You inhale less air pollution on the sidewalk than in your car
Anyone walking along a highway during morning rush hour is likely to get a lungful of engine exhaust, but actually they won’t be as bad off as the people in the passing cars.
That’s perhaps a surprising result of a study of the exposure of drivers to pollution done by scientists at Duke University, Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology. In their study published this summer, researchers say they found that the levels of soot and chemicals detected inside cars during rush hour in Atlanta were twice as high as those measured by roadside detectors.