The Health Threat: Harmful Effects of Air Pollution, Accidents

Personal health and well-being, a goal shared by all Americans, has become an issue of major national concern. Transportation choices in Washington and across the country improves personal health and access to heathcare. If you'd like to know more about this or be directed to reports and resources, contact us.

The Harmful Effects of Air Pollution

Air pollution is hurting kids. Researchers has shown that ozone air pollution and childhood asthma are linked. Asthma has reached epidemic levels in the U.S.

Cars and trucks are the #1 cause of Washington's toxic air pollution, and are a major factor in the rising asthma rates in our cities. One in ten kids in Seattle and Spokane suffer from asthma, compared with less than 7% nationally. Hospital rates for children with asthma in the Puget Sound region have increased 53% in the last decade.

A recent study in Alaska showed found that children who live within 100 meters of neighborhoods with high automobile traffic had a 2.7 times greater chance of an asthma diagnosis.

Almost half of all Americans, over 130 million people, live in areas that violate federal health standards for air pollution.

The American Lung Association's State of the Air Report in 2002 finds that 143 million Americans are breathing in unhealthy amounts of ozone pollution linked to lung and heart disease.

Exposure to air pollution contributes to the development of cardiovascular diseases, according to the American Heart Association (2004).

In the Central Puget Sound the number of cancer deaths from transportation-related air pollution is in the worst 5% in the U.S.

Research in California and Colorado shows that those living close to very high traffic-volume highways face unacceptable cancer risks - as high as 1 in 500 - due to exposure to traffic related toxic air polluntants that will increase if roads are further expanded.

In France researchers have found that more than 30,000 people die in the country each year from atmospheric pollution, and between 7 and 20% of all cancers have an environmental origin.

An emerging study in California may show that air pollution is not only linked to asthma and lung cancer, but also brain cancer. Along freeways there's a very high concentration of ultra-fine particles being released from deisel engines. When these particals are inhaled, they rapidly cross into the blood, and cross from the blood into the brain. The head of the study put it this way on NPR's Living on Earth radio program: "It's easy to make the association between asthma and particulates, between lung cancer and particulates, because we're breathing those in the lung. What we don't understand…is that these…are crossing from the lung into the blood system and they're affecting other organs in the body."

A recent study found that nearly one in twelve heart attackes is linked to being caught in traffic, researchers believe that polluted air might be part of the problem.

The public health costs of pollution from cars and heavy duty vehicles have been estimated between $40 billion and $64 billion a year. (The range in numbers is attributable to different methods researches used to value "a life" in their calculations)

A recent study of 38 metropolition areas showed that rates of arthritis, asthma and headaches, as well as other complaints, have increased as the amount of sprawl has increased.

Accidents

Across the country in 2001, 41,730 people died and 2 million were injured in car accidents.

The National Safety Council estimates that riding the bus is over 170 times safer than car travel.

Deaths and injuries from auto crashes are the leading cause of death for persons of every age range from 4 to 33 years old. If the nation's roadway users had the same accident rates as buses, 21,000 motorist lives would be saved annually.

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