Tricyling Portland Supplies - Is it a health issue?
By:
NWHF Staff
| Posted on: February 3rd, 2011
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Categories:
Environmental Health •
Public Health •
Transportation •
Urban Issues
When the City of Portland announced that all office supplies would be delivered by cargo tricycles, the blogosphere went bonkers.
Many howled that the ecological impact is basically equivalent of a cleaning the Willamette River with a droplet of pure water.
Anna Griffin of the Oregonian defended the plan saying “they’re trying to preserve the environment one paper clip at a time.”
But a typical commenter on the Willamette Week site said “How about Sam do something really effective like set all the thermostats in city offices to 58 and locking them? But it won’t happen because then city workers would have to make a sacrifice.”
Jack Bogdanski wrote, “It’s dopier than any parody that Fred Armisen will ever appear in.”
But scroll through all the articles, and the comments, and there’s a concept that’s virtually nonexistent:
Health.
The health impact here is certainly greater than any environmental impact of moving products that were made in China and shipped thousands of miles to the downtown store, only to be placed onto tricycles for the last thousand feet.
And while the overall health impact too is fairly negligible, the difference between a cargo trike delivery day and a day at the wheel of a truck is not negligible at all.
As Truckersplace.com says, “Truck drivers are at more risk than the average Americans for a number of health problems. Obesity is easily the most commonly occurring and preventable cause of disease; half of them smoke, eat a lot of fast food, sit for long periods and don’t exercise, and these habits can fuel high blood pressure and chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes…”
So, while one new trike rider won’t cure obesity and diabetes, the health impact of shifting suppliers from a truck to a trike, as small as it might be, is still more tangible than the environmental impact.
Yet people always frame these things as environmental issues and not health issues.
Why is that?
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