385,000 deaths

Diesel exhaust fumes as carcinogenic as asbestos, arsenic and mustard gas

That is the annual toll from vehicle tailpipe emissions, around the world.  If a terrorist kills 10 people, civil liberties are curtailed, there are endless news articles and TV pundits speaking, questions in Parliament.  Yet we continue to tolerate hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths from car and lorry exhausts.

Researchers combined the most recent vehicle emissions, air pollution, and epidemiological models to find that vehicle tailpipe emissions were responsible for 385,000 premature deaths worldwide in 2015, up from 361,000 in 2010. Exhaust from on-road diesel vehicles was responsible for nearly half of these premature deaths globally, and fully two-thirds in India, France, Germany, and Italy.

For their study, researchers at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), University of Colorado Boulder, and George Washington University assessed the health impacts of emissions from four major transportation sectors: on-road diesel vehicles, other on-road vehicles, shipping, and non-road engines (tractors used in agriculture, generators, construction equipment etc.).

The health impacts of transportation emissions such as PM2.5 — atmospheric particulate matter (PM) that have a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers — and ozone were immense but unevenly distributed geographically. According to the authors, the global cost of transportation-attributable health impacts was approximately $1 trillion. Two-thirds of the impact was felt in the four largest vehicle markets in the world: China, India, the European Union, and the United States.

The global health burden of on-road diesel vehicles is especially large because of their higher levels of particulates — microscopic bits of soot left over from the combustion process, which can penetrate deep into the lungs, causing irritation and potentially triggering asthma attacks. Compared to previous research, the new study attributed a 68% higher health burden to diesel vehicles because it includes the effects of tailpipe PM2.5. A 2017 study published in Nature found diesel cars emitted 50% more nitrogen oxides (NOx) under “real-world” driving conditions than expected.

[Read more here]

The conclusion is obvious: we need to switch to EVs as fast as we can.  Fossil fuels are killing us.