The health impacts of traffic-related exposures in urban areas: Understanding real effects, underlying driving forces and co-producing future directions

Publication date: Available online 22 July 2016 Source:Journal of Transport & Health Author(s): Haneen Khreis, Karyn M. Warsow, Ersilia Verlinghieri, Alvaro Guzman, Luc Pellecuer, Antonio Ferreira, Ian Jones, Eva Heinen, David Rojas-Rueda, Natalie Mueller, Paul Schepers, Karen Lucas, Mark Nieuwenhuijsen The world is currently witnessing its largest surge of urban growth in human history; a trend that draws attention to the need to understand and address health impacts of urban living. Whilst transport is instrumental in this urbanisation wave, it also has significant positive and negative impacts on population health, which are disproportionately distributed. In this paper, we bring together expertise in transport engineering, transport and urban planning, research and strategic management, epidemiology and health impact assessment in an exercise to scope and discuss the health impacts of transport in urban areas. Adopting a cross-disciplinary, co-production approach, we explore the key driving forces behind the current state of urban mobility and outline recommendations for practices that could facilitate positioning health at the core of transport design, planning and policy. Current knowledge on the health-related impacts of urban transport shows that motor vehicle traffic is causing significant premature mortality and morbidity through motor vehicle crashes, physical inactivity and traffic-related environmental exposures including increases in air p...
Source: Journal of Transport and Health - Category: Occupational Health Source Type: research