Is Airplane Fuel Liable for 8,000 Deaths A Year? [Environment]

A new report from MIT is linking airplanes to deaths…on the ground. The study suggests that airplanes flying at their normal altitude (35,000 ft) are emitting dangerous pollutants that contribute to 8,000 deaths a year.

Currently, aircraft emissions are only regulated up to three,000 feet. Why? Because it’s been long assumed that anything emitted over 3,000 feet can be deposited into a component of the atmosphere that has significantly smoother air, that means in theory, that the air pollutants wouldn’t be suffering from turbulent wind that’d bring them back to the ground. One problem though, this is able to not be true.

To test the effect of airplane emissions, MIT used a computer model that combined flight data, a world atmospheric model and population density to look if the air pollutants would result in an increased chance of death. They found that:

Analysis of these data revealed that aircraft pollution above North America and Europe – where air travel is heaviest – adversely impacts air quality in India and China. It’s, even if the quantity of fuel burned by aircraft over India and China accounts for less than 10 percent of the estimated total amount of fuel burned by aircraft across the globe, the two countries incur nearly half – about 3,500 – of the once a year deaths with regards to aircraft cruise emissions.

So how does North America and Europe, who are liable for more flights, walk away with less deaths? Because within the testing, pollutants are emitted at an altitude where high-speed winds are flowing eastward, which mean flights in North America and Europe damage population dense areas like India and China more.

For the moment though, it doesn’t seem like anything will change. Airplane companies believe they’re a ” small portion of a huge problem” and MIT probably still must do more research on the topic. I believe if this knowledge is even almost real, regulation at all altitudes is needed. [ MIT via Fast Company ]

Source

This post is tagged: aircraft emissions, aircraft pollution, dangerous pollutants, population density, study suggests that