For all of our Spanish-speaking readers, here is a short clip from a recent Mexico City television broadcast that gives a quick overview of some of the ways in which transport policy impacts public health. It describes a Mexico City NGO (and EMBARQ Network partner) that is working with the Mexican capital to improve both traffic conditions and the health of the citizenry.

Importantly, better transport systems can have community-wide effects that go beyond reducing air pollution and the incidence of traffic accidents; they can also help promote physical activity, providing another tool in the fight against chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.

In fact, as cities become increasingly congested, the myriad connections between traffic and public health have become more visible and more serious. Forward-thinking cities are beginning to realize that failing to address these links and thereby improve the quality of life in their cities will mean losing their competitive advantage in our increasingly globalized world.

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People In Mexico City Losing Their Sense of Smell. Produced by theEMBARQ Network on Vimeo.

Rhys Thom and I recently visited Mexico City where we met with two researchers at UNAM - Mexico’s National University - who are doing some fascinating research. Robyn Hudson, a charismatic professor, originally from Australia who has been living in Mexico City for quite some time, and her colleague Marco Guarneros, a fellow biomedical researcher, conducted a study comparing the ability of Mexico City’s residents to detect certain smells, with the ability of people living in a Tlaxcala, a neighboring town. Mexico City and Tlaxcala are similar in many respects - they share a similar culture and climate, situated high in the mountains of Mexico. But there is one crucial difference: Mexico City has much higher levels of air pollution.

When compared to their neighbors, people living in Mexico City need higher concentrations of a smell in order to identify it, a clear indication that their sense of smell is deteriorating.
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Photo by Alexandra Moss.

Once known as the world’s ‘bicycle kingdom,’ China has experienced rapid urbanization leading some to declare the beginning of the end for China’s bikes. While it’s true that from 1995 to 2005, China’s bike fleet declined by 35 percent and private car ownership more than doubled, there is no evidence today that bicycles are a thing of the past on Beijing’s streets.

Increased urbanization and growing diversification of transport has only meant cycling Beijing streets is becoming a greater challenge, particularly in areas where designated bike lanes have been removed. Cycling in Beijing – let alone mastering the art of walking Beijing’s overcrowded streets brimming with buses, cars, bicycles, motorcycles, and some 18 million people – is (in a word) terrifying, yet somehow millions of Beijingers seem to cope just fine.

Helmets are nonexistent, and the agile Chinese have mastered the art of multi-tasking while cycling. Not only do people seem to cart their livelihoods on bikes, but I’ve witnessed whole families perched atop a single tandem, ladies cycling one-handed with umbrella in tow to prevent any sun exposure that would risk their pale complexions; I even saw a man with three 15” computer monitors strapped above his back wheel (and they were not flat screen). And you’ll never see a hint of the abashed – anything goes in the Beijing bike lane. Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo by James Cridland.

In ancient Indian and Chinese texts, writers noted that the ultimate form of torture involved subjecting captives to loud and horrible noises. It’s an interesting paradox that we now live in the modern world as free citizens, and all we need to do is stroll down the street to be exposed to noise loud enough to become physically ill, elevating our blood pressure to unhealthy levels, interfering with our sleeping patterns, and causing a whole host of stress related diseases.

On the majority of roads in cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, and Delhi, noise pollution can measure nearly 80-90 decibels during peak hours. That’s roughly the equivalent of standing just 15 feet from a passing freight train! Noise levels above 80 decibels are detrimental to healthy hearing and the Australian EPA suggests that prolonged exposure to noise at or above this level can cause deafness. It’s such a serious problem that researchers in the EU found that the social cost of noise pollution for that region is 0.4% of total GDP. In Indian city’s it must be a lot worse. (For normal tension free conversation one requires a background noise level less than 55 decibels.) Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo by Hossam all line.

The New York Times reports today that noise on Cairo’s streets averages 85 decibels, the equivalent of standing just 15 feet from a passing freight train. And that’s just the average. In the loudest parts of the city it can reach 95 decibels, only slightly softer than the noise produced by a jackhammer!

The loud noise on the city’s streets is not just a nuisance:

It can cause elevated blood pressure and other stress-related diseases. It can interfere with sleep, which almost always makes people more irritable. “People need a chance to sleep, to have a chance to think, in quiet,” said Dr. Nagat Amer, a physician and researcher with the national center.

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By walking twenty minutes each way from the metro in Atlanta to her job at the American Cancer Society, Lois Fletcher has lost more than thirty pounds. It’s a remarkable story about how tweaking your day to day routine can have profound influences on your health. But as researchers who study public health will tell, its really not all that surprising. Below are the conclusions of several studies that clearly illustrate the link between good transit and public health:

• Train commuters walk significantly more steps per day (+30%) than automobile commuters. Train commuters are also 4 times more likely than car commuters to meet the recommended standard of 10,000 steps per day.” [Environment and Behavior]
• A study conducted in Shanghai found that women who reported regular exercise and cycling for transportation were at a 20–50% lower risk for early mortality than less active women. [American Journal of Epidemiology]
• 78% of riders from three walkable New Jersey train stations met the national standard for physical activity. As a whole, only 45% of Americans meet this recommended standard. Read the rest of this entry »

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Here two-wheelers invade a footpath. All photos by Sudhir Gota, SECON Pvt Ltd.

Krishnappa is a security guard for a multinational software firm in Bangalore who, for the past thirty years, has walked and cycled to work. For Krishnappa, the trip, which often took around 15 to 30 minutes, was one of life’s small pleasures as he made his way along Bangalore’s tree-shaded streets, often meeting friends and acquaintances, discussing politics and family matters, before continuing on his way. However, in recent years he has been unable to walk or cycle to work. And it’s not because of age or injury.

When asked about his transport woes, he blames the government. The increase in land prices, lack of cycle tracks, footpaths, poor public transportation, and the risk of being struck by a motorized vehicle have forced him to drive to work. He now spends nearly 30% of his salary on his monthly commute.

Krishnappa is not alone. Rapidly growing Bangalore city has generated a new human species aptly named “Transport Challenged People.” The common trait of these people is that they are forced to become captive to a mode of transport just because they don’t have an accessible alternative. Their other characteristic is that they pay a price for traveling that they do not consider fair or just, but because they have no other option, they continue to pay it.

Bangalore has seen a spiral of economic activity and urban growth, with the developed area of the city increasing from roughly 175 square kilometers in 1971 to more than 560 in 2006. The government, in order to decongest the city center, restricted the Floor- Space-Index (FSI) – that’s a technical term for building density - in the core and liberated the FSI along the outer peripheries. The restriction in FSI in the city core caused land value here to skyrocket, driving out the lower class to the more affordable peripheries. (There’s a photo essay after the jump)

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China’s Green Beat, is a neat bilingual blog I stumbled upon the other day, written by John Romankiewicz, an American Fulbright scholar currently living in Beijing, and Zhao Xiangyu, a Chinese citizen from Heilongjiang, a province in the northern part of the country. Check out the above video for a comical take on serious challenge: motorization in the Chinese capital.

Read more about Beijing’s metro, BRT system, Olympic bid, and weather problems.

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Congestion pricing is good for the environment and public health. Photo by dlisbona.

A team of scientists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and King’s College London conducted a study showing that London’s congestion pricing scheme has reduced air pollution in central London, saving Londoners as a whole 1888 extra years of life. The study focused on two types of pollutants from cars: NO2, a chemical compound known to cause acute and chronic bronchitis, and particulate matter (PM10), tiny particles suspended in the air which can become embedded in the lungs, causing asthma and bronchitis.

The authors of the study, which was published in the journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, are hardly sanguine about their results, noting that overall London saw only “modest” reductions in NO2 and PM10 levels. However, they also point out that, “Absolute and relative reductions in NO2 and PM10 were greatest within the congestion charging zone wards,” suggesting that an expansion of the zone would have an even greater environmental and health impact. Read the rest of this entry »

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Smog in the city. Photo by A30_Tsitika.

Residents of Mexico City have a much poorer sense of smell than their counterparts in the neighboring state of Tlaxcala due, in large part, to the poorer air quality in the Mexican capital. A study by Robyn Hudson, Aline Arriola, Margarita Martinez, and Hans Distel - researchers at UNAM, Mexico’s national university - suggests that the cause is exposure to abnormally high levels of ozone, a chemical compound known to damage the olfactory mucosa, the part of the nose that allows odors to be detected.

“For a megacommunity like Mexico City with more than 20 million inhabitants, this could constitute an important public health issue,” the researchers wrote. The study notes that chilangos, as residents of Mexico City affectionately refer to themselves, had more difficultly identifying trace smells of coffee and orange juice than people who live in neighboring Tlaxcala. What’s more, they had more trouble differentiating between two traditional Mexican drinks, horchata and atole.

For sometime it has been known that air pollution causes all sorts of health problems, including ailments like asthma, bronchitis, and irregular heartbeats. Read the rest of this entry »

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