A new study has found that cleaner cars have led to almost 30,000 fewer deaths in 2017 compared to 2008. That’s in only 10 years, and we can already see a big impact from cleaning up vehicle emissions. In addition to fewer deaths, the researchers estimated that the economic impact of so many fewer deaths was $270 million.
Researchers at Harvard compared vehicle emissions from cars and light trucks (pickup trucks) in 2008 and 2017. They also compared vehicle miles traveled (how many miles all the different cars and pickups were driven), what kinds of cars, pickups, or SUVs people drove, and other changes that affected background air pollution rates. They noted there would some of the health benefits from lower pollution and better emissions were offset by people driving bigger vehicles (SUVs compared to cars).
The researchers studied several kinds of air pollution: fine particles (PM2.5), ammonia, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen oxides (NOx).
Because much highway air pollution (fine particle and ammonia) stays nearer to the highway, the researchers commented that local policies in urban areas could really help improve health in people living in those areas. This is especially true for black and brown people, because our country’s environmental racism built interstate highways through black and brown communities in the 1950s and 1960s.
The researchers also found that federal policies about NOx, and other air pollutants that EPA regulates, could help reduce emissions further. And, right now Congress is considering plans to fund and support electric vehicles and EV charging stations, and other ways to fund cleaner transportation.s
Read a news article about the study here.
Read the scientific study here.
12/14/2021
