Vehicular air pollution linked to myriad maladies

Air pollution from motor vehicles increases rates of cancer, asthma, premature and low-birthweight babies and creates other health woes. And the closer you live to congested roads, the greater the danger to your health, says a report issued Wednesday by an environmental group.

"Highway Health Hazards," produced for the Sierra Club, looks at 24 different peer-reviewed studies published in the past decade — including one from Brigham Young University — to conclude that "a critical consequence" of reliance on and construction of highways is increased health problems.

"This study shows the weight of the evidence. Why is it important? Because every American either drives in a car or lives near a road," said the club's Brett Hulsey during a question-and-answer session following the study's release.

The report also criticizes the Bush administration and goes after Utah's Legacy Highway project.

The president's proposal to reduce federal financial support for mass transit projects by 30 percentage points to 50-50 (federal and local match) while maintaining federal funding for highway projects at current 80-20 levels is the wrong thing to do, Hulsey said.

Among the report's findings:

• A study conducted in part by C. Arden Pope, professor and epidemiologist at BYU, found that "air pollution is a major risk to our health and safety and is the contributing cause of nearly 100,000 premature deaths each year." It was published in the Annual Review of Public Health.

Since that 1994 report, Pope's research has also linked air pollution to heart ills. Last December, in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, Pope said it causes inflammation that is a key cause of heart ills. And heart woes are a more common result of pollution than respiratory ills.

• Soot in diesel exhaust is linked to lung cancer, cardiopulmonary disease and more, according to a study from the Journal of the American Medical Association.

• Another journal study found that when Atlanta increased public transportation and used other traffic-control measures during the 1996 Olympics, acute asthma episodes among children dropped 44 percent. Ozone concentrations fell 29 percent and morning peak traffic was down 22.5 percent.

• Denver researchers showed that children who live close to high-traffic roads are up to eight times more apt to develop leukemia or other cancers. Researchers had been looking for a link between power lines and increased cancer but found only weak ties, said Howard Wachtel of the University of Colorado, one of the researchers. It found "a strong association" between the cancers and proximity to busy roads.