Thursday, October 18, 2007

[EQ] Health effects and risks of transport systems

Health effects and risks of transport systems

 

The HEARTS project  

The Regional Office for Europe of the World Health Organization

 

Available online as PDF file [97p.] at:  http://www.euro.who.int/document/E88772.pdf

 

“……  The health effects of urban transport have received increasing attention in the last years. This report provides a framework for integrated assessment of health impacts from urban transport.

 

Promoting healthy and sustainable transport options to prevent the negative effects of transport systems on human health is an important goal of modern policy development. This means ensuring that health issues are considered when transport policies are being formulated and creating the conditions to develop integrated assessments, monitor progress, account fully for social and environmental costs and identify the strategies with the greatest net benefits.

Integration initially requires combining scientific knowledge, methods and results into one long list.

 

Further, integration comprises selecting the procedures and practices that contribute most to the overall objective of a healthy and sustainable transport system. Overcoming the shortcomings of fragmented and even inconsistent approaches is also important. More importantly, integration also means promoting a dialogue and developing shared language and tools between various sectors of civil society (such as health, transport and environment) and stakeholders. Nevertheless, analytical tools to pursue an integrated assessment of transport scenarios have been unavailable, inadequate or scantily produced.

 

Characterizing transport-related exposure requires detailed information on the spatial and temporal trends of various risks, people’s mobility patterns, the ability to predict exposure in unmonitored settings and considering the policy dimension in terms of the involvement of relevant sectors. This information is developed by and is available from various professions with little experience of collaboration. A main challenge is therefore to bring together within a coherent framework a diversity of inputs to appraise the effects of transport systems on health…..”

 

Contents

Executive summary

1. Introduction

2. Material and methods

2.1 Reviews

2.2 Road traffic and emissions

2.3 Air pollution

2.4 Noise pollution

2.5 Road crashes

2.6 Population exposure

2.7 Health effects

2.8 Case studies

3. Results

3.1 Traffic emissions

3.2 GIS-based exposure modelling: the STEMS model

3.3 A probabilistic approach to simulating microenvironmental exposure

3.4 Case studies

4. Discussion

 Policy implications -  Future developments -  Final considerations

5. References

 

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