A recent study suggests that in comparison with those who cycle or take the train, people who drive to work have higher rates of cancer, death from heart disease, and total death from all causes.
Traveling to work by car is worse for your health than cycling, walking, or taking the train, according to a large study spanning 25 years in England and Wales.
Researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge, both in the United Kingdom, tracked the outcomes of more than 300,000 commuters between 1991 and 2016.
They tapped into data from the Office for National Statistics’s Longitudinal Study, which collates information on people in England and Wales from several sources, including a national census that takes place every 10 years, cancer diagnoses, and death registrations.
The study, which appears in The Lancet Planetary Health, compared commuting by “private motorized vehicle,” public transport, walking, and cycling in terms of cancer incidence and mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and all-cause mortality.
The researchers adjusted the results for other factors known to influence health, including age, sex, housing tenure, marital status, socioeconomic status, and deprivation.
They also made adjustments for ethnicity, university education, car access, population density, long-term illness, and year of entering the study.
Cyclists fared best in the analysis. Compared with those who drove to work, cyclists had an 11% lower rate of cancer diagnosis and a 16% lower rate of death from cancer. They also had a 24% lower rate of death from cardiovascular disease and a 20% lower rate of death from all causes.
However, only 3% of commuters cycled to work during the course of the study. On average, 11% of people walked, 18% used public transport, and 67% drove.
The researchers say that their results suggest that increased walking and cycling in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic could reduce deaths from heart disease and cancer.
“As large numbers of people begin to return to work as the COVID-19 lockdown eases, it is a good time for everyone to rethink their transport choices,” says Dr. Richard Patterson from the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, who led the research.
“With severe and prolonged limits in public transport capacity likely, switching to private car use would be disastrous f