By now, everyone in Colorado knows that breathing smoke from wildfires is bad news for our lungs, especially after smoke from Canadian wildfires in mid-May obscured the Rockies, forced us inside. When the wildfires were extinguished, the skies cleared.
But how many know that we are exposed every day to an even more pernicious air pollution problem? It’s from tailpipe exhaust from the hundreds of thousands of cars, trucks, and buses plying Colorado’s roads. The primary pollutants released from vehicle tailpipes are carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbon, particulate matter, and other kinds of toxic substances.
These chemicals, combined with heat, can form ground-level ozone, which is a health risk. This is why we are more likely to get an air quality alert on hot days. These tailpipe pollutants are literally driving a growing threat to our health and our climate. Air pollution from transportation, like smoke, is poisonous to breathe.
This toxic transportation pollution affects everyone, but the heaviest burden falls on communities of color and low-income communities who work, live, and go to school along transportation corridors, and breathe a heavy-duty brew of toxic chemicals every day. Fortunately, Colorado is working on a solution that will greatly ease this danger. It’s called Colorado Clean Cars, and it would put many more clean, zero-polluting electric vehicles on our roads.
New data from an ERM study shows major public health, economic and climate benefits available to Coloradans — if the state adopts the most effective Colorado Clean Cars standards all the way to 2035. If fully adopted, and implemented with equity in mind, these standards would clean up Colorado’s transportation pollution and would provide benefits to all Coloradans, particularly low-income communities and communities of color.
The Front Range is known for many positive things, unfortunately also for its poor air quality. Adams and Denver counties earned an F rating for ozone and 24-hour exposure to particle pollution – key transportation air pollutants – in a recent report from the American Lung Association, which tracks air pollution data nationwide.
It’s time to clean up our air. Colorado Clean Cars, a standard that ensures Colorado car manufacturers sell clean, zero-emission vehicles, has the potential to bring $95 billion in cumulative public health benefits by reducing air pollution by up to 90% by 2050, according to the ERM study. Air pollution caused by cars and trucks, while widespread, is more highly concentrated along Colorado’s industrial and highway corridors. My community of Northglenn is bisected by Interstate 25, and our residents are exposed to persistent transportation pollution. Many places in the metro area, like Globeville-Elyria-Swansea, Commerce City, and North Park Hill, share a similar reality.
Due to the history of redlining and subsequent gentrification of our industrial and highway corridors, these communities are primarily Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). In Colorado, these communities breathe the majority of dirty air from transportation. According to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, “African American, Asian and Latino residents are exposed to vehicular particulate matter pollution levels, on average, that are 81, 37, and 27 percent higher, respectively, than the exposure experienced by white residents.”
It’s clear that Colorado’s transportation pollution exacerbates existing racial and socioeconomic fractures. The clean cars standard will save lives. The ERM report estimates that by 2050, the full standard will prevent 216 premature deaths and 132,900 asthma attacks and illnesses.
These are not just numbers; they represent real lives improved and saved through this crucial standard.
Colorado can act to protect the lives and well-being of disproportionately impacted, BIPOC, and low-income communities from transportation pollution by adopting the full Colorado Clean Cars standard through 2035. State leaders should floor it on this public health and climate protection plan.
A healthier, cleaner and safer future for all of us lies just around the bend.
Katherine Goff is a Northglenn city council member and president of Colorado Communities for Climate Action, a coalition of 42 local governments working for strong state climate policy.
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