Talk:Particulate matter

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On 7 May 2025, it was proposed that this article be moved from Particulates to Particulate matter. The result of the discussion was moved.

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Interpunct inconsistency

European countries revealed that there was no safe level of particulates and that for every increase of 10 μg/m3 in PM10, the lung cancer rate rose 22% [95% CI 1·03–1·45]. The smaller PM2.5 were particularly deadly, with an 18% increase in lung cancer per 5 μg/m3 ([CI 95% 0·96–1·46]) as it can penetrate deeper into the lungs.

I'm going to edit this into consistency, and change the interpunct into regular dots, because it seems to me this can only interfere with assistive technologys such as text to speech.

I found a mention of interpunct in MOS:COMMONMATH, but it didn't resolve this case, so I'll go with my spidey sense, instead. Revert at will if you think I've got it wrong. — MaxEnt 02:34, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Please check interlinkages with aerosol

I see that several people have improved this article in recent times. Could you please take a look also at the related article aerosol (a parent article?). I think the content about atmospheric aspects, climate change and so forth overlaps a bit in both articles. It's probably better covered here and might need culling/reworking at aerosol? EMsmile (talk) 09:52, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Aerosols Cycle

Hi all. After an overview of the page, I would suggest to change a bit the structure, so we can have:

Aerosols processes (or aerosols cycle)
- Emissions
- Removal
- Transformation

Where the different processes are described, this allow us to introduce the term lifetime, and amounts like burden, budget and eventually mention the global budget of the different aerosols in the atmosphere. I don't want to introduce such kind of change, without a previous comment here in which we can discuss in the incoming days before an eventual edition of the page.AyubuZimbale (talk) 13:48, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 7 May 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Bobby Cohn 🍁 (talk) 19:17, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Particulates → Particulate matter – The WP:COMMONNAME of this concept is particulate matter. This is for instance the name the UK gov, EPA, the EEA, Canadian gov, Britannica and the WHO use. Furthermore, the term particulates is less WP:PRECISE, as it's sometimes used outside of the context of air pollution (see the minority of results on Google Scholar). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 14:21, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Support as per nom. EMsmile (talk) 10:16, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Support per nom. KnowDeath (talk) 21:56, 10 May 2025 (UTC)
- Comment
  - The move request was discussed thoroughly in 2014 and the result was no consensus. The current name has sticked for over a decade since then.
  - None of the 804 editors of this article has been pinged to this discussion.
  - We need more input from native English speakers.
  - See the majority on United States Environmental Protection Agency,
    Particulates 67,923 results. "Finely divided solid or liquid particles in the air or in an emission. Particulates include dust, smoke, fumes, mist, spray and fog."
    
    Particulate matter 41,849 results. "Tiny solid particles or liquid droplets suspended in the air."
2A01:9700:6336:B500:9C38:D67D:1E48:A2DE (talk) 11:11, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

It seems like the EPA search tool isn't of much use here. It returns pages for the search term 'particulates' that do not mention "particulates", but only mention "particulate". So by construction, particulates will feature all pages that mention 'particulate matter' and therefore have more search results than 'particulate matter'. I've notified Wikiproject Environment, which is the recommended of bringing in more people per WP:RSPM (rather than pinging hundreds of people). But feel free to notify others neutrally to the discussion, for instance Wikiproject Medicine. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 12:33, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Support per COMMONNAME, as demonstrated by the nominator. Google searches of EPA.gov show "particulates" has 50k hits and "particulate matter" has 119k hits, nearly 2.5x as many. Since the matter was raised, I am a native English speaker and am familiar with this topic, though by no means an expert. I find particulate matter to be the better term, and it makes sense of the PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 convention, although both terms are correct and usually interchangeable. Particulates should redirect to Particulate matter. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 22:53, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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