Study blames 2,200 deaths on traffic emissions Traffic
congestion experts have long warned that pollution caused by
idling vehicles on crowded roads was harming Americans' health.
Now, for the first time, researchers at Harvard University have
quantified the damage: They say that congestion in the USA's 83
largest urban areas last year led to more than 2,200 premature
deaths and a related public health cost of at least $18 billion.
"Our estimates of the total public health cost of traffic
congestion in the U.S. are likely conservative, in that they
consider only the impacts in 83 urban areas and only the cost of
related mortality and not the costs that could be associated
with related morbidity — health care, insurance, accidents and
other factors," the researchers at the Harvard Center for Risk
Analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health report.
Researchers focused on motor vehicle emissions, using several
models "to predict how much of what people are breathing in each
urban area is attributable to emis