Stephen Rees’s blog

BBC on Harvard School of Public Health Report

Breathing in air pollution from traffic fumes can raise the risk of potentially deadly blood clots, a US study says.

Exposure to small particulates - tiny chemicals caused by burning fossil fuels - is known to increase the chances of heart disease and stroke.

But the Harvard School of Public Health found it also affected development of deep vein thrombosis - blood clots in the legs - in a study of 2,000 people.

Particulates are nasty little things, but their chemistry is horribly complicated and they are difficult to measure and quantify because they are so small. A lot of attention is paid to diesel emissions because they contain small particulates: in fact the number of very small particles has been increasing as the technology to reduce the total weight of emitted particles has been improving. And the smaller the particle the further it can penetrate into the lung. So the links to asthma, lung and heart disease are fairly clear.

What this research does is provide an understanding of how particulates have even wider impacts than we used to think. And these particles may not be directly emitted, but form in the chemical soup that the air we breathe in our car oriented urban areas has become. There are chemical reactions that lead to the creation of more particles as the various pollutants interact with the nitrogen, oxygen and hydrocarbons that are in the air naturally. I have long suspected that more attention was being paid to trucks and buses, because that way car drivers can point the finger elesewhere. In this region, where cars have to pass regular emissions testing (but not, of course basic roadworthiness or safety checks) people believe their cars are clean becuase they have a certificate that tells them so. And every time a heavily loaded bus accelerates away from a stop there is the tell tale plume of smoke. So obviously that convinces the car drivers that air pollution is not their fault.

In truth, of course, the huge volume of vehicles means that the impact of cars as a whole is much greater than the relatively small number of buses and trucks. And while those cars  generally have passed Air Care, they are far from zero emission, and the total volume of emissions is very significant.

What is also not said in the BBC piece, but I think may also be worth looking at is the fact that air quality inside vehicles is usually much worse than the air in general. And many people are inactive, since they are sitting in their vehicles for long periods. Taxi drivers should be concerned. But I would also like to see studies done in North America since the use of diesel cars is much greater in Italy (where this study was done) than it is here.

Hat tip to Cycling Mama on the LRC blog for this New York Times article.

It is about a controversy in the US. The White House has been doing its usual trick of doubting the science that links exposure to low level ozone with morbidity. A bit like they were doing on climate change and greenhouse gas (though they seem to have reversed that one now).

It does not apply here. For example in the SFPR studies there is an acknowledgment that local air pollution will get worse and there will be health effects. What is stunning is the effrontery of the analysis which suggests that as this will increase expenditure on healthcare that will be good for the economy! This is a well known mistake long recognised in cost benefit analysis and known as the “broken window effect”. It stems from people who used to claim that repairing broken windows was economic activity that added growth to the economy. It is, of course, nonsense. What it actually does is divert spending away from other activities that would have lead to an overall improvement in “welfare” . For example, the shopkeeper whose windows were smashed must pay to put them back as they were instead of investing the money in improvements, which would have increased his business.

It is also worth noticing that ozone is the product of emissions - mostly from gasoline powered cars - that react in sunlight. The SFPR will also increase emissions of ultrafine carbon particulates as well - and the health impacts of those are not in doubt. Diesel exhaust is a known human carcinogen - and increased truck traffic near homes and schools guarantees increased exposure to the most vulnerable members of the community - the young and the aged.

At least with the SFPR there is an admission that traffic will increase. Somehow that is not supposed to happen on the Freeway or the Port Mann Bridge. Apparently that will just divert increases in traffic that would occur anyway. And amazingly there are people who believe that - or say they do.

Los Angeles Times

LA is seen by some here as a competitor west coast gateway. It seems to me that many people there would be quite pleased if we took some more the polltuing ships and trains away from their area. They like polluted air about as much as we do.

I though when I saw the headline that this was a major change but no

Because the new rules will take decades to implement, and do not target large marine vessels, the AQMD will not be able to reach a 2015 federal deadline to bring deadly fine particulate exposure down to legal amounts, Wallerstein said. [That's Barry Wallerstein, executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District]

Large, ocean-going vessels are linked to about 800 premature deaths in the region each year. More than 40% of all retail goods shipped to the U.S. come through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The hope for us is that we will follow suit to ensure that the we get the benefit from the new technologies that will now get built into locomotives and tugs. Otherwise what will happen is that our operators will just shift the old equipment up here. Railway locomotives in particular have very long lives and many in daily service here have been around in one shape or form since the 1950s. Of course, they have been rebuilt and refurbished in the meantime. Even the cleanest Green Goats are not entirely new.

This loco was first built in 1959 and is still in operation

BBC News

An hour sniffing exhaust fumes may not just give you a headache - it could even alter the way the brain functions, Dutch researchers have suggested.

Scientists have known nanoparticles reach the brain when inhaled, but this is the first time they have been shown to affect how we process information.

Researchers sought to replicate the environment experienced by those who work in a garage or by the roadside.

Their findings were published in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology.

There’s more of course, but there are big ethical problems with studying human brains and exposes people to toxins. We know that these nanoparticles penetrate deep into the lungs. Indeed it has been suggested that modern diesel engines may be cleaner in terms of the weight of particles they produce, but the particles could be smaller and hemce more numerous, and also more dangerous, as a rsult of some of the engine management techniques used.

It is also the case that although the study showed a “stress reaction” it is not clear what the long term effects might be. I imagine that humans have evolved self preservation mechanisms that warn them of fire when they smell smoke, but we also associate smoke with warmth, comfort, fun and barbecues. People love the smell of woodsmoke, but we also know that it can be very harmful. Likewise tobacco and other smoking materials.

It might also explain the brain dead behaviour of so many road users who appear to be totally oblivious to the risks they run and that they expose others too.

Vancouver Sun

Not entirely, Mr Campbell. Your government needs to play its part too. Because your government is laying the groundwork for the development of BC for the next generation. And so far that seems to be “business as usual”.

The announcement I wanted to see was that the Gateway Program would be cancelled immediately. The UN’s International Panel on Climate Change has recently revealed that its estimates for pollution from ships need to be tripled. That is not just greenhouse gas emissions, it also the emissions that threaten the health of the residents of the Lower Fraser Valley. Environment Canada and Health Canada have both recently informed you, in response to the Environmental Assessment of the Port Mann Bridge Twinning and Highway #1 widening, that the estimates for future pollution and greenhouse gas emissions were “misleading”. That is because the demand forecast chose to ignore the impact of this development on both land use and induced traffic.

There will be another million or so people moving to the Lower Mainland in the next twenty years. You have made long term “promises” to provide them with transit after they arrive. This will not change the pattern of development or their chosen means of travel. We have to provide transit to the fastest growing areas of the province now and not leave it until after the freeway has been widened. Because the developers are already moving to build more car oriented sprawl - just as they always have done in areas which have little or no transit provision. And no one would expect them to do otherwise. LiveSmart BC, aimed at containing urban sprawl and rewarding green developments, will not work unless it incorporates transit from the start - not as a possible add on later, which is what your recent transit announcement proposed. This also means you have to change your priorities. Not just cancelling all of the Gateway, but also the underground line to UBC. Because growth is not going to happen as much in your constituency (Vancouver, Point Grey) and that money will be much better spent on shaping the much greater growth in Langley, Surrey and Abbotsford.

People can only make choices from what they have been offered, and for too many people their transportation choices are still too limited despite a regional growth strategy that you wrote when Chair of the GVRD that said it should have been increased by now. Building more freeways now and promising that transit will come later is just Not Good Enough.

=========

The above has been sent as an email to both the Premier and a letter for publication to the Editor of the Sun

UPDATE February 14

Of course it was not published in the Sun. And no doubt I will get the same form letter back from the MoT in due course.

Another day, another revelation that knocks the Gateway.

This one is reported in The Guardian.

The true scale of climate change emissions from shipping is almost three times higher than previously believed, according to a leaked UN study seen by the Guardian.

It calculates that annual emissions from the world’s merchant fleet have already reached 1.12bn tonnes of CO², or nearly 4.5% of all global emissions of the main greenhouse gas.

(I will forgive the typesetter but that should be a subscript 2 not a superscript 2)

The first thing I thought was that if they got the CO2 wrong, they probably got the local air contaminants wrong too - since I think what is happening here is that they underestimated how much oil is being burned.

The UN report also reveals that other pollutants from shipping are rising even faster than CO² emissions. Sulphur and soot emissions, which give rise to lung cancers, acid rain and respiratory problems are expected to rise more than 30% over the next 12 years.

Again that would be called sulphur oxides and particulates here. And the California Air Resources Board has determined that diesel particulate is a human carcinogen

The health implications of shipping emissions are most acute for Britain and other countries bordering the English Channel, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. A recent peer-reviewed study of shipping emissions found world shipping led directly to 60,000 deaths a year.

And of course the Fraser Valley, where the off shore breezes ensure that the soot and sulphur from the stacks of those freighters will waft up the valley and get trapped around Hope.

I do not recall seeing any of the environmental assessment of the port expansion. I do recall hearing that it failed but proceeded anyway. Which, of course, is what you expect in business friendly BC. Much more important that we get some more containers diverted through here instead of Oakland or Seattle, than we reduce the risk of people who live here from diseases like asthma, emphysema, lung cancer or COPD. In fact as an economist I might even work out a few sums. How does the profit from a few more container ships stack up against the increased health care costs and loss of productive work time?

I find the economic arguments in favour of port expansion less than compelling. There actually is not really a lot of new employment or a great deal of new net revenue - and labour shortages here mean that we might think twice about a strategy that depends on finding new truck drivers - since there aren’t enough of those already. But the environmental balance sheet is only negative - even before this new information came to light. Do we really need to poison ourselves just so the Vancouver Port Authority senior staff and Board Members can have bigger pay packets?

Most readers of this blog will know that the Livable Region Coalition came about because of concerns about the impact of highway expansion on this region. Specifically the proposal to both twin the Port Mann Bridge and expand the freeway from the Vancouver boundary out to Langley. There is currently an Environmental Assessment under way, which should try to address these issues. And because it is required to be an open process you can read all the documents. The proponent is the province, and the comments of others on the proponent’s assessment can also be read there.

Over the Christmas holiday, Environment Canada sent in its comments. The EA Office waited a month before putting them on its web page. This may well explain the extraordinary rush to get out the allegedly “new improved” transit plan. For the document from Environment Canada (and also one from Health Canada) is quite extraordinary. While written in the careful language of bureaucrats, it is a damning indictment of how the province has fudged, falsified and failed to produce an assessment that anyone can trust.

Of course, in BC, former Minister for Deregulation (Kevin Falcon) made sure some years ago that EA processes would be so useless that they would not be able to delay, let alone stop, a favourite government project. Even so, the LRC and others have been pointing out the obvious failings of the work done by the Ministry of Transportation to justify the project, in the hopes that something might change. And now we have an endorsement from the Federal Government.

I strongly recommend that you download both documents and read them carefully. I would not want anyone to think that by selectively quoting them here I am trying to distort the message. I leave that sort of thing up to the Gateway Program, who have been aware of these failings - I think long before the feds put them on paper - but have chosen spin instead of an effective response.

Let’s start with Health Canada - emphasis has been added

the assessment generally focuses less on the effects of the PMH1 project, and more on the anticipated improvements in air quality over the baseline case (2003), which would be due to improvements in the efficiency of fuel use by the vehicle fleet and reduced sulphur in the fuel and associated vehicle technology changes. These improvements are independent of the proposed project and will take place regardless of approval. While they may be a useful additional consideration, and while some information comparing build vs. no build is included in the application, the misdirected focus of this assessment is inappropriate and may be misleading to the general reader.

Gordon Campbell is on record as saying that the Gateway program will improve air quality. This is because he says that it will reduce congestion. But that would only be true if the total amount of traffic in the region in future years was the same in the “with project” and “do nothing” case. Of course, no one would or has seriously suggested that we do nothing at all - but that was the “base case” used in all the province’s modelling.

All indented quotes from here on are from the Environment Canada document with emphasis added

We believe that decision makers will require additional information to assess the full extent of potential air quality impacts associated with the project. Our key advice and concerns are as follows:

• There is a significant level of uncertainty associated with traffic forecasting. The report does not adequately explain assumptions or the sensitivity of the model’s output to these assumptions. The traffic model potentially underestimates growth in traffic and resulting emissions and air quality effects due to induced traffic resulting from the Gateway program.

• The report predicts exceedances of several relevant ambient air quality standards. Predicted ambient pollutant levels are higher in the 2021 “with Port Mann / Highway 1 (PMH1)” scenario compared to the 2021 “without PMH1” scenario. We therefore advise that the project as described is predicted to contribute to some deterioration of air quality and an increase in GHG emissions in the study area over the baseline.

Don’t forget that this is the same government that is trying to portray itself as “green”. It is also the government that was proud of its achievement of using the EA process in Whatcom County, Washington to stop a power station at Sumas - because of its impact on air quality in the Fraser Valley. We do not have accurate information on the deterioration that will be caused by PM2H1 but I would not be at all surprised if the impact was not equal to or greater than SE2.

The Proponent states that none of the functionally different methods analyzed are able to meet all of the objectives of the project. However, the Proponent has not analyzed the potential for a combination of functionally different methods to meet the needs identified. A combination of alternative measures of approximately equal budget to PMH1 will allow a meaningful comparison.

Further, the relative environmental impacts of the various options available to meet the needs of the project have not been estimated. Although the Proponent is not obligated to select the option of carrying out the project with the least environmental impacts, it would be useful to review agencies if the relative environmental impacts of the various options were described.

The LRC has been saying that options are available now that would relieve some of the congestion on the Port Mann. One, a bus service, was actually planned for implementation by Translink. But that does not matter to the province, for in all their work they assumed that if the Gateway did not go ahead, nothing else would happen. Which, given the time period we are talking about is unrealistic - even if we kept on re-electing the BC Liberals until 2021.

Note also that EC recognizes that they cannot stop the project - no matter how badly the assessment has been biased or how poor the proposed mitigation measures will be.

Reductions in vehicle emissions and predicted improvements in localized ambient air quality impacts from 2003 to 2021 are expected to occur completely independent of the project. The project as proposed would reverse a portion of the improvements in air quality that will eventually be achieved through these investments. We suggest that additional mitigation and / or offsets are required to avoid such backsliding.

we advise that the project as described is predicted to contribute to some deterioration of air quality and an increase in GHG emissions in the study area over the baseline scenario. We recommend additional mitigation of emissions or impacts are necessary for pollutants including diesel PM; PM_2.5; road dust; NOx; and GHGs.

Although the language is careful, what has got up EC’s nose is that they have been working hard at producing new regulations nationally to get cleaner vehicles and fuels, and that the benefits of those are what produces the expected improvement the province has tried to claim for its much bigger highway. There is not much point coming up with cleaner cars if there are so many more trips - which, of course, will also be longer - that the overall air quality gets worse. “Backsliding” is not a word that a bureaucrat uses casually.

A review of the sizeable scientific literature suggests that new highway capacity generally encourages more vehicle kilometres travelled, influences land-use planning, enables car-dependent lifestyles and decisions, and induces traffic for vehicle trips that would otherwise not occur. These factors can contribute a significant volume of traffic beyond business-as-usual growth projections.

For example, Noland (1999) found that “Increased capacity clearly increases vehicle miles of travel beyond any short run congestion relief that may be obtained… While other factors, such as population growth, also drive increases in VMT, capacity additions account for about one quarter of this growth.”3

The 2005 technical report Planning and Traffic prepared by Delcan for the Gateway Program cites several studies and reports. For example, Boarnet (2002) found that induced travel is a true phenomenon, and that increases in highway capacity can facilitate changes in urban development that are associated with longer trips and thus more vehicle-miles travelled.4

It appears as though the modeling of future traffic in the “with PMH1″ scenario did not incorporate the effects of induced or generated traffic. For example, on p. 9-5 it states that future regional air emissions are based on the GVRD emissions inventory forecast for the Lower Fraser Valley, which incorporated projected changes in population, land use, and industrial activity along with changes in emission rates or controls. The report then states that the traffic emission estimates were replaced with more recent estimates based on the effect of the Gateway projects. We note that the 2000 GVRD emission inventory forecast did not incorporate Gateway projects. The location of population growth, transportation demand, and land use planning assumptions that GVRD used may be significantly altered by the PMH1 project.

For me this is the heart of the matter. Kevin Falcon has been saying that the growth will occur anyway. That the freeway will not change the future land use. We know that is not true. And so does he. For he has said exactly the opposite to the realtors of the Fraser Valley at his breakfast meetings - where he invited them to “get on board” the freeway expansion for it offers opportunities for making lots of money. For Kevin should know, being a former realtor himself, and having had such success with the Sea to Sky Highway project in opening up new development opportunities.

And we also know that induced or generated traffic has always followed the opening of new and expanded freeways. This is not new or surprising information. Indeed I can recall this being one of the reasons cited for the abandonment of London’s proposed “motorway box” back when I was still learning how to run a four step model, and being surprised at how crude and unrealistic it was then. And still is now, as the emme/2 model used to forecast this project simply ignores induced travel and assumes the same land use in both future scenarios. It is not that the proponents did not know about these effects - they have been well understood for many years - they simply chose to ignore them. In fact, in most project assessments for public transport it is usual to find ways to enhance model results - which is one reason why the Millennium Line has not yet achieved the demand usage forecast for it. So it is not surprising that with a freeway expansion designed to blow a hole through the Livable Region Strategic Plan, the province went out of its way to make sure it got the sort of results that would allow it to paint itself green, and deliberately chose a methodology that would minimize the traffic forecasts. After all, while most people like the idea of a quicker trip down the freeway, no one wants more traffic in their neighbourhood. And in the short term this is about getting votes: making money from property development takes a little longer.

Environment Canada agrees that tolling may offer a disincentive for single-occupant automobile users and possibly reducing the future GHG and CAC emissions associated with the project.

We would like a description of the assumptions and traffic modeling inputs for various TDM measures such as tolling and HOV lane allocation, along with the sensitivity of these assumptions on predicted future VkmT and emissions. We are particularly interested in whether the Proponent considered allocating all of the additional lanes from the PMH1 project to a combination of HOV / freight / transit, and what the predicted effects would be on VkmT, CAC and GHG emissions.

EC missed an important point here. The tolls only apply to the bridge. They do not apply where the growth of traffic will be greatest - short trips along the freeway on either side of the bridge, where there will be no tolls, because the government says it will not consider them. And as I have argued elsewhere, there is not enough freight transport across the bridge (8% of vehicles in the am peak hour) to make exclusive lanes worth considering in an expanded scenario. And the province refuses to look at a bus only queue jumper lane one the Surrey approach to PM now!

Environment Canada recognizes that the Proponent has proposed several measures to reduce the environmental impacts of the project, including a mitigation of air impacts during construction; allocating a portion of the new highway capacity to HOVs; a cycling plan along with financial commitments; enabling transit service across the bridge; etc. The Proponent should be commended for demonstrating leadership in this area.

However, despite these proposed measures, the Proponent is predicting an increase in emissions of GHGs and CACs, contributing to some deterioration in air quality over the future baseline. Further, from the information provided in the Application, there is significant uncertainty surrounding the predicted future traffic, emissions, and resulting air quality. If the growth in traffic and related congestion exceeds the modeled forecasts, the resulting emissions and air quality impacts could be much greater.

Environment Canada therefore believes that additional mitigation measures are necessary to ensure that the project will conform to the Canada-wide Standards for PM and Ozone, and will not result in unacceptable increases in GHG and CAC emissions.

Did you notice that? Campbell and Falcon have both been saying that it makes things better when their own studies show a deterioration. Spin is one thing. Telling porkies is another.

BBC News

Now here is an idea I would like to see adopted here.

 The most heavily polluting lorries are facing charges of £200 per day to enter Greater London as Britain’s first low emission zone (LEZ) comes into force.

The £49m scheme uses cameras to check all lorries over 12-tonnes entering the zone against a database of vehicles certified as meeting EU exhaust limits.

The emissions zone is much bigger than the congestion charge zone. London lies in a basin with low hills to the north and south. So bad air tends to fill up the bowl, and despite clean air legislation introduced in the 1950s, the growth of internal combustion engine use has meant that air quality is getting worse. And since the industry and the port shut down and moved away, transport contributes half of of the air pollution.

Here our air quality is pretty good - on the whole. Off shore breezes ensure that most of our activity’s by-products blow up the valley, where the AQ is markedly worse. But along the routes used by heavy duty trucks (I love seeing that word “lorries” again, but I won’t use in deference to our location) diesel particulates do make the air dangerous to breathe. There is a very distinct bell curve that transects Knight Street for instance.

Missing from the Gateway strategy is any action to deal with pollution. We are expected to put up with a lot more shipping - and ships have the worst standards and little enforcement, and sit running their engines while at anchor - and a lot more trucks too. You cannot put a heavy truck through an AirCare station - in fact last time I looked the only equivalent test rig for heavy duty vehicles was in Ottawa. AirCare On Road is better than nothing, but seems very low profile to me.

BBC transport correspondent Tom Symonds says other UK towns and cities with pollution problems will be watching the implementation of the LEZ with interest.

I hope someone here does too.

This study was published a year ago.

Experts already know toxic traffic fumes can trigger lung conditions such as asthma. But new research suggests pollution can stop the lung from growing to its full potential, even in children who are otherwise healthy. Researchers at the University of Southern California have examined the lung function of 3,677 children annually from the age of 10 until they reached 18. Those who had lived within 500 metres of a motorway had much poorer lung function at the age of 18 than those who had lived 1,500 meters away or more, even when factors such as smoking in the home were taken into account. Scientists do not know exactly how air pollution hampers lung development, but they believe lung inflammation in response to daily irritation by air pollutants may play a role. As background air quality did not alter the picture, children living in the countryside but close to a main road would also be at risk, the researchers add. Children living close to big roads in cities with high levels of background air pollution were likely to be at a greater risk of lung problems, however, because of the double effect on their lungs, they suggest.

Source: Effect of exposure to traffic on lung development from 10 to 18 years of age: a cohort study.”
Dr W James Gauderman PhD, Hita Vora MS, Prof Rob McConnell MD, Kiros Berhane PhD, Prof Frank Gilliland MD, Prof Duncan !omas PhD, Fred Lurmann MS, Edward Avol MS, Nino Kunzli MD, Michael Jerrett PhD and Prof John Peters MD.

Lancet Early Online Publication, 26 January 2007.
DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60037-3

The report is available for free on-line at: http://www.shankerlaw.net/Articles/Loop202/FreewayEffectOnChildrenStudy.pdf

You do read the Livable Blog don’t you?

If not can I recommend to you a post by Andrew Feltham, inspired by an article in “Forbes” - not noted as a hot bed of left wing agitation.

Andrew draws some very sensible conclusions about what we can expect if the plan to widen Highway #1, twin the Port Mann Bridge and build the North and South Fraser Perimeter Roads (collectively known as the Gateway program but not being assessed as a whole - only its component parts) on this region.