Reducing air pollution impacts on young children through safe routes to schools in high traffic areas

Joint Event on 17^th International Conference on Environmental Toxicology and Ecological Risk Assessment & 36^th International Conference on Environmental Chemistry & Water Resource Management

September 24-25, 2018 | Chicago, USA

Timothy R McAuley

Consulting for Health, Air, Nature & a Greener Environment, LLC, USA

Keynote: J Environ Anal Toxicol

Abstract :

Traffic is a major source of outdoor air pollution. Traffic pollution is a combination of several different types of contaminants that are emitted into the air during on-road driving and idling at busy intersections. As a result, these higher concentrations can affect those individuals riding on buses and/or those walking or bicycling on sidewalks next to the road. Specific to children and their exposures on the way to school, there are many variables that make it difficult to determine whether children walking or bicycling to school are prone to traffic pollution exposures. It can be stated that exposures are higher in areas where traffic is the congested yielding a high number of cars idling and slow moving. For children walking or bicycling, it can be recommended and shown for reducing risks that children use alternate routes away from busy roadways for reducing exposures to air pollution. Low-cost infrastructure improvements, such as sidewalks, crosswalks, school zone signage made through Safe Routes to Schools can reduce traffic deaths and injuries. These initiatives can also reduce traffic congestion around schools and increase childrenâ??s physical activity levels reducing air pollution impacts on health. A combination of increased awareness of high congested traffic areas with improved infrastructure in urban settings can be responsible for improving and reducing overall air pollution exposures to children.

Biography :

Dr. Timothy R. McAuley is the Founder, Board Chairman and Executive Manager of CHANGE, a certified Veteran Owned Small Business headquartered in Upstate, NY. He is a multi-award winning environmental expert and a world-renowned environmental leader. He is highly respected and recognized expert in air quality and human exposure and risk assessment.

E-mail: mcauleyt@airqualitychange.com