Aren’t bicyclists exposed to far more air pollution? Nope.
Intuitively this seems odd, but a whole range of studies ’suggest’ that car-drivers are exposed to much more traffic-related air pollution. Exemplary is the research of Kingham, Meaton, et al. from 1998 with the following findings neatly compiled at the Sprawl and Health blog:
While i am taking the bike here in Santiago – not necessarily the friendliest place for bicyclists – i am exposed to a lot of fumes, but this counts just as well for every Santiaguino. Motorists surely are worsening the situation for everybody, yet they hurt themselves even more. When i am preaching that more people should take the bike relieving the local air situation and doing exercise at the same time i often got the respond that one would breath too much air pollutants. Now i can counter that cheap excuse with tough, scientifically backed research. Watcha say now?!The car driver had the highest mean exposure to benzene (108.3 micrograms/m^3) a factor of at least 4 and also the highest mean exposure to particulates (7.6 absorbance), but by a much smaller margin.
Train riders had the lowest benzene exposure (12.9) and path cyclists had the lowest particulate exposure (2.7).
The bus was slightly better than the road bike
The exposure ratios for the car driver to the road cyclist were 4.05 for benzene and 1.26 for particulates.
The exposure ratios for the road cyclist to the path cyclist were 1.73 for benzene and 2.41 for particulates.
For a list of studies related to urban living, transport and health check out the bibliography of the Sightline Institute. It is a rich set of all kind of research questions ranging from health problems to absence of community correlated by sprawl and suburbanism.
via La voz de la chimba (in Spanish)
Published on June 28th, 2006 at 19:10.
Filed under english, mobility, santiago, urbanlife, environment
In Chile – as in the rest of the world – we see a growing discomfort among motorists about the rising gas prices. Here in Santiago this translates also to demonstrations by people that are either relying on or are plainly used to take the car. This seems to me a bit ironical. Every other day we have air pollution warnings by the government limiting the (legal) use of special kinds of vehicles so that the smog level doesn’t get ‘too unhealthy’. On the contrary the demonstrating motorists are asking for lowering the gas taxes arguing that a great part of the economy relies on this very combustion based transport. The government should help out since those transcendent causes hit the economy and the middle class – which both ought to be protected. In fact Chile is seeing price increases in different product categories ranging from bread to bus transit because of higher gas prices. While this argument surely has some basis, i would argue that the decline of fossil fuels is not that unforeseen. 
Therefore i think economy and society needs to develop and adopt new ways of undertaking transport. As capitalist economy is rather interested in making a quick buck than investing in long term goals it is probably up to governments to encourage (read: subsidize) change. But than politicians are rather in it for the next election and not the welfare of future generations. Which leads me to the conclusion that true environmental change can only happen from below, from the people choosing whether they take the SUV or the metro to get to work. Furthermore there is a need for a broad social movement for environmental change to demand more alternative transport and energy.
If you haven’t noticed yet: the penguins are plotting and doing the world revolution. Here in Chile we have seen the greatest social movement in 30 years undertaken by high school students – colloquially referred to penguins due to their school uniforms – demanding an education accessible to everyone. Furthermore the open source community – with the famous penguin Tux as its charismatic leader – proofs that the production of value and knowledge needs to be open and accessible. And ultimately we have penguins showing up on walls all over to underline the greatest revolution of mankind – undertaken by their black-and-white counterparts. Besides stepping into their claw steps we finally need to stop global warming to acknowledge these magnificient deeds.
Due to health problems i had to quit playing basketball on the peek of my career – i think i was allowed to play in a game when either we were or the other team was losing badly – but i still like it as a sport. Now that the basketball revolution is underway – 
