Day Nine Wednesday 23rd May 2007

Forecast for today,Wednesday
Partly cloudy with a few showers, mainly during the morning. Moderate to fresh
west to northwesterly wind.

Precis: Few showers, mainly morning.
City: Min 10 Max 17

My experince, didn't notice much of a wind on the way to work. Traffic jam on the way to work, heard on the news before I left to stay away from Royal Parade ( my route to work) becuase of a power poll that had fallen down and was delaying traffic. There were traffic controllers everywhere, but all the people cycling went through on the bike lane!

Work mate told others what I was doing during the staff meeting today... They laughed and the comment came back, "yeah riding in the traffic and all the pollution". I remembered being told about a study that said that people in cars were exposed to more pollution than cyclists, I recall that the reasoning was because cyclist weren't sitting in the polluted air, like in traffic jams. They were moving through the air.

Well I thought I better check and it seems there is a lots of info out there, this report said that "pollution levels inside cars can be up to eighteen times higher than those in "ambient" air outside."

This web site concluded that "But all is not doom and gloom. Of all those passive chokers sucking up air-borne poisons, cyclists are the least affected and best equipped to the counter their impact."

This url sighted The Institute for European Environmental Policy, stating that they had published a report showing that car drivers breathe in up to three times more toxic exhaust fumes than pedestrians or cyclists.

In this chapter of Air Quality Guidelines - Second Edition, commisioned by the WHO Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2000, they state " The carbon monoxide levels are highest in personal cars, the mean concentrations being 2–5 times the levels measured in streets or inside subway trains (6, 8, 9). Traffic patterns, car model and maintenance, vehicle ventilation conditions and season are factors that affect the carbon monoxide levels inside the cars (10–12). In Southampton in the United Kingdom, commuters using bicycles have been shown to be exposed to mean concentrations of 6.1–20.5 mg/m3 (5.3–17.9 ppm) with short peak values as high as 71 mg/m3 (62 ppm) (13). In the inner city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, the corresponding mean concentrations in bicycle trips have been much lower: 0.6–4.1 mg/m3 (0.5–3.6 ppm) (14)."

Interesting to note the lower levels in a bike domintant city like Amsterdam.
This site had a wealth of different studies about pollution in a car vs outside of in and on a bike. With comments like "Therefore, even after taking the increased respiration rate of cyclists into consideration, car drivers seem to be more exposed to airborne pollution than cyclists." certainly help to firm my belief that riding is a good health option.

So I might be riding through the pollution, but this sure beats sitting in it in a car! Yet another reason to go car free! Well I didn't think I'd be learning this kind of stuff on a car free challenge, but I am really happy that I am. I just hope it helps to sway a few more people to car free...Just got to get some people to read it!

Ride home was uneventful - really noticing that the ride is a bit slower than the morning ride, but it isn't significant. I have also noticed that it is signifcantly less stressful bothdirectons on the biek than I think it could possibly be in a car. Saw somone get pulled over by an unmarked police car, for what looked like aggressive kind of driving...Nothing I have to worry about...