Do you know traffic jams can make your body susceptible to cancer? - Read

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: A new study furnished by medical experts has revealed that long traffic jams have the potential to increase various health risks, especially cancer.

Apart from wasting one's time, traffic jams can cause serious health issues which can make a person sick.

Exposure to outdoor air pollution is among the top ten health risks faced by humans and is especially pronounced in urban concentrations, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In October 2013, WHO classified outdoor air pollution as being carcinogenic to humans.

The findings showed that when vehicles stop at red lights, they go through different driving cycles such as idling, acceleration and deceleration and emission of toxic fumes.

These emissions take more time to disperse, especially in built-up areas and end up accumulating in the air at traffic signals.

Thus, the people sitting inside cars, with closed windows but with fans switched on, can be at an increased risk of exposure to the outdoor pollutants, the researchers said.

Switching on the fan sucks the dirty air from outside to inside the vehicle, resulting in an accumulation of pollutants in the car.

However, it may be relatively safe to put fans onto the setting where they re-circulate air within the car without drawing polluted air in from outside, the study stated.

(With IANS inputs)