Bicycle production and damage to the environment?

Hello,

Lately, I've seem a lot of people start cycling for economic, and
environmental reasons.

I I know that car exhaust is extremely barmful.But I wonder if anybody
knows if bicycle production does anything harmful to the environment?
If so, what kind of damage does it do?

Thanks,
Cullen
www.comatimes.blogspot.com

I know that car exhaust is extremely barmful.But I wonder
if anybody knows if bicycle production does anything harmful
to the environment? If so, what kind of damage does it do?

=v= The short answer: less. There is more toxic material in
a car's steering wheel than in a bike, and bikes tend to have
a much longer useful life.

=v= The longer answer is that the exact numbers are hard to
come by. When I worked for _Terrain_, we did a bicycling issue
and my editor, collected and compiled toxic release inventory
(TRI) data for various bicycle companies in the U.S. There was
some impact, but orders of magnitude less than for cars.

=v= These days most bikes are made overseas in countries that
do not conduct TRIs and generally have very lax environmental
standards, so the impact of bicycle manufacture (and overseas
transport) is presumably higher. But nowhere nearly in the
league of a car's impact.
_Jym_