maladies than by suicide, it would seem that having sex after breathing poor air will more than make up for the increase in people who off themselves, and quite likely also reduce the number of people driven to that extreme.
Clearly we need to put together a follow-up study to determine the relative suicide rate of people who breathe dirty air and have 30 minutes of sex five times a week (or dancing, if you insist) verses a control groups who (a) just breathe dirty air and (b) breathe clean air but have regular sex.
I know it would be a long and detailed study, requiring extensive data gathering, but wouldn’t it be worthwhile even if it only saved one life?
Meanwhile, it appears from early reviews that the suicide rate among people who saw 50 Shades of Grey might spike upward. Perhaps they should have gone dancing instead.
“On the other hand, this reportjust out from the National Health Service (Britain) reveals that regular sex reduces risks of heart disease, strokes, and several kinds of cancer:”
————————————————————————-
I haven’t checked yet but, I wonder if ACA (Obamacare) has a provision for this?
Although, I’m sure I don’t want any government provided hookers.
Is there an insurance policy that offers this medical service?
Then I wondered… am I’m already paying for government provided sex?
Cause I feel like I’m the one paying to get
scrDOH!
And for all these years, I thought suicide was a result of mental stress.
Shit now I got to buy my 56 year old ass a gun :>)
SSHHHH don’t talk my saddle 30-30 rifle
add it to the list…
So after the Clean Air Act took effect, the suicide rate in Britain dropped. Far fewer men found with their head in the gas oven and a note saying “I can’t stand this air any more. I have to end it all. Goodbye, filthy world.”
I often felt like committing suicide while sitting around the camp fire, especially during row – row – – row your boat.
funny, must be the song that does it..
my mum threatened me with assisted suicide aka murder for practicing that on my trumpet:-)
(she coulda taken out the music teacher for me woulda been smarter:-0)
The more that, once-venerated, academic institutions scream “Give us da money” by publishing political-propaganda that ticks the “It’s worse than we thought” box, the further they distance themselves from the world of trust and common-sense that they so desperately appear to place themselves in!
RIP, one-venerated , academic institutions.
President Eisenhower, despite his comparative, lowly academic status, nailed it in 1961!
RIP, General.
As an afterthought, it is indeed truly amazing that, whereas, environmental concerns, regularly, hit the positions of least relevance with respect to multiple polls, this study elevates it to a major factor in suicides.
The conclusion, that may be sensibly drawn, is that opinion polls are worthless OR this study is a crock of s***.
I’m loathe to fall down on either side but ….
And these are the “educated”. Nothing like turning from science to superstition. Every area of climate /environmental science has become a joke. I’d rather buy a car from a greasy haired salesman in a velour track suit adorned with requisite gold chains than listen to one “climate scientist “. I would sooner believe the former over the latter.
Shouldn’t there be a high coincidence with kerosene heaters and these suicide inducing gasses? What about us farmers, in diesel equipment for 12 hours or better at a stretch?
It seems that they should have discovered a mechanism, by which inhalation of NO2 induces the will to end one’s own life before this claim would be plausible to make. Besides, did these suicidal folks all wear air analyzers, or are we all being tracked so they can tell what sampling station you were close to at any juncture? So how can they claim an analysis of the amount of pollution they were exposed to?
Maybe drawing correlation between pollution and women bearing autistic children would get me some cash for a week of searching and selecting favorable statistics. Oh, I forgot… I’m not in that club.
Let me guess, the EPA funded this ‘research’?
This whole thing is becoming so laughable if it was not so sad ( but to all of you with the funny/sarc/cynical comments i can tell you. You raised my endorphin levels greatly, … (And prevented me from suicide (not really),… oh could there be a study and money there?)
“Middle-aged men at highest risk of suicide after breathing poor air”
The key-word is “poor”.
Epidemiology, whose practitioners fight with eachother over the “cake of death”,
shows that by far the biggest factors which shortens lifespan are poverty and social isolation.
Socio-economic status and social connectedness literally slice DECADES off your lifespan.
But these don’t make headlines since they are not new.
Instead epidemiology focuses on such things as:
the few seconds of life that radiation exposure MAY reduce your life (if you believe the models)
the few minutes you may lose due to eating peanut butter or the wrong kind of margarine
the few hours you might lose due to air quality or CO2 (again if you believe the models)
the few days or weeks you lose from cigarette smoking
etc..
“Poor air” is what you breath in places where poor people live.
Talking of epidemiology –
slightly OT but this was interesting in the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21641277-rise-anti-vaccine-sentiment-has-put-everyone-risk-vaccines-and-vacuous-starlets
People about to commit suicide are nervous. They smoke a lot 2 to 3 days before suicide. So high exposure to nitrogen dioxide and PM 2.5. Check the records of non-smoker suicides.
My theory is that men who work in blue collar industrial towns are more liable to permanently lose their livelihood when the warmies use green tape or carbon pricing to render their industry uneconomic. Hence people in cities with dirty air are more at risk of suicide for economic factors.
People about to commit suicide are depressed and tend to stay indoors 2 to 3 days before suicide.
According to the EPA, our indoor environment is two to five times more toxic than our outdoor environment, and in some cases, the air measurements indoors have been found to be 100 times more polluted.
Yes clean air is missing in many places and might causes effects. BUT the Real problem for Worlds future Clean Water problem
Dr. Strangelove
“People about to commit suicide are depressed and tend to stay indoors 2 to 3 days before suicide.”
==================
People commit suicide because (i) they are in an extremely dissatisfied state, and, for whatever reasons (right or wrong), (ii) they can’t envision a future in which things are going to improve.
That’s the intractable fact that psychiatrists, psychologist, social workers and big pharmaceutical companies will never say, because it doesn’t pay.
e.g.:
==================
Sir George Mackenzie, the Lord Advocate, at the time when witch-trials were so frequent, and himself a devout believer in the crime, relates, in his “Criminal Law,” first published in 1688, some remarkable instances of it.
He says, “I went, when I was a justice-depute, to examine some women who had confessed judicially: and one of them, who was a silly creature, told me, under secrecy, that she had not confessed because she was guilty, but being a poor creature who wrought for her meat, and being defamed for a witch, she knew she should starve; for no person thereafter would either give her meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her and set dogs at her; and that, therefore, she desired to be out of the world; whereupon she wept most bitterly, and upon her knees called God to witness to what she said.”
[…]
Another author, also a firm believer in witchcraft, gives a still more lamentable instance of a woman who preferred execution as a witch to live on under the imputation. This woman, who knew that three others were to be strangled and burned on an early day, sent for the minister of the parish, and confessed that she had sold her soul to Satan. “Whereupon being called before the judges, she was condemned to die with the rest. Being carried forth to the place of execution, she remained silent during the first, second, and third prayer, and then, perceiving that there remained no more but to rise and go to the stake, she lifted up her body, and, with a loud voice, cried out,
“Now all you that see me this day, know that I am now to die as a witch, by my own confession, and I free all men, especially the ministers and magistrates, of the guilt of my blood. I take it wholly upon myself. My blood be upon my own head. And, as I must make answer to the God of heaven presently, I declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child. But, being delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of a witch, disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground of hope of ever coming out again, I made up that confession to destroy my own life, being weary of it, and choosing rather to die than to live.”
http://www.econlib.org/library/Mackay/macEx10.html#Ch.10,%20The%20Witch%20Mania
===============
Suicide is a conditional response to a perceived future of unremitting misery.
But that kind of common sense doesn’t pay very well.
They forgot the last paragraph and I even sent it to them all edited and everything!
“In summary, combined with the previous well-researched connection between the aging of the population and the rise in stupid scientists studying global warming, it is verified that higher rates of suicide are caused by older and wiser humans drinking too much in response to the increasing numbers of stupid scientists. Recommendations related to reducing the number of stupid scientists obtaining grants to study global warming will be forthcoming, to include the present researchers hereto attached.”
I am gobsmacked! GOBSMACKED that they didn’t include the final paragraph!
A psycholocial study on Epidemiology of course has to include asthma, suicide. … – whatever calls the topics ‘air pollution, individual traffic’ etc.
Next step of escalation:
searching for the correlation between body mass index BMI and cars coloring.
A new sidekick on the automotive industry.
ridicolous? When socialised in a ridicolous ‘environment’?
Regards – Hans
A psycholocial study on
Epidemiology of course has to
include asthma, suicide. … –
whatever calls the topics ‘air
pollution, individual traffic’ etc.
Next step of escalation:
searching for the correlation
between body mass index BMI
and cars coloring.
OBESITY.
A new sidekick on the
automotive industry.
ridicolous? When socialised in
a ridicolous ‘environment’?
Regards – Hans
Janice Moore,
re: your counter-factual rant above.
1) A pharmaceutical company in pursuit of a blockbuster “diet pill” to inhibit appetite (“munchies“) in fatties developed a molecule to block endo-cannabinoid receptors. The trial of the patented product was abruptly ended when all the volunteers grew morbidly depressed, with one or two in the small sample committing suicide.
2) M Simon’s life-affirming post was correct. He’s evidently done plenty of research on the topic, unlike you.
3) Everything you said in your addendum was false. Anesthetic alcohol is never “healthful” in any dose: it significantly increases cancer incidence, precipitates aggression and violence, and destroys neurons at a staggering rat, leaving it’s victims depressed, increasingly stupid, then bewildered, then incapable of recognizing the damage done (anasognosia), spouting word-salad or confabulating (Korsakoff’s syndrome), while killing more people, in the end, than any other drug. In contrast, not a single death has ever been attributed to weed (evah!), which, contrary to all that propaganda you imbibed, is an effective anti-cancer agent and a neuro-protectant (see U.S. government patent # 6630507). It even shrinks lung cancer (cough), with no deleterious effects observed in moderate users, according to peer-reviewed studies (cough).
4) A society that burns people for using a life-enriching therapeutic plant in their pursuit of happiness is not much better than a society that burns witches for dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight.
Well done reply. While I can’t stand smoke in my lungs and I can’t handle the “seasoned” taste of the stuff in brownies, I am all for its medicinal use and don’t care if people use it for recreational use. Chemical drugs are nasty compared to pot and I am not a nosy neighbor. As I age and possibly lose my appetite and get shorter and skinnier, please somebody figure out how to put it in red wine and/or bitter sweet chocolate so I have enough of an appetite to eat enough to age well into my frail years.
Most of the states noted on the graph are cold and snowy in the winter. Could the results show that being trapped in the house with their nagging wife drove them over the edge? 😉
This may be the first article I have ever seen where women and minorities were not hardest hit
From personal experience over many years, I can affirm they do have something of a case with No2. It’s probably the most ‘moreish’ substance you can abuse. suicide by No2 – or death y misadventure from N02 are both very well represented in the ‘scores’ In fact a ‘right to decide’ euthanasia information group tha once had a very complicated set of methodologies now recommend No2 as number one of five best ways to peacefully and calmly leave the stage.
This may well be reflected in the middle-aged men figures, especially since catalytic converters made the old tube in the exhaust method chancy, when a man decides to go there he is usually serious about things not ‘crying for help’
I doubt casual or chance exposure to a lungful of No2 is likely to send you down that path though…
Are you speaking of NO2 or N2O???
Frank Kotler
February 14, 2015 at 6:14 pm
Are you speaking of NO2 or N2O???
My apologies I got the number wrong, Nitrous dioxide is correct just I am no scientist.
(N2O) is correct – the stuff they put in these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipped-cream_charger
Perhaps there’s a correlation between suicide and reading drivel the few days before?
They should study that.
What a load of absolute bollocks. I’ll take that study, and raise you a big city called London. Where NO2 levels are through the roof and worst in the world thanks to the green lobby, and yet suicide levels are the lowest in a generation.
http://time.com/122283/china-pollution-london-beijing-nitrogen-dioxide-no2/
http://positivenews.org.uk/2013/wellbeing/11199/london-suicide-rate-30-year/
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-suicide-rates-are-lowest-in-uk-8461574.html
All this talk of suicide is keeping any “highs” lower, the main problem is keeping the lows higher.
I’ve seen attempts with an asprin overdose, and bloody wrist cutting with a razor blade, it makes you wonder what made your mother so…….sad.
New study shows middle aged people are at greater risk of becoming old people.
“Bakian examined the records of more than 1,500 people who died by suicide in Salt Lake County between Jan. 1, 2000, and Dec. 31, 2010, and found that the odds of completing suicide were 20 percent higher for people exposed to increased levels of nitrogen dioxide in the two to three days before their deaths.”
So, if I read this correctly, by breathing N02, your chances of success increase by 20%