Bikers Inhale Five Times Toxic Fumes Than Drivers

Grist:

A Belgian study finds that bicyclists on urban streets inhale tens of millions of toxic nanoparticles with each breath, taking in five times as much as drivers and pedestrians on the same streets.

Read the whole story: Grist

Comments

[capitaldysfunction]

12:59 PM on 06/10/2010

I know this is not universally possible, but in my neck of the woods in the Henderson-Boulder City NV area, bicycle paths are generally off road. In many cases, they are way off road.

[dumbrecovery]

12:09 AM on 06/10/2010

Please get your terms straight for the headline. A "biker" is a motorcyclist, not a bicyclist.

[T4]

10:28 PM on 06/09/2010

So what? Nanoparticles??? Make the correlationwith something real. The exhaust from cars and buses in the US has lower VOCs than cleaning chemicals youuse in your house butthe worst offender are those nail salons - they arethe worst place for VOCs and pollutants on the planet.

[Tulka2]

08:01 PM on 06/09/2010

I am too old to bike with cars, but have a radical solution. In places where children walk and bikes peddle, car traffic should be 12 miles per hour except for emergency vehicles. If you want to get people out of cars, slow the cars down. The animals would thank us, the children would thank us. Ditto bikers and walkers of all ages. Think how silly i would feel put-put-putting and being passed by bikers. Going that slow would really make a single driver feel foolish to be hauling around that huge piece of steel in a chair seat.

[shthar]

07:30 PM on 06/09/2010

I put this with the recent realization that vegatables grown in the city just concentrate all the pollution into easily consumed morsels.

[wm1066]

05:06 PM on 06/09/2010

I can understand this, I have gotten into the habit of washing down real good after a day on the bike. I ride in the Minneapolis city burbs but sometimes go downtown, I try to stay on side streets and not get behind buses. I have noticed my hair gets dirty quicker when I do alot of riding.