Study blames 2,200 deaths on traffic emissions

[The Straight Story]

Traffic congestion experts have long warned that pollution caused by idling vehicles on crowded roads was harming Americans' health.

Now, for the first time, researchers at Harvard University have quantified the damage: They say that congestion in the USA's 83 largest urban areas last year led to more than 2,200 premature deaths and a related public health cost of at least $18 billion.

"Our estimates of the total public health cost of traffic congestion in the U.S. are likely conservative, in that they consider only the impacts in 83 urban areas and only the cost of related mortality and not the costs that could be associated with related morbidity — health care, insurance, accidents and other factors," the researchers at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health report.

Researchers focused on motor vehicle emissions, using several models "to predict how much of what people are breathing in each urban area is attributable to emissions from traffic congestion."


http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-05-25-traffic-pollution-premature-deaths-emissions_n.htm

[The Straight Story]

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