Spatial extent of road pollution: a national analysis

Roads form vast, pervasive and growing networks across the Earth, causing negative environmental impacts that spill out into a ‘road-effect zone’. Previous research has estimated the regional and global extent of these zones using arbitrary distances, ignoring the spatial distribution and distance-dependent attenuation of different forms of road environmental impact. With Great Britain as a study area, the authors used mapping of roads and realistic estimates of how pollution levels decay with distance to project the spatial distribution of road pollution. They found that 25% of land was less than 79 m from a road, 50% of land was less than 216 m and 75% of land was less than 527 m. Roadless areas were scarce, and confined almost exclusively to the uplands (mean elevation 391 m), with only ca 12% of land in Great Britain more than 1 km from roads and < 4% of land more than 2.5 km from roads. Using light, noise, heavy metals, NO₂, and particulate matter PM₂.₅ and PM₁₀ as examples, the authors estimate that roads have a zone of influence that extends across > 70% of the land area. Potentially less than 6% of land escapes any impact, resulting in nearly ubiquitously elevated pollution levels. Generalising from this, the authors find that, whilst the greatest levels of road pollution are relatively localised around the busiest roads, low levels of road pollution (which may be ecologically significant) are pervasive. These findings demonstrate the importance of incorporating greater realism into road-effect zones and considering the ubiquity of road pollution in global environmental issues. The authors used Great Britain as a study area, but the findings likely apply to other densely populated regions at present, and to many additional regions in the future due to the predicted rapid expansion of the global road network.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145589
• Record URL:
  • http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969721006574
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/00489697
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2021 Benjamin B Phillips et al.
• Authors:
  • Phillips, Benjamin B
  • Bullock, James M
  • Osborne, Juliet L
  • Gaston, Kevin J
• Publication Date: 2021-6-15

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Appendices; Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 145589
• Serial:
  • Science of the Total Environment
  • Volume: 773
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 0048-9697
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00489697

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Air pollution; Exhaust gases; Heavy metals; Light; Noise; Pollutants; Pollution; Roads; Spatial analysis
• Geographic Terms: Great Britain
• Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01767460
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Mar 22 2021 10:36AM