As a driver, you normally feel hot and therefore drive with your windows down. Now here is the news, did you know that about seven million die because they drive with their car window down? You see, when your window is open, you let in more polluted air.
Air pollution indeed affects everyone, but the problem becomes adverse for drivers hailing from poorer cities. Indeed, most of these drivers can not afford to buy themselves proper car air conditioning, and therefore they drop their windows down to cool down.
The University of Surrey conducted this study, which focused on 10 cities globally: Dhaka, Dar-es-Salaam, Chennai, Cairo, San Paulo, Guangzhou, Addis Ababa, and Blantyre, Medellin, and Sulaymaniyah. The researchers examined PM 2.5 and PM 10. The focus was on peak hour traffic during the morning and evening but nonpeaks hours at mid-day. The PM 2.5 and PM10 are compared to the specific traffic times when drivers lower their windows and when they keep them up. The results. Pollution levels are the highest in drivers who leave their windows down. Now for those who have an AC in the car, good news, you are exposed to bad air at a level of 80 percent less.
During peak hours, drivers are 91 percent less likely to expose themselves to pollution than 40 percent less during the peak hours in the evening.
Cabin filters are great at filtering PM 2.5 and PM10. These are large particles, but the unfortunate part is that the cabin filters cannot filter out fine particles. So what could be the best solution? Green cars. More of these cars should take over the road. Of course, this is something that is going to take a while. You could opt for air conditioning in vehicles, but the problem is that most of the drivers cannot afford an AC car system. It all goes to making smart decisions such as not driving during peak hours. This is a decision that comes highly recommended by senior author Abdul Salam.
