Fig 1.
Overview and visual representation of the ‘Ringland’ project (www.ringland.be).
Reprinted from ‘Ringland’ under a CC BY license, with permission from Peter Vermeulen, original copyright 2015.
Fig 2.
PM2,5 difference of scenario RL-F (‘Ringland’ with filtration—a filtered tunneled ring road) with the basic scenario (‘open air ring road’).
Fig 3.
NO2 difference of scenario RL-F (‘Ringland’ with filtration—a filtered tunneled ring road) with the basic scenario (‘open air ring road’).
In addition the ‘Ringland North’, ‘Ringland South’ and ‘Tunnel Mouth’ areas are shown.
Fig 4.
Example of NO2 difference of RL-1 (‘Ringland’ without filtration—a tunneled ring road) and RL-F (‘Ringland’ with filtration—a filtered tunneled ring road) with the basic scenario (‘open air ring road’).
All are plotted against population exposed to this difference, for the 50-100m radius around urban ring road.
Table 1.
Population exposed to PM2,5 change—comparing the ‘Ringland with filtration’ scenario (filtered tunneled ring road) with the basic scenario (open air ring road)–in a 500 meter perimeter and a 1,500 meter perimeter around the ring road.
Table 2.
Differences in all-cause mortality, life expectancy, number of myocardial infarctions and lung cancer deaths in the exposed population—predicted by the ‘filtered tunneled ring road’ scenario (‘Ringland project’) as compared to the ‘open air ring road’.
(dose response functions based on the extended follow-up of the Harvard Six Cities Study by Laden et al. 2006 for the calculation of the changes in mortality [32]; Pope at al. 2009 for the calculation of life expectancy [36]; a meta-analysis by Nawrot et al. 2014 for the calculation of myocardial infarctions [41]; and a meta-analysis by Hamra et al. 2014 for the calculation of lung cancer deaths [40]).
Table 3.
Annual all-cause mortality changes comparing the ‘filtered tunneled ringroad’ scenario (‘Ringland project’) with the ‘open air ring road’ in 3 particular areas: ‘Ringland North’, ‘Ringland South’ and ‘Tunnel Mouth’ areas.
(dose response function based on the extended follow-up of the Harvard Six Cities Study by Laden et al. 2006 [32]).
Table 4.
Population exposed to PM2,5 changes near the tunnel mouths predicted by the model, comparing the ‘filtered tunneled ringroad’ with the ‘open air ringroad’ scenario.
Table 5.
Changes in Forced Vital Capacity (FVC) development in children as predicted by the model, comparing the ‘filtered tunneled ring road’ scenario versus the ‘open air ring road’, based on the predicted annual NO2 concentration changes in 430 schools in the 1,500 meter perimeter.
(dose response function based on Gauderman et al. [38]).
Fig 5.
The ‘pyramid of health’ effects (by Künzli et al. [46]) associated with air pollution’.
This pyramid shows that the number of people affected by the mortality reductionis only the tip of the iceberg.
Table 6.
Nursing homes and their residents in the 1500 meter radius around the ring road.