Air pollution from the road haulage industry costs European countries an estimated €43 - €46 billion a year, according to a new technical study entitled ‘Road user charges for heavy goods vehicles’. In response the European Environmental Agency has said it wants these costs to be reflected in increased road charges for lorries to promote cleaner technologies.
EEA Executive Director Jaqueline McGlade said: “European economies rely on transporting goods long distances. But there is also a hidden cost, paid in years of reduced health and lost life. The cost is especially high for those living close to Europe’s major transport routes. By incorporating these costs into the price of goods, we can encourage healthier transport methods and cleaner technologies.”
This news isn’t so good for European couriers, but perhaps we’ll all benefit in terms of health. The EEA report claims that diesel causes more air pollution per kilometre than petrol, and reports that exhaust emissions from diesel engines were recently labelled as carcinogenic by the Internation Agency for Research on Cancer.
The average cost of pollution is highest in Switzerland, followed by Luxemburg, Germany, Romania, Italy and Austria, and lowest in Cyprus, Malta and Finland. It is thought that places where there are high population densities, and landlocked or mountainous areas, suffer more because the pollution can’t disperse so easily.
