Can Air pollutants negate health benefits of cycling in city urban centres??

Again, not the question you asked. Why are you being so obtuse?

What air do you think the people is cars are breathing? Or people standing at the lights beside the cyclists. You aren't really comparing to anything, looking at one in isolation is a bit pointless. To harmless if something is bad or worse, you need to establish a counterfactual or banchmark.

But the short answer yes, at a certain point, if pollution is high enough cycling long durations daily could cause more harm that good. That duration is likely to be extremely long in Ireland, far longer than you would cycle.

You take in 3 times the air when cycling? By what unit. Have a little think about that it it might change you "hence more pollutants" conclusion.

You are forgetting time and length of exposure.

It would take me about 40-50 minutes to walk through the city centre on my commute to work. Beside the road, breathing in car fumes the whole time.

The equivalent part of my cycle takes me about 12-15 minutes.

Whilst Electric vehicles may be "Zero emissions" at the exhaust pipe, they emit particulates from tyres and brake pads, and the fact that most EV's weigh about 400 to 500kg+ more than an Ice equivalent... So all those particulate can end up in the lungs...

Not going to be dragged down the rabbit hole of EV's versus ICE cars, needless to say there is such a thing called "non-exhaust emissions" and heavy EV's emit them.

increasingly stringent standards regarding the PM content of exhaust emissions, non-exhaust emissions are quickly becoming the dominant source of PM emissions from road traffic, and are expected to comprise the vast majority of all PM from road traffic as early as 2035. While the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) will contribute to reducing exhaust PM in future years, non-exhaust PM will not noticeably fall unless targeted policies are undertaken.

Where are you cycling through, a smog riddled city in China?

I cycle right through Dublin city centre twice a day every day in peak time traffic and over to the N11, which I continue along all the way out to the outskirts of Dublin.

The only time I feel what you are talking about is if I'm stopped in traffic behind someone who has a ruined exhaust on their car. Which is very very rare.

I'll give it a 'taste' on the way home and see what you mean. 😁

I still think time spend is a very important factor though. Doesn't matter what the traffic is like, I'll be through the city centre on my bike in about 15 minutes.

I've sat in traffic on the same commute along the quays for 40 minutes plus. So exposure time is far longer. You can definitely smell fumes and the likes when sitting on a bus or in traffic in the summer with your car windows open.

As an aside, I'd be a bit worried about someone's health if they were breathing 'deep and heavy' while cycling through the city. You can't exactly go relatively fast with the traffic and Dublin city is very flat. I'll monitor my breathing rate on the way home but I don't think it's particularly laboured when I actually hit the city centre and have to start slowing down.

A car is breathing in MORE fumes because it takes in air from in front. What's in front but the exhaust of the vehicle in front. It's literally got an intake fan sucking and funnelling it into the cabin. Most cars don't filter out the really bad stuff. What's more someone in a car is mostly likely to be sitting in traffic longer than other forms of transport.

Data can say anything. So going off and looking for a report in the internet you can get one to say whatever you want. Its much the same here as people saying they dont sweat or breathe deeper when they are cycling to when they are sitting down in a car. Biology says they are telling porkies, but im sure they can find a study somewhere that tells them they do if they look hard enough and go past all of the ones that say the opposite while they are looking.

On my commute (which I do on the bike whenever it is not raining or icy) I am flying all the way from Naul to Grand Canal dock. Im cycling at a fair clip all the way to maybe dorset street or phibsboro depending on which way i go, and then have to slow down a bit then. I would consider myself reasonably fit and im certainly not breathing anywhere near as easy as im breathing when driving with windows closed and aircon on either before or when i get to the city. People saying they dont breathe heavier and deeper on a bike than when in a car is just not true.

But each to their own. I personally can tell the difference between what I breathe in when at rest in a car in the city and when im on the bike in the city. In the car ive windows and a filter I guess. On the bike ive nothing. So when in the car at least some of it is getting filtered out. Sure you can even see the dirt on your sleeve when you wipe the sweat of face after cycling through the city.

If anyone wants to convince themselves that the air in the city is somehow healthier if you cycle isnt going to get it cleaned up for us.

I tried a mask on the bike for a couple of weeks a few years ago but couldnt really get used to it.

OK we get it. You dont breathe heavier or sweat when you cycle. You are superman and the rest of us mere mortals need more oxygen when we require more energy.

They are magic windows.

What a clusterf**k of a discussion this has turned into. It went fairly rapidly from a straightforward question - it's still there in the thread title if you glance up - to "I don't care what anyone says about the question that wasn't asked, I know I'm right and I don't need to prove it".

Good night and good luck.

Right if everyone cycles as slowly as you do they wont be needing deeper breaths. Gotcha. We will all do that then and that will save us breathing in toxins and particulates on our rides. You should write a book about that strategy and how you get the health benefits of cycling without requiring more oxygen than if you were sitting. You'll make a fortune.

Let me try this again. When all of us except Flinty are cycling we require more oxygen. This causes our breathing to be more rapid than if we were sitting down, increasing the amount of air going in and out of our lungs. Now if there are any particulates or chemicals in the air then they will be going into our lungs in greater volume because - well greater volume of air going through our lungs (unless we are flinty and he is getting so called health benefits from not breathing more than if he was sitting).

If you are in a car you keep your windows closed and your air filter filters out most of the large particulates, even if it doesnt filter out the chemicals. But you are also not using as much of the air because you are only breathing about 15 to 20 breaths per minute. No more than Flinty breaths when he is cycling. For the rest of us mere mortals we will be taking lots more breaths to get the oxygen we require to get the health benefits of the exercise of cycling. Its filtered air versus unfiltered air.

And im also not convinced that anyone here, even Flinty, isnt aware that you can actually tell that the air is more polluted yourself by the tatse of it cycling down the Rathmines road or along the canals compared to say, out in Blessington.

But yes, back to the question of the thread title. Im pretty sure that breathing in a whole load of diesel fumes as you cycle through the city is worse than sitting in a car going through the for you healthwise as if you are not Flinty you are breathing a lot more of it in. Unless of course you drive with the windows open the whole way taking deep breaths. The air in the city needs to be cleaned up either way because its filthy.

Ive a couple of mates who are into bikes and they modify the exhausts quite a bit. When asked why its to get the noise right :)

So id bet that a lot of motorbikes going around dont have any sort of filter on the exhausts at all.

Consider that the reason they put different filters in some of their cars (I don't think all mercedes have them) is exactly because most usual car filters don't filter this stuff out.

I think you're going to have to decide if cycling is better for fitness and health than sitting in a car pumping invisible odourless pollutants into it.

You're arguing look at the data, don't assume get metrics, measure it. To counter a argument which deliberately isn't looking at the data or studies.

The thread title is one thing, what they posted was another, and argument of cars being healthier is entirely another.

As you say you have to look at holistically. For example if your route is via a green way it's vastly less polluted then going down the busiest congested routes. Studies show the effects of proximity even a street away. Same with sitting in a car with it's air intake in front of a cars exhaust. A cyclist don't spend anything like that time near an exhaust.

Same with cycling vs walking. You're going to spend less time and less energy cycling the same distance in the city. You could walk at a pace that gets you dripping in sweat. Most people don't though.