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Transportation Earth

EVs Are Already Making Your Air Cleaner, Research Shows (grist.org) 175

Fossil fuels produce NO2, which is linked to asthma attacks, bronchitis, and higher risks of heart disease and stroke, according the EV news site Electrek. But the nonprofit news site Grist.org notes a new analysis showing that those emissions decreased by 1.1% for every increase of 200 electric vehicles — across nearly 1,700 ZIP codes. "A pretty small addition of cars at the ZIP code level led to a decline in air pollution," said Sandrah Eckel, a public health professor at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine and lead author of the study. "It's remarkable."
The study was done at the University of Southern California's medical school, by researchers using high-resolution satellite data, reports Electrek: The study, just published in The Lancet Planetary Health and partly funded by the National Institutes of Health, adds rare real-world evidence to a claim that's often taken for granted — that EVs don't just cut carbon over time, they also improve local air quality right now... The researchers ran multiple checks to make sure the trend wasn't driven by unrelated factors. They accounted for pandemic-era changes by excluding 2020 in some analyses and controlling for gas prices and work-from-home patterns. They also saw the expected counterexample: neighborhoods that added more gas-powered vehicles experienced increases in pollution. The findings were then replicated using updated ground-level air monitoring data dating back to 2012...

Next, the researchers plan to compare EV adoption with asthma-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations. If those trends line up, it could provide some of the clearest evidence yet of what we already know: that electrifying transportation doesn't just clean the air on paper; it improves public health in practice.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader jhoegl for sharing the article.
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EVs Are Already Making Your Air Cleaner, Research Shows

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  • by Atmchicago ( 555403 ) on Sunday February 22, 2026 @06:44PM (#66004510)

    We need to eliminate car dependency and give people a choice of transportation. Freedom of mobility includes freedom to not travel by automobile. Side benefits include less pollution.

    • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday February 22, 2026 @07:18PM (#66004558)

      give people a choice of transportation

      A truck.

      • Wrong answer. Try bus or train or bicycle next time.

        • I don't know, a bus or train all to myself seems more wasteful than the regular car.

          • But how else are you going to leave when you want to and be driven to exactly the place you are going with no delays?

            • No delays? Don't roads have traffic where you live?

              Funny thing about bicycles is they provide the freedom that car advertisements promise. You can cruise through a city to your destination without traffic getting in your way.

              • No not really. I have never lived in a big city by choice. The biggest city I lived in was under a million people. I did look into moving once but didn't want to spend almost two hours a day on a train and deal with traffic. I ended up getting a work from home job so I could move up a place with as little traffic as possible.

            • by whitroth ( 9367 )

              ROTFL!
              Last time I lived in Chicago, I'd be on the Metra (commuter rail). As we got towards downtown, we'd be in the middle, or right next to the Kennedy. We'd be cruising along, passing the one-person-in-a-car commuters, in traffic jams, heading to their "early bird special, in before 7, out before 4, only $22/day" parking.

              • Ok but how long was the commute from your front door to your desk? Probably not much quicker once you board the train and everything.

        • by PPH ( 736903 )

          bus or train or bicycle

          None of which have tool boxes in the bed or a gun rack in the back window.

    • I have a choice and I chose a car. Thank you.
      • by Pascoea ( 968200 )
        Cool. I live in a suburb next to a major metro, top 20 in the nation as far as size goes. It would literally take me 3-4x longer to get to work taking public transit. It's not an option. Hell, I'd be willing to take a 2x time increase if it meant I didn't have to fight with freeway traffic, but it's literally not an option here. The public transit system in this country is bullshit, plain and simple. It would be a long damn time before I gave up my car, but that doesn't mean commuting here couldn't be drast
      • Seems unlikely. I'd be willing to bet that a car is the only viable means of transportation you have. A bus that takes all day, or biking along roads where you will die aren't in any meaningful manner viable.

        • Seems unlikely. I'd be willing to bet that a car is the only viable means of transportation you have. A bus that takes all day, or biking along roads where you will die aren't in any meaningful manner viable.

          I'd use it if it was at all convenient. I simply do not have the time to use mass transit every day. Biking would require me to take a shower after getting to work. It is possible for me to avoid most auto roads on the way to work, but wintertime ice and snow, and humid summer mornings and rain and snow will make to soak me, either sweat or precipitation. So I'd have to shower at work, as well as keep separate clothing there to change into. Biking in a suit only kinda works. But a sweaty suit? Nah - I'l

    • We need to eliminate car dependency and give people a choice of transportation. Freedom of mobility includes freedom to not travel by automobile. Side benefits include less pollution.

      U sovereign? Well, get out there and build the alternatives I guess.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      As a lifelong cyclist, I agree in principle. The problem is over the last seventy-five years we have rearchitected the very geographic fabric of society to make *solving* our transportation problems with bike and public transit impossible.

      Before WW2, Dad would leave the apartment and walk or take a trolley to work (usually in the same city neighborhood) while Ma "kept house" -- managed cooking, clearning, childcare, and the family's community and social engagement. In the 1950s and 60s, instead of an apa

    • People need to go to work, or they should die. What those people want is completely irrelevant. The only question is: How to get them to work? Disrupting the current cash flows is not really an option until the people receiving those cash flows figure out how to ensure all cash still flows to them.

    • We need to eliminate car dependency and give people a choice of transportation. Freedom of mobility includes freedom to not travel by automobile. Side benefits include less pollution.

      Bullshit. You already have that in cities. People have a variety of choices. Every big city in the US has both bus and light rail systems with very few exceptions (Cincinnati, for one). EVERY city of medium size on up has a bus system. What you really want is to force your post title on people: no cars at all. Your whole aim has nothing to do with "choice".

    • We need to eliminate car dependency and give people a choice of transportation.

      I like my private car (dependency) where I can some and go door-to-door when I want on my schedule.

      As long as you don't fsck what works for me and most people today....have fun.

      By the way...there are other forms of public transportation, but mostly only smelly bums ride on them...at least from my observations.

      Please don't try to PUSH things on people to force them to change because you think YOU know better, you know?

  • Dupe (Score:5, Informative)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Sunday February 22, 2026 @07:03PM (#66004534) Homepage
    • Dupes are considered ok now.
      They used to be considered an editorial oversight, and something to be avoided, but with the reduction in our attention span and memory retention, they have become all but vital.

  • Article is paywalled. Any of the authors engineers?

    I had Grok help me look at California Cars from 2019-2024. (2025 data not out) California tracks number of new ICE cars and number of EVs sold. Cars in the US are kept about 14 years. It turns out that the cars from 14 years ago put out more NOx than current cars. Therefore, when one buys a new car in California, NOx production goes down. According to Grok - a 2012 car has a NOx of 0.083 grams/mile, 2026 ice car has 0.20 grams/mile, and new EV 0 g

  • by arcade ( 16638 ) on Monday February 23, 2026 @04:57AM (#66005024) Homepage

    Norwegian here, can confirm ...

    Air has gotten significantly better in urban areas in the last decade. Given that about half the cars on the road now are electric - it's not only measurable, but very very smellable.

    Whenever I go abroad now, I can *smell* the difference.

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      No doubt EVs are big contributors, but time and the aging out of the oldest vehicles is also a big help. Vehicle age is average around 12 years now in typical conditions, but there are always some older ones as well. An EV replacing a modern vehicle doesn't do much to improve the smell situation (except as compared to a diesel) but any modern vehicle replacing any old one is major.

  • Glad that the products of combustion are declining thanks to EVs... We will ignore the effects of the occasional thermal runaway. But EVs, from what I have read, are much heavier than their ICE equivalents and as such have much greater tire wear. And tire particulates are a major contributor to the fine particuates that are a significant driver of urban health problems. So... fixed one problem, made a different one worse. Personally, I would rather take the train -- but in North America that option has been

  • You know those ebikes you hate? You could power over a thousand ebike for the the power of one Tesla Plaid. I think it's time to think about smaller, lighter, vehicles.

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