(AP) — Researchers who study the environment and public health say that thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars have been saved in the United States by recent reductions in emissions from vehicles.

The researchers from Harvard University looked at the impact of declines in emissions from cars and other vehicles between 2008 and 2017 on deaths caused by air pollution from them. T

hey found deaths dropped from 27,700 in 2008 to 19,800 in 2017 and that the economic benefits from the emissions reduction totaled $270 billion.