Silent killer

I stumbled upon this tweet from WHO: https://twitter.com/WHOSEARO/status/937632756967784449

The thing that took my interest was that the air pollution was named the 'silent killer'.
Why? One reason is, because it causes lot of death but nobody see the actual immediate danger.

You can see pollution maps, pollution predictions, you can even smell and some time see it but few people do because they doubt, argue and question before they put something over they faces, it is kinda the new normal so why bother?

Lets be a bit theoretic. To what you can compare it? To something invisible and deadly as well.

To me, the ionizing radiation bears lot of common marks with the urban air pollution.

No I am not kidding. Lets compare both of them in detail:

Ionizing Radiation: is tasteless and invisible
Air pollution: sometimes it smells and can be seen, sometimes not. And sometimes we mentally block it away from our senses.

Ionizing Radiation: polluted areas are dangerous in form of radioactive dust that can be inhaled and causes long term damage to internal organs
Air pollution: PM2.5 MP10 are getting deep in the lungs and can cause cancer. PM2.5 can enter the blood stream and cause massive damage all internal organs.

Ionizing Radiation: There is nothing that warns you against. You can us a Geiger counter
Air pollution: You can watch a pollution forecast, study the pollution maps. There are even portable detectors

Ionizing Radiation: exposure is accumulated, the longer you are exposed the greater probability causing you harm
Air Pollution: accumulates in your entire body in form of dust and chemicals. The more pollution accumulates the higher  probability of serious damage to your health.

Ionizing Radiation: People and animals are able to survive for whole life, on base of luck, in mildly radiated environment. See Chernobyl area in Ukraine where some people still live. They simply chosen to ignore the danger. Mostly because it was their home and they do not want to live anywhere else.
Air pollution: People live in heavily polluted areas and place their lives in the hands of higher power (I do not mean government) not because they want to but because they have nor choice. 

Ionizing Radiation: Is well understood and there is adequate and effective commercial protection available. You can wear it for extended periods, because some of them is meant to be used in case of nuclear disasters. They are children sizes available.
Air pollution: We only start to understand what this 'newly realized' danger is doing to our bodies. There is lack of protection equipment designed exactly for one and only purpose of urban air pollution protection which includes extensive and comfortable social wearing.

Ionizing Radiation: People did not realized the dangers of radioactivity and died because lack of knowledge. Because people now how to protect them self today, there is little danger under normal circumstances.
Air pollution: People are dying even they know (or suspect) of the danger and have some means of rudimentary protection. Unfortunately the danger is persistent and it gets worse.

If somebody would say to you, put this mask on, there is radiation here! I would firstly put the mask on and then I would question and doubt the person. Not the other way around.

Do not underestimate,

Your Michal