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Cutting out short auto trips and replacing them with mass transitand active transport would yield major health benefits, accordingto a study just published in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives . The biggest health benefit was due to replacing half of the shorttrips with bicycle trips during the warmest six months of the year,saving about $3.8 billion per year from avoided mortality andreduced health care costs for conditions like obesity and heart disease . The report calculated that these measures would save an estimated$7 billion, including 1,100 lives each year from improved airquality and increased physical fitness. Moving five-mile round trips from cars to bikes is a win-winsituation that is often ignored in discussions of transportationalternatives, says Jonathan Patz, director of the Global HealthInstitute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "We talk aboutthe cost of changing energy systems, the cost of alternative fuels,but we seldom talk about this kind of benefit." The study of the largest 11 metropolitan statistical areas in theupper Midwest began by identifying the air pollution reductionsthat would result from eliminating the short auto trips. A small average reduction in very fine particles, which lodge deepin the lung and have repeatedly been tied to asthma , which affects 8.2 percent of U.S. citizens, and deaths due tocardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, was a major source of healthbenefits, says co-author Scott Spak, who worked on the study atUW-Madison and is now at the University of Iowa. "The reductions tend to be much larger during high pollutionepisodes, and even small changes reduce a chronic exposure thataffects the 31.3 million people living throughout the region -- notjust in these metropolitan areas, but even hundreds of milesdownwind," Spak says. The study projected that 433 lives would be saved due to thereduction in fine particles. The second step was to look at the health benefits of using abicycle on those short trips during the six months with optimumweather, when cycling is quite feasible in the region. "Obesity has become a national epidemic, and not getting exercisehas lot to do with that," says first author Maggie Grabow, a Ph.D.candidate at UW-Madison's Nelson Institute, who presented the studyto the American Public Health Association in Washington, D.C. "The majority of Americans do not get the recommended minimum levelof exercise," says Grabow. "In a busy daily schedule, if thatexercise can automatically occur while commuting to work, weanticipate a major benefit in stemming the obesity epidemic, andconsequently a significant reduction in type II diabetes , which is a deadly epidemic in its own right." Overall, the study may underestimate the benefits of eliminatingshort auto trips, says Patz, an environmental health specialist inthe Department of Population Health Sciences, because it did notmeasure the financial savings due to reduced auto usage.Furthermore, the study did not try to account for the healthbenefits of the foregone auto trips, which would be performed onfoot or via mass transit, both of which provide an additionalamount of exercise. Patz acknowledges that it's unrealistic to expect to eliminate allshort auto trips, but notes that biking as transportation isgaining popularity in the United States, and that in some cities inNorthern Europe, approximately 50 percent of short trips are doneby bike. "If they have achieved this, why should we not think wecan achieve it too?" he asks. Chicago and New York, among other cities, have devoted significantresources to bike infrastructure in recent years, Patz notes. The new study, he says, should provide another motivation formaking cities more bike friendly, with better parking, bike rackson buses and trains, and more bike lanes and especially separatebike paths. "Part of this is a call for making our biking infrastructure safer.If there are so many health benefits out there, we ought to try toredesign our cities to achieve them without putting new riders atrisk," Patz says. By lessening the use of fossil fuels, a reduction in auto usagealso benefits the climate, Patz adds. "Transportation accounts forone-third of greenhouse gas emissions, so if we can swap bikes forcars, we gain in fitness, local air quality, a reduction ingreenhouse gases, and the personal economic benefits of bikingrather than driving. It's a four-way win," he adds. Additional References Citations. I am an expert from chinadrillingequipment.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Diaphragm Wall Equipment Manufacturer , Geological Drilling Rig, core drilling,and more.
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