Story at a glance
- A new report by the American Lung Association found switching the transportation sector to zero-emission vehicles could yield over $1.2 trillion in health benefits.
- That transition could also avoid 110,000 pollution-related deaths over the coming decades.
- Air pollution can be serious, harming children and adults, through wheezing and coughing, shortness of breath, asthma attacks and even lung cancer.
The quality of air that Americans breathe in could stand to benefit greatly as the U.S. moves closer towards widespread use of zero-emission transportation. One report has found that shift can yield more than $1.2 trillion in health benefits and avoid 110,000 pollution-related deaths over the coming decades.
The American Lung Association (ALA) published its Zeroing in on Healthy Air report which outlined broad benefits that come with the transition to a zero-emission transportation sector over the next 30 years. If there is a national shift to 100 percent sales of zero-emission passenger vehicles by 2035 along with medium- and heavy-duty trucks by 2040, coupled with renewable electricity use, that would generate over $1.2 trillion in public health benefits between 2020 and 2050.
“Zero-emission transportation is a win-win for public health,” said Harold Wimmer, national president and CEO of the ALA, in a statement.
“Too many communities across the U.S. deal with high levels of dangerous pollution from nearby highways and trucking corridors, ports, warehouses and other pollution hot spots. Plus, the transportation sector is the nation’s biggest source of carbon pollution that drives climate change and associated public health harms. This is an urgent health issue for millions of people in the U.S.”
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The benefits of widespread use of zero-emission cars could even take the form of avoiding up to 110,000 premature deaths, along with nearly 3 million asthma attacks and over 13 million workdays lost due to cleaner air.
ALA also noted that shifting to zero-emission transportation and electricity generation could save the U.S. $1.7 trillion in global climate damages.
Air pollution can be serious, with ALA explaining it harms both children and adults in many ways —through wheezing and coughing, shortness of breath, asthma attacks and even lung cancer.
It can also cause premature death, increase susceptibility to infections, heart attacks and strokes, metabolic disorders and preterm births and low birth weight.
Air pollution isn’t consistent around the country either, with ALA’s report concluding many communities face disproportionate burdens from pollution generated from production, transportation, refining and combustion of fuels along with the transportation and electricity generation systems.
Many times, lower income communities and communities of color are, “often the most over-burdened by pollution sources today due to decades of inequitable land use decisions and systemic racism,” said ALA’s report.
There is an attainable solution, as accelerating the transition to zero-emissions transportation and non-combustion electricity generation will reduce key pollutants — like nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, fine particle pollution, sulfur dioxide and greenhouse gases.
ALA found that approximately 94 percent of the country’s on-road vehicle fleet in 2020 generated over 1 million tons of ozone and particle-forming nitrogen oxide emissions and over 33,400 tons of fine particles annually.
Heavy-duty vehicles, despite accounting for only about 6 percent of 2020’s on-road fleet, generated 59 percent of ozone and particle forming nitrogen oxide emissions and 55 percent of the particle pollution that comes from braking and tire particles.
More American consumers are catching on, as a report by the Alliance for Automotive Innovation found between October and December 2021, electric cars made up 6 percent of all light-duty vehicle sales, the highest volume for any quarter on record.
ALA recommended that every level of government, transportation and energy decisions should be considered public health decisions. That’s something President Biden has attempted to do through his bipartisan infrastructure bill which includes a goal to get electric car sales up to 50 percent of all car sales by 2030.
Corporations are also stepping in, with FedEx announcing it would be replacing all of its parcel pickup and delivery trucks with zero-emission electric vehicles over the next two decades. The company also said it would switch to buying only electric for 50 percent of its global pickup and delivery trucks by 2025 and rise to 100 percent by 2030.
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