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:

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.

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?!

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)