Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ljcn 2917 days ago
> I laugh when people say cycling is healthy. Not in London.

Not according to this Cambridge study two years ago. They found the health benefits of cycling in London always outweighed the risks.

http://www.mrc-epid.cam.ac.uk/blog/walking-cycling-air-pollu...

It got quite a bit of media coverage, e.g.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/05/benefits...

2 comments

There where a lot of edge cases to those calculations. Including very short short commute times, specific locations within cities, background physical activity, traffic accidents etc.

Further, while 1% of cities may cross their air thresholds at their assumption levels those are the largest cities. So far more than 1% of the population would be worse off.

It's just the news glossed over the very real downsides mentioned in the study.

The benefits of cycling outweigh the harms of the pollution, almost everywhere. The pollution is still harmful, though, and lowers your lifespan compared to not having as much pollution.