Smoking from our Tailpipes

John Metcalfe, writing for The Atlantic Cities, reports on a recent European study on links between car exhaust and asthma:

European researchers applied a statistical technique known as “population-attributable fractions” to existing data to root out how much childhood asthma can be blamed on heavy traffic. Their conclusion: 14 percent of chronic asthma in kids is caused by car exhaust, which falls into the 4 to 18 percent bracket of childhood asthma cases resulting from exposure to second-hand smoke, as per World Health Organization estimates.

Terrible. But not shocking. What is shocking is our inability or lack of desire to do something about the root cause of all of this pollution. Cleaner cars might help but the better solution would be to become much less auto-centric in our development and lifestyles. And while it might be tempting to conclude based on this study that the best option is rural living, such a solution is insufficient and amounts to a stubborn disregard for the safety of the millions of children who live in cities clogged by lung-inflaming pollution.