The transportation sector in Virginia is a significant source of air pollutants including particulate matter, methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons, which are all linked not only to climate change, but also to decreased air quality, worse public health outcomes, and environmental damage.  Long-term personal health effects can include cancers, cognitive decline, upper respiratory diseases, asthma, heart disease, and obesity.

Effectively reducing unsafe levels of air pollution will require the Commonwealth to use a variety of tools, including strong emission standards to incentivize cleaner vehicles, a robust statewide real-time air monitoring system to measure progress, and proper incentives and funding opportunities to mitigate the impact of pollution in Virginia, particularly in our most vulnerable and overburdened communities.

Reducing vehicle pollution requires understanding how transportation impacts not only access and mobility but also social structures, public health, the environment, and economic factors. Another fundamental challenge is that the people who suffer the worst from its pollution tend to contribute the least. Communities of color bear a disproportionate burden from air pollution building from decades of environmental racism, discriminatory practices such as redlining, and land use decisions that allowed for the creation of overburdened neighborhoods, cancer alleys, and sacrifice zones.

Fine particulate matter, a major component of transportation, generates air pollution and can injure a person’s respiratory and cardiovascular systems.  This increases the risk of developing many medical problems including disproportionate hospitalization and death from COVID-19, and higher risks of cancers and upper respiratory illnesses such as asthma, as well as suffering heart attacks.^1,2

Annually, particulate matter from Virginia-specific transportation has been found to cause 92 excess deaths, 2,600 cases of exacerbated asthma, 10,000 lost workdays, and lead to additional health costs of $750 million.³ When considering transportation emissions in their entirety, these emissions led to 750 premature deaths in Virginia in 2016, and the deaths associated with this pollution are 61% higher in low income, older, and BIPOC elderly, and minority communities.^4,5

Annually, particulate matter from Virginia-specific transportation leads to 92 excess deaths and $750 million in health costs.

Agriculture, a multi-billion dollar industry in Virginia, is heavily influenced by the environment. Air pollution contributes to failing agricultural and commercial crop yields, raises plant susceptibility to disease pests and other environmental stressors, and can directly contaminate ground and surface bodies of water and soil. Furthermore, contaminants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide particles can create toxic rain when they mix with water and oxygen in the air, as well as absorbed directly by water bodies further worsening environmental problems, such as biodiversity reduction, habitat degradation, and impacts to Virginia’s aquaculture industry.

Strict requirements to reduce tailpipe emissions, effective clean car standards and personal choices to reduce vehicle miles driven can help reduce vehicle emissions significantly. The less fossil fuel we burn, the faster we can reduce vehicle pollution. Other complementary strategies concern land-use, forestry, and the built environment.

How communities are developed will impact how convenient and/or appealing alternative transportation modes will be for commuters.

Strategies to support reducing vehicle pollution include:

• Limiting carbon emissions from tailpipes and lessen limits annually. All carbon management programs must engage and be responsive to the needs of impacted communities throughout the policy design and implementation process and must hold polluters accountable for the true cost of pollution. Impacted communities must be prioritized as recipients of generated revenues.

• Reallocating funding away from carbon-intensive highways, and boosting new funding to swiftly transition to zero emission, i.e. public transportation.

• Continuing to support efforts to implement equitable emission standards, such as the Virginia Advanced Clean Car Standards.

• Continuing to support and fund previously passed electric school bus bill programs.⁶

• Planting native trees and vegetation, including near-road plantings that would provide noise and vegetation barriers, which have been shown to remove small particulate pollutants and reduce downwind pollution at a greater rate than vegetation or solid noise barrier alone.⁷ Additionally, expanding tree canopies in vulnerable areas can lead to decreased levels of pollutants due to their absorption through structures in the leaves surfaces.⁸ Studies have shown that trees can reduce street level particulate matter by 60%.⁹

• Investing in a robust statewide air quality monitoring system consisting of stationary monitors and scheduled mobile monitoring throughout the Commonwealth and in heavily polluted communities.

¹ “CDC Health Disparities and Inequalities Report – United States, 2013 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” Center for Disease Control and Prevention MMWR 62 no. 3 (2013): 48. https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/20872/cdc_20872_DS1.pdf.

² “Asthma Capitals: Top 100 Most Challenging Cities to Live in with Asthma,” Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, 2018, https://www.aafa.org/asthma-capitals.

³ “An Assessment of the Health Burden of Ambient PM 2.5 Concentrations in Virginia,” Industrial Economics, Incorporated (October 28, 2020). https://cee8204b-70a4-447f-9567-a8b385f8bd93.filesusr.com/ugd/b42d13_16d1da1c63e84d328db4239aea371617.pdf.

⁴ Arter et al. “Health and Equity Impact Assessment of the Transportation Climate Initiative,” Conference presentation, TRECH Project, February 25, 2021, https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2343/2021/02/TRECH-SlidedeckUpdateFeb2021.pdf.

⁵ “An Assessment of the Health Burden.”

⁶ Leah Lazer and Lydia Freehafer, “The State of Electric School Bus Adoption in the US,” World Resources Institute, August 2021, https://www.wri.org/insights/where-electric-school-buses-us.

⁷ “Living close to Roadways: Health Concerns and Mitigation Strategies,” US EPA, January 10, 2017, https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/living-close-roadways-health-concerns-and-mitigation-strategies.

⁸ “Benefits of Trees,” International Society of Arboriculture, 2004.

⁹ Dr. Kim D. Coder, “Identified Benefits of Community Trees and Forests” (University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Service Forest Resources Unit Publication FOR 96-39, October 1996).

¹⁰ Kaufman, Joel D. Kaufman, et al. 2016. “Association between Air Pollution and Coronary Artery Calcification within Six Metropolitan Areas in the USA (the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and Air Pollution): A Longitudinal Cohort Study.” Lancet 388 (10045): 696. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)00378-0.