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Environmental health impacts of mobility and transport in Hai Phong, Vietnam

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Abstract

Traffic is an essential part of modern society and mobility is part of its socio-economic setting. However, signs of counter productivity arise as the current mobility patterns substantially affect our health, including the consequences from traffic accidents, air pollution—which causes even more victims than traffic accidents—and traffic-noise. The use of private motorised vehicles also contributes to sedentarism, climate change and psychological effects. This paper reviews these mobility related health effects and applies them to the situation in Hai Phong, a Vietnamese port-city in fast development and facing growing mobility patterns. In his Master Plan the city developed a view on its development together with the transportation infrastructure up to 2020. Together with the fast changing mobility patterns, such as a modal change from bicycles to motorcycles and cars, this lead to an increase in motorized vehicles and non-negligible environmental health risks. Applying the methodology of a Health Impact Assessment as used in previous studies the current health burden is estimated, focussing on particulate matter (PM) and noise. For PM10 1287 deaths per year were calculated for the current situation, where the estimated number of deaths by 2020 doubled up to 2741. Hospital admissions due to PM10 raised from 44,954 now to 51,467 in 2020 and for PM2.5 the restricted-activity days were calculated, accounting for 852,352 per year. For noise only calculations for the current state (2007) were performed. The total estimated DALYs due to noise was 4758.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank colleagues at the Institute for Marine Environment and Resources (IMER), Hai Phong, Vietnam and at the Hai Phong Centre for Environmental Monitoring (HACEM) for their data collection. Parts of this research was funded by the Flemish Community of Belgium, by the project “Integrated Mobility Planning for Hai Phong City, Vietnam”, co-financed by the European Commission’s Asia Pro Eco II programme.

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  1. Human Ecology Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Laarbeeklaan 103, B-1090, Brussels, Belgium

    Stijn Dhondt, Quynh Le Xuan, Hieu Vu Van & Luc Hens

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  1. Stijn Dhondt
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Correspondence to Stijn Dhondt.

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Dhondt, S., Le Xuan, Q., Vu Van, H. et al. Environmental health impacts of mobility and transport in Hai Phong, Vietnam. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 25, 363–376 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-010-0374-3

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