Pollution

[Spec]

Greetings comrades! Does anyone have a deep understanding on how this game mechanic works? I can’t seem to find any quick information on this, and some thoughts even are contradictory to one another. Is there any way at all to mitigate pollution without certain workshop mods? Is there a certain distance in meters residents should be to not be effected by pollution?….if this is the case how does one design better cities to be productive without getting wrecked by pollution? Also a side note….I really enjoy playing realistic mode which makes things more challenging as far as city design is concerned. Any thoughts or guides out there that explains this better? Thanks!

[Silent_Shadow]

Here is a brief overview of how pollution works:

There are pollution sources that create pollution:

• Industrial buildings produce the most.
  • Actual pollution output scales with production %.
  • You can look up "how much" pollution is generated in their pop-up card.
  
  
• Old world buildings produce a little pollution locally if you don't provide heating.
  • Generally this can be ignored.
  
  
• Sewage also causes pollution wherever it is dumped.
  • Severity scales with sewage pollution %.
  • If buildings' sewage tanks overflow, there will be local pollution.
  • Sewage can be ignored for a short time, but you really should avoid overflows.
  
  
• With the waste update, we now have pollution from waste too:
  • Incinerators create pollution and ash, which if left to decay away, creates pollution.
  • If waste overflows at buildings or at bin stands, local pollution is created.
  • Dumping waste from a dump, storage, or vehicle creates pollution.
  • Waste creates pollution in most storages and in skids, but not in bins.
  • Demolishing certain buildings can leave various wastes behind that decay too.

Vehicles do not create pollution, and trees do not limit nor absorb pollution.

Pollution is only simulated as air pollution and radioactive contamination (see next post), so all sources, even sewage outlets, will just create clouds of pollution around them. Water movement is not simulated, so pollution will not be carried nor diffused through bodies of water.

You can see how an area is affected by pollution by building a pollution monitoring station (found under state infrastructure) nearby. Typically there will be one or more "clouds" of pollution that are randomly distributed a certain distance from the source. More pollution output means larger clouds and more severe effect on the land.

Pollution is not permanent by any means. If you remove the source of the pollution, then the pollution in an area will dissipate pretty quickly (like in a week or two). Operating polluting buildings at low rates also reduces a lot of the pollution they output and thus their effect on the area around them.

Pollution only has three effects in the game (for now):
• Lowers citizen health (which affects a lot, like lifespan and productivity).
• Lowers tourism ratings (only tourists care about these; citizens do not.)
• Lowers the quality of water from water sources, to a point.

I think that farmland fertility/yield may be affected by pollution in the coming update, but I don't really know. These are mineral enriched crops comrade, very good for you, so no effect on fertility, production, or health.

Citizen health is only affected by living in polluted areas, which includes prisons, orphanages, dorms, and maybe hospitals (as a critical patient) and hotels (as a tourist). Working or satisfying needs in polluted areas does not seem to have any effect on citizen health, even for sports related buildings like the beach. Lower health causes lower lifespans (to a minimum around 30 "years"), lower productivity, death, more hospital visits, more ambulance calls, and lower population growth.
The health and thus lifespans of citizens can recover once they are removed from polluted residences.

With research enabled, there are techs you can research to reduce the impact of pollution on health and the overall pollution generation from industries.

Each polluting building will display an output of "Environmental pollution" in tons/years, which you can use to estimate the range you need to maintain between them and residences, attractions, and hotels. Note that these outputs are only displayed if you have pollution enabled as a game setting.

These are the ranges I maintain from pollution sources:

Minimum Range	Pollution Source Output	Example sources
300m	< 3 tons/year	Sawmill, gravel quarry
500m	< 10 tons/year, seasonal operation	Small heating plant
700m	< 10 tons/year, constant operation	Electrontic factory
800m	> 10 tons/year, seasonal operation	Large heating plant
1000m	> 10 tons/year, constant operation	Coal power plant.
1250m	Tight clusters of 10+ tons/year sources or a 30+ tons/year single point source	Chemicals Complex, Aircraft factory
1500m	> 40 tons/year, constant operation	Incinerator

These ranges eliminate all of the influence on citizens. For attraction/hotel ratings, you should probably add another 200m. If you're fine with 1% or 2% pollution exposure, then you can reduce the range by 200m, but I wouldn't recommend it, as this makes citizens more vulnerable to sickness and puts more stress on your healthcare systems.

Edit 1: Updated for the waste/maintenance update.
Edit 2: Updated because I felt like it.

[Silent_Shadow]

There is also radioactive contamination, which behaves much like pollution but persists seemingly forever, even if the source is removed.

Radioactive contamination only occurs when you have buildings that store radioactive materials (nuclear fuel or waste) catch fire, or if you have a lot of nuclear waste sit a while in a storage yard.

[Spec]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

The coming update may change some of this, but here is a brief overview:

There are pollution sources that create pollution:

• Industrial buildings produce the most.
  • Actual pollution output scales with production %.
  • You can look up "how much" pollution is generated in their pop-up card.
  
  
• Old world buildings produce a little pollution locally if you don't provide heating.
  • Generally this can be ignored.
  
  
• Sewage also causes pollution wherever it is dumped.
  • Severity scales with sewage pollution %.
  • If buildings' sewage tanks overflow, there will be local pollution.
  • Sewage can be ignored for a short time, but you really should avoid overflows.

Trees do not limit nor remove pollution.

You can see the affected areas of pollution by building a pollution monitoring station (found under state infrastructure). Typically there will be one or more "clouds" of pollution that are randomly distributed a certain distance from the source. More pollution output means larger clouds and more severe effect on the land.

Pollution is not permanent by any means. If you remove the source of the pollution, the effects of the pollution will dissipate pretty fast (like a matter of days). Operating polluting buildings at low rates also reduces a lot of the pollution they output and thus their effect on the area around them.

Pollution only has two effects in the game (currently):
• Lowers citizen health (which affects a lot)
• Lowers tourism ratings (citizens don't care about these)
I think that farmland fertility/yield may be affected by pollution in the coming update, but I don't really know.

Citizen health is only affected by living in polluted areas, which includes prisons, orphanages, dorms, and maybe hospitals (as a critical patient) and hotels (as a tourist). Working or satisfying needs in polluted areas does not seem to have any effect on citizen health, even for sports related buildings like the beach. Lower health causes lower lifespans (to a minimum around 30 "years"), lower productivity, death, more hospital visits, more ambulance calls, and lower population growth. Lifespan can recover once removed from polluted residences.

Each polluting building will display an output of "Environmental pollution" in tons/years, which you can use to estimate the range you need to maintain between them and residences, attractions, and hotels. Note that these outputs are only displayed if you have pollution enabled as a game setting.

These are the ranges I maintain from pollution sources:

Minimum Range	Pollution Source Output	Example sources
300m	< 3 tons/year	Sawmill, gravel quarry
500m	< 10 tons/year, seasonal operation	Small heating plant
700m	< 10 tons/year, constant operation	Electrontic factory
800m	> 10 tons/year, seasonal operation	Large heating plant
1000m	> 10 tons/year, constant operation	Coal power plant.
1250m	Tight clusters of 10+ tons/year sources	Chemical plant complexes

These ranges eliminate most of the influence on citizens. For attraction/hotel ratings, you should probably add another 200m.

This is exactly the type of info I was looking for. Thank you!

[melkij]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Citizen health is only affected by living in polluted areas, which includes prisons, orphanages, dorms, and maybe hospitals (as a critical patient) and hotels (as a tourist)

I can confirm that pollution greatly affects the health of tourists in a hotel.
Once I built a hotel next to the boiler room. In winter, all ambulances drove to the hotel non-stop.
PS: pollution also worsens the tourist rating of the hotel.

[Bert]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

These are the ranges I maintain from pollution sources:
[...]

Very nice list, thanks. As mentioned elsewhere, it would be nice if there was a graphical tool that better showed the current amount of pollution caused by each building, not just the effect (pollution monitoring station). It can be difficult to understand why an area is suddenly getting polluted when it wasn't before for a long period of time.

[Silent_Shadow]

Usually it is because production increased from minimal production to near constant maximum production, and pollution at full production is a lot worse than partial levels of production. Deaths during winter are common because heating plants suddenly have a lot more heat demand and new players tend to build them close to houses so workers can walk to them.

Operating buildings at partial production or at maximum production for only a short time greatly reduces the amount of pollution they generate. For example, if you pair a coal fired power plant with two solar power plants and only run the coal power plant at night, you can build residences up to ~500, maybe 400 meters away without pollution appreciably affecting them. Even within 300m the pollution is okay enough to draw water from provided you have a treatment plant to filter out the occasional cloud of pollution.

[Zairev]

Thank you kind sir, thats the exact info i needed.
Still got 2 more questions tho:

-Does pollution clouds stack (increasing distance if bunch of smaller ones combine) or do they only overlap (only the biggest polluter is relevant to distance)?

-Do pollution clouds travel, and if yes, how far? Do they get smaller overtime if traveling?

[ling.speed]

Afaik pollution does "stack", but rather than clouds its more like blobs that somewhat repell each other - both stacking and overlapping to varying extents. More pollution in one place will make them appear further apart but they dont really travel.
The only "weather" effect of pollution would be slight bias toward wind direction (which is fixed NE i believe)