Comment 96014

By KevinLove (registered) | Posted December 14, 2013 at 20:16:25

Ted wrote:

"The reality is that alcohol causes less than 40 percent of traffic fatalities... That leaves over 60 percent of deaths due to other human errors such as speed, aggression, drowsiness, distraction, age, and medically-related impairment."

Kevin's comment: This leaves out the #1 cause of traffic fatalities. An absolute majority of traffic deaths are due to car drivers poisoning people with their lethal air pollution. Excellent work examining this was done in Toronto by Toronto's Medical Officer of Health, Dr. David McKeown, and Toronto Public Health.

Is anyone aware of similar use of the Health Canada AQBAT findings to get similar data for Hamilton?

Here are the horrific details for Toronto:

*Car drivers poison and kill 440 people every year in Toronto.

*Car drivers poison and injure 1,700 people every year in Toronto so seriously that they have to be hospitalised.

*Health care costs to treat people in Toronto poisoned by car drivers every year are about $2.2 billion.

Children are most vulnerable to being poisoned by car drivers so that:

*Children in Toronto experience more than 1,200 acute bronchitis episodes per year due to being poisoned by car drivers.

*Children in Toronto experience about 68,000 asthma symptom days every year due to being poisoned by car drivers.

For details, see the official City of Toronto website for:

The full Report: http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2007/...

City Staff Report Summary: http://www.toronto.ca/health/hphe/pdf/ai...

Backgrounder Report: http://www.toronto.ca/health/hphe/pdf/ai...

A quotation from the full Report:

"The current study determined that traffic gives rise to about 440 premature deaths and 1,700 hospitalizations per year in Toronto. While the majority of hospitalizations involve the elderly, traffic-related pollution also has significant adverse effects on children. Children experience more than 1,200 acute bronchitis episodes per year as a result of air pollution from traffic. Children are also likely to experience the majority of asthma symptom days (about 68,000), given that asthma prevalence and asthma hospitalization rates are about twice as high in children as adults.

This study shows that traffic-related pollution affects a very large number of people. Impacts such as the 200,000 restricted activity days per year due to days spent in bed or days when people cut back on usual activities are disruptive, affect quality of life and pose preventable health risk.

This study estimates that mortality-related costs associated with traffic pollution in Toronto are about $2.2 billion."

Comment edited by KevinLove on 2013-12-14 20:23:40

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