Growth in electric cars will help health, environment
LJohn Barnard
ast summer, I bought a fully electric car. Driving it is enjoyable — the feel is quite different from a traditional gas-powered vehicle.
The purchase was motivated less by an environmental concern than a longstanding desire to own an electric car, having lived through the 1970s oil crisis as a cash-strapped teenager. It took decades, but the technology has improved. Though electric cars are still more expensive than gas-powered ones, the price point is changing and the electric car market is finally taking off.
Now, more than six months into a fundamentally different driving experience, I am reminded that I have not pumped a tank of gasoline in that time, and it soothes my environmental conscience. There have been zero hydrocarbon emissions from my car’s tailpipe. And there might be health benefits as the number of electric cars on the road increases.
Last year, two of the largest and most sophisticated analyses ever conducted about the relationship between air pollution and mortality in the United States were published. Both came from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Sixty-one million Medicare beneficiaries living in more than 39,000 U.S. ZIP codes were studied along with exposure to ozone gas and inhalable fine particulate matter. Ozone is a cell-damaging form of air pollution. Fine particulate matter, less than 2.5 microns in diameter, is especially concerning. Called PM2.5, these particles are about 30 times smaller than a human hair and are inhaled into the far reaches of the respiratory tree and even can pass into the bloodstream. They are composed of toxic solids and liquids, and contribute to the familiar haze in the air on a bad pollution day.
The Harvard studies found that small increases in ozone and PM2.5 exposure were associated with higher death rates. These occurred with short- or long-term exposure as all-cause mortality — meaning a death for any reason. Examples might include heart attacks, strokes and acute respiratory disease. Although all groups studied had an increase, most affected were racial minorities and lowincome groups. The increase in deaths occurred below Environmental Protection Agency recommended levels of PM2.5, indicating that more stringent standards might save more lives and further improve health.
A more recent study of children in Paris tied PM2.5 outdoor air pollution to emergency department visits for asthma flare-ups. A multitude of other studies has found more severe childhood asthma and other respiratory illnesses the closer children live to heavy traffic.
In sum, a growing body of increasingly sophisticated evidence implicates air pollution is a major contributor to illness and even death. Children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable.
Major sources of harmful PM2.5 are petroleum-burning vehicles and fossil fuel-burning power plants. Though electric cars do not directly generate PM2.5, their batteries are recharged with electricity generated by fossil fuel-burning power plants. In the Midwest, where coal remains a major source of energy generation, the benefits of electric cars are less than in other regions of the United States where nuclear, wind and solar power predominates.
Here in Columbus, our Smart City aspirations include aggressively growing the electric vehicle market (http://www.columbus. gov/smartcolumbus/ home/). It seems increasingly clear (pun intended) that doing so will improve our community’s health and even save lives.