Significant progress was made in reducing the emissions contributing towards air pollution from heavy-duty trucks. However, there was not much success in doing the same with light-duty vehicles, such as cars, SUV\u2019s and pickup trucks. Light duty vehicles account for two-thirds of the public health burden from transportation related air pollution in 2017. Researchers noted that emissions from these vehicles in large metropolitan areas are responsible for more than 30% more attributable deaths than all heavy-duty trucks combined.\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The link between health, and the impact on climate change from vehicle emissions, has been widely studied in the US. It is because of research into this topic that federal air pollution regulations and technological innovations by car manufacturers were introduced. This study investigates how these policies have impacted vehicle emissions, and as a result, public health. The drop in deaths related to illnesses caused by vehicle emissions suggests that, while there is a notable drop in deaths, the Earth\u2019s climate is still a long way from any notable benefits. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf the trends of increased population density with an aging population, and a shift to larger passenger vehicles continue, emissions, especially in urban areas, will continue to become more harmful and it will be harder to achieve further public health gains by small incremental improvements in new vehicles,\u201d said John Spengler, Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation and\u00a0another\u00a0author of the study. \u201cOur study findings strengthen the case for policies at the municipal level that encourage electric vehicles while discouraging conventional gasoline vehicles and for making our cities more accessible for non-motorized transportation such as biking or walking.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Socioeconomical benefits<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Choma and their team calculated\u00a0the social benefits attributable to decreasing\u00a0emissions and\u00a0estimated that reductions in air pollution\u00a0yielded 270 billion dollars\u00a0in 2017.\u00a0This is\u00a0primarily due to the estimated value of reduced mortality risk from the particulate matter. Also,\u00a0reduced social costs from greenhouse gas emissions\u00a0were considered in the calculation, as this factor had a minor but notable impact.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers have investigated the link between decreasing vehicle emissions and deaths attributable to air pollution.\u00a0 The study\u00a0 Using recent national emissions data, researchers from Harvard Chan School\u2019s Department of Environmental Health, modelled four scenarios for emissions in 2017. This consisted of actual emissions, and three alternative scenarios, in which county-level emissions were the same as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":16497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24433,785],"tags":[689,3365],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n