Reason of death: commuting

Everybody makes some kind of commute every week Whether its by plane, train or automobile everyone is at risk of shortening their lives because of it. Why, you may ask? Is it because of the stress, road rage or crashes? No, it’s because often soot particles that we breath everyday on our commute. I never thought that on my way to school everyday that Ii could potentially be shortening my life, but I possibly am.

                            (photo credit:en.wikipedia.org)

According to Scientific American, one of the main sources of these soot particles are diesel-powered trucks. Everyone’s seen them, those huge rigs that constantly have smoke emitting out of them. The New Jersey Media Group compares the exposure to soot particles on you commute to being in a closed car with a smoker everyday.Eventhough, most people only commute for a couple of hours every day (hopefully), the exposure to damaging soot particles is tremendous.

This knowledge has come to the public’s attention thanks to the Clean Air Task Force, located in Boston. The CATF said that about 13 million vehicles spewed these particles last year alone. Luckily, the CATF said this all could be helped with the installation of filters or retrofitting these vehicles with new muffler and tailpipe systems. Unfortunatly that would cost between $7000 and $9000 per vehicle. If all 13 million vehicles form last year were to be retrofitted it would cost between $91 billion and $117 billion total.

So with those numbers in mind, the government has a harder decision on whether or not make companies retroit all of their vehicles.

Calculation: 13,000,000 * 7000= 91,000,000,000 ; 13,000,000* 9000= 117,000,000,000

Sources: http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3MDg1NDgyJnlyaXJ5N2Y3MTdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5Mg

http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2007/03/02/?source=rss#4

http://sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=870271B323EDC885B0478B67113FDBB1