Air Quality Around Property - Moving Traffic vs Idle Traffic?

[bswb97]

Hi everyone,

 

Aerospace engineer here looking for input outside of my realm of expertise. I've read up quite a bit about home recommendations for air quality -- basically, the idea that a property is more at risk to asthma development/etc. for homes within 300 feet of a major freeway.

 

My family is considering a home that is about 200 feet from an expressway (6 lanes across, stoplights, 45 MPH). The expressway is a major thoroughfare in the area that stretches across several suburbs in Silicon Valley. However, it doesn't see heavy backup at this area. So there's always some light volume of traffic going through but you don't get those endless bumper-to-bumper during commute hours. Google Maps "typical" projections have it as always either green or orange, even during the commute. If you live in Silicon Valley, you know this is something of a miracle because EVERYWHERE is red on that damn map at this time.

 

My wife (the former geologist) and I (the aerospace engineer) have been debating this. She says that since you've still got the volume of cars moving through there and some idling with the intersection lights, the air quality of the home is still a concern like living close a freeway. I'm of the opinion that if since the overall volume is lower and you don't get commute stretches where it's hundreds of cars idling for hours at a time, it's not that much different from living off any major street, which is basically what this is, and while it's not preferable from a sound perspective, it's not necessarily a health risk.

 

Please help this science couple out as we figure out where to raise our family in Silicon Valley's ridiculously overpriced and thin market.

 

Thanks!

[CharonY]

I have no qualification to actually answer that question as I would recommend taking air samples over a given time. Of course one can correlate it roughly with the residency time of the cars in a given area for a given time frame. Though I would expect that factors such as wind directions could play a bigger role. I am not sure if I recall it correctly but I vaguely remember talks from environmental engineers who looked at air pollution that in their stations they sometimes find that dominant pollutants within homes can come from rather far away sources.

 

If there was sufficient time and money taking home air samples would probably the best way to go as usually the pollution levels are higher than outside (as they tend to accumulate, even with good ventilation). Or at least that is what took home from these talks and discussions.

Edited March 17, 2017 by CharonY