15 years disparity in life expectancy exclusively attributed to air quality is not incredibly obvious. To put this in perspective, nationwide average disparity in life expectancy is 5 years between Black and white people. Triple that amount, exclusively attributed to air quality, is a substantial claim.

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olalonde 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Exactly. Even smoking doesn't shorten life expectancy by that much (it's 10 years).

	▲	makeitdouble 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Smoking is voluntary, partly self-adjusting (willingly or not you'll reduce smoking as you get worse), composition is regulated and that habit only starts at a later stage in life. None of that applies to PM2.5 kind of pollution.

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makeitdouble 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

For an area that has well known air pollution issues it doesn't sound far-fetched.

Comparing to the national average helps put it into perspective but doesn't make sense as sanity check. Flynt could be a better data point.