Car Air Kills More Than Car Accidents
Posted by: Kathie Brosemer (kathie) on September 18, 2002 at 12:29:49
from the hold-your-breath! dept.
Here's a shocker from the Earth Policy Institute! Story by Bernie Fischlowitz-Roberts
The World Health Organization reports that 3 million people now die each year from the effects of air pollution. This is three times the 1 million who die each year in automobile accidents. A study published in The Lancet in 2000 concluded that air pollution in France, Austria, and Switzerland is responsible for more than 40,000 deaths annually in those three countries. About half of these deaths can be traced to air pollution from vehicle emissions.
In the United States, traffic fatalities total just over 40,000 per year, while air pollution claims 70,000 lives annually. U.S. air pollution deaths are equal to deaths from breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. This scourge of cities in industrial and developing countries alike threatens the health of billions of people.
Governments go to great lengths to reduce traffic accidents by fining those who drive at dangerous speeds, arresting those who drive under the influence of alcohol, and even sometimes revoking drivers' licenses. But they pay much less attention to the deaths people cause by simply driving the cars. While deaths from heart disease and respiratory illness from breathing polluted air may lack the drama of deaths from an automobile crash, with flashing lights and sirens, they are no less real. Full Story here.
air pollution
Not just car but all internal combustion engines are culprits.by Al Jablanczy on 2002-09-20 01:12:08
My suggestions are to tax gasoline double and diesel triple.
Double sales tax on all motorised lawn mowers, skidoos, motorboat engines and motor boats, whipper snippers, roto tillers,
gas barbecues, three and four wheelers motor cycles, chain saws,
wood splitters, leaf blowers, etc . Its horrible how human ingenuity invents useless and dangerous and polluting machines for every
trivial task which any able bodied child or hale octogenarian sholud be able to do by hand tools.
Following this logic all nontoxic hand tools should be tax free
bicycles, roller skates, canoes, snowshoes cross country or mountaineering skis, (not downhill as these are mechanically dragged up a hill), shovels, pick axes, maul wood splitters, hand saws,
snow shovels and scoops, ice augers( but motorised should obviously double or triple taxed as being completely unnecessary).
((by the way those odious abominations seadoos and other noisemakers and polluters should be triple taxed)). Obviously sailboats
kayaks any wind or human powered water vehicles such as windsurfs
should be likewise tax free.
All lakes less than a certain size say 10 km2 should be
declared oil and exhaust free zones for all outboard motors leak gasoline constantly into the hitherto pristine waters.
These should be a good start as the cities are built for the automobile and it would be almost impossible to switch totally
to horse human wind and solar powered vehicles.
But idling should be discouraged if not totally made illegal.