In 1996, organizers of the Atlanta Olympics were expecting a million visitors to their congested city. To ensure spectators could reach Olympic venues on time, they developed strategies for reducing traffic congestion. They beefed up public transportation, closed parts of downtown to private vehicle traffic, and encouraged local businesses to allow telecommuting.
Vehicle exhaust is a major source of ground-level ozone and other pollutants. And scientists had noted an association between tailpipe emissions and childhood asthma. With alternative transportation plans in place, the Atlanta Olympics offered a unique opportunity to study this relationship.
Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed traffic, public transportation use, and air quality in metropolitan Atlanta for periods before, during, and after the Olympics.
As expected, for the duration of the Games, traffic decreased about 22 percent during weekday morning rush hour. Peak ozone concentrations dropped almost 28 percent.
Then, the scientists looked at asthma-related hospitalizations and acute care visits for children aged one to sixteen. They found a 41 percent decrease in acute asthma events, compared to the periods before and after the Olympics.
Asthma is one of the leading causes of school absenteeism, particularly in urban areas; the cost of treating childhood asthma in the U.S. is estimated to be $3.2 billion dollars a year.
With the connection between auto emissions and asthma established, more efforts are needed to get people in cities out of their cars and into public transportation.
Photo, taken on October 14, 2006 using a Canon Digital IXUS II, courtesy of Iquo E via Flickr.