2.4 Public health and sustainability  (Page 2/12)

The olympics as an example

A natural experiment during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta shows the impact of car use on health. During the games, peak morning traffic decreased 23% and peak ozone levels decreased 28%. Asthma-related emergency room visits by children decreased 42% while children’s emergency visits for non-asthma causes did not change during same period ( Friedman, Powell, Hutwagner, Graham,&Teague, 2001 ). We also saw that with the Beijing Olympics in 2008 where driving days were rationed, more than 300,000 heavy-emitting vehicles (about 10% of total) were barred from the city’s administrative area in order to decrease pollution for athletes and visitors This reduced the number of vehicles by about 1.9 million or 60% of the total fleet during the Olympic Games. Emissions of black carbon, carbon monoxide and ultrafine particles were reduced by 33%, 47%, and 78% respectively compared to the year before the Olympics. Frequency of respiratory illnesses during the 2008 games were found to be significantly less in certain populations compared to previous years and this was hypothesized to be related to the reduction of vehicles on the road ( Wang et al., 2009 ; Jentes et al., 2010 ).

Figure Minutes Americans Walk per Day shows the average time Americans spend walking a day. People who walk to and from public transit get an fair amount of physical activity related to using transit, thus the name given to modes of transit that do not involve driving: active transit. Those people who did not own a car or were not a primary driver had higher walking times ( Besser&Dannenberg, 2005 ).

Water quality

Increasing numbers of roads and parking lots are needed to support an automobile transportation system, which lead to increased non-point source water pollution and contamination of water supplies (road runoff of oil/gas, metals, nutrients, organic waste, to name a few) with possible impacts on human health. Increased erosion and stream siltation causes environmental damage and may affect water treatment plants and thus affect water quality.

Social capital

On the social sustainability side, we can look at social capital otherwise defined as the “connectedness” of a group built through behaviors such as social networking and civic engagement, along with attitudes such as trust and reciprocity. Greater social capital has been associated with healthier behaviors, better self-rated health, and less negative results such as heart disease. However, social capital has been diminishing over time. Proposed causes include long commute times, observed in sprawling metropolitan areas. Past research suggests that long commute times are associated with less civic participation; Robert Putnam suggests that every ten additional minutes of commuting predicts a 10% decline in social capital ( Besser, Marcus,&Frumkin, 2008 ). Urban sprawl is considered the reason for most long commutes.

As of 2011, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune , Chicago commuting times are some of the worst – with Chicagoans spending 70 hours per year more on the road than they would if there was no congestion – up from 18 hours in 1982. They have an average commute time of 34 minutes each way. These drivers also use 52 more gallons per year per commuter, increasing their costs and pollution.