This report links state-of-the-art models on vehicle emissions, air pollution, and epidemiological models to determine how, when, and where transportation emissions are impacting air quality and public health. It advances beyond examining the transportation sector as a whole, evaluating the health burden attributable to specific subsectors: on-road diesel vehicles, on-road non-diesel vehicles, shipping, and non-road mobile sources that include agricultural and construction equipment and rail transportation. Some of the key findings include:
- Emissions from the transportation sector were responsible for 11.7% of global fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone mortality in 2010 and 11.4% in 2015.
- Global transportation emissions in 2010 and 2015, respectively, contributed 361,000 and 385,000 PM2.5 and ozone-attributable premature deaths. These mortality impacts indicate that vehicle tailpipe emissions were responsible for an estimated 5.43 deaths per 100,000 people globally in 2010 and 5.38 deaths per 100,000 people in 2015.
- Together, PM2.5 and ozone concentrations from transportation emissions resulted in 7.8 million years of life lost and approximately $1 trillion in health damages globally in 2015.
- The majority of estimated transportation emissions-related health impacts occurred in the top global vehicle markets. In 2015, 84% of global transportation-attributable deaths occurred in G20 countries, and 70% occurred in the four largest vehicle markets: China, India, the European Union (EU), and the United States.
- Of the four transportation subsectors examined, on-road diesel vehicles contributed the most to pollution and associated disease burdens. This was particularly the case in the EU, where on-road diesel vehicles accounted for 60% of transportation-attributable PM2.5 in 2015.
- The urban areas with the highest number of transportation-attributable air pollution deaths are a combination of those with the largest populations and transportation emissions. The top 10 in order for 2015 were Guangzhou, Tokyo, Shanghai, Mexico City, Cairo, New Delhi, Moscow, Beijing, London, and Los Angeles. By contrast, when normalised by population, the urban areas with the highest number of transportation-attributable air pollution deaths per 100,000 people were mainly in Europe.
Despite recent adoption of more stringent vehicle emission regulations in some major vehicle markets, the transportation sector remains a major contributor to the air pollution disease burden globally. This points to the need for reducing emissions from the transportation sector to be a central element of national and local management plans aimed at reducing ambient air pollution and its burden on public health.