Indianapolis ranked no. 5 on auto pollution list

INDIANAPOLIS -- Nearly 700,000 people in the Indianapolis metro region commute to work each day, and the cars and trucks they drive help make the area's air among the nation's most-polluted from vehicle emissions, a new report said.\nIndianapolis was No. 5 on a list of major cities ranked according to per capita air pollution from vehicles in a study by an environmental and consumer advocate group. The top four cities and five of the top 10 were in the Southeast.\nThe study, "More Highways, More Pollution," was released Tuesday by the Washington-based U.S. Public Interest Research Group. The rankings were based on statistics from the Federal Highway Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency for 1999, the last year for which figures were available.\nThe report found that road construction aimed at relieving congestion leads to a cycle of increased traffic that produces more pollution. Per capita, cities with more highway capacity have higher levels of air pollution from vehicles, the study found.\nAccording to the 2000 census, 685,836 people commute to work each day in Indianapolis and the eight nearby counties that comprise the metro area.\n"Roads and air pollution go hand-in-hand," Emily Figdor, a spokeswoman for the consumer group, said in a news release accompanying the report. "And air pollution is linked to asthma attacks, lung cancer, heart disease and early deaths."\nA spokeswoman for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management said Wednesday the agency had not fully reviewed the report and would not comment on its conclusions.\nBut IDEM spokeswoman Laura Pippenger said the decades-long nationwide trend for motorists to travel longer distances is being factored into air quality plans intended to make sure the state's metropolitan areas meet new EPA health standards.\n"We're working with a regional group of local officials, citizens and industry to develop measures that may be needed to meet EPA's new ozone health standards over the next few years, and transportation planning will be part of the discussion," she said.\nAccording to IDEM records, during the past decade, the Indianapolis metropolitan area's population has grown about 11 percent, while the number of vehicle miles traveled on its roads has risen about 28 percent.\nAlthough today's cars and trucks are far cleaner than those built in the late 1960s, the number of vehicle miles traveled in urban areas has more than tripled since 1970, from 570 billion to 1.73 trillion, according to the 39-page study's executive summary.\nThe study found per capita pollution from vehicles was highest in Nashville, Tenn., and Atlanta. Three of the other most polluted sites were urban areas in North Carolina, the report said.\nThe consumer group based its findings on road construction and travel data from the Federal Highway Administration, census figures and vehicle emissions data from the EPA.\nThe U.S. Public Interest Research Group is the lobbying arm of the various state PIRGs, which are non-profit, non-partisan watchdog organizations.