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With the results of the American Lung Association's "State of the Air" report - which you can read about here - Clean Air NY is motivating NYC residents to improve air quality by improving their travel choices. The New York State Department of Transportation Acting Commissioner Stan Gee, in partnership with the American Lung Association, is declaring next week "Commit to Cleaner Air" week.
65% of New York State residents live in counties where pollution levels endanger lives. If we all started walking more and driving less, that number would decrease. In hopes that all of us will take part in "Commit to Cleaner Air" week, here are some bet-you-didn't-know-that facts on walking!
- Residents' walking speed generally increases with the size of the community. New Yorker's reputations for fast-talking and fast-walking apparently has some basis in fact.
- People walk more slowly on carpeting than they do on bare floors.
- You burn approximately as many calories from walking a mile as you do running a mile--you just burn them quicker running.
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It is the lateral arrangement of three gluteal muscles in the human body that keeps us from walking like a chimp. The gluteus maximus allows us to go from sitting to standing, where a chimp is always in a sitting-position with their legs flexed. Chimps can't extend their legs back because they lack the laterally organized muscles that allow humans to back-kick and walk the way we do.
For more walking trivia, click here.
Note that the first two facts were excerpted from Environmental Psychology, Fifth Edition by Paul A. Bell, Thomas Greene, Jeffrey Fisher, and Andrew S. Baum.
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