How time spent in traffic jams affects our health

If you often drive over crowded routes, you should think about your health. Transport in a traffic jam strongly pollutes the air! A recent study has clarified this issue. If there is a traffic jam on the road, turn off the fan and close the windows. In this case, you will reduce the impact of harmful emissions by about seventy-six percent.

Study details

The conclusions of the British researchers are concerned not only with particularly serious traffic jams on holidays and weekends. Scientists believe that transport can affect your health on ordinary days. In recent years, the number of people traveling by car has increased noticeably. On average, a person spends about an hour a day in the car. Statistics are approximately the same for citizens of different countries of the world, forced to get to work and return home by car. Think about the fact that at each long stop, close the windows, and ventilation is better to include the internal circulation mode. If air does not penetrate the car from the outside, you will be less exposed to the negative effects of harmful substances.

Air pollution

The problem of dirty air is very acute. It is on the list of the top ten causes of health problems. About seven million premature deaths each year are the results of interaction with the polluted atmosphere. Particularly difficult is the situation in large cities, where at each important intersection there are foci of pollution, which are becoming more dangerous as the number of used cars increases. Scientists noted that drivers caught in a traffic jam are much more exposed than those who just drive a car, because the amount of harmful substances in these two situations is twenty-nine times different! In London alone, air pollution kills ten times more people than car accidents. In the United States, exposure to dirty air is the eighth most common cause of death.

Different types of pollution

During the experiments, scientists evaluated various ventilation systems, the impact on the passenger and the driver, as well as differences between the two types of pollution. It turns out that in the air there can be both small and large chemical particles. They arise as a result of a combination of vehicle exhaust, ozone and other toxins in the air. Scientists compared the readings for air purity outside and inside the car in an average town with a small number of residents during rush hour.

Conclusion of specialists

The experiment was divided into five different variants, each of which was used as open, as well as closed windows, the fan turned on or off, and air conditioning. The main conclusion is this: the results most clearly depend on the ventilation of the cabin. If you drive with open windows, the air in the car is the same as outside. When the windows are closed and ventilation is turned off, the pollution effect is minimized as much as possible. Therefore, if the weather permits, it is best to travel this way - with the windows closed and the fan turned off. So you limit the impact of exhausts during congestion on your health. If you are forced to turn on interior heating or ventilation, it is good to be able to select the recirculation mode so that only the air inside the passenger compartment is used. Interestingly, this is not the first time that scientists come to such a conclusion. In 2013, scientists from the University of California came to similar conclusions. Nevertheless, only now have different types of ventilation been evaluated, which allows us to make a final conclusion.