From http://www.local6.com/health/4223221/detail.html

Study Blames 20,000 Deaths A Year On Diesel Exhaust

POSTED: 7:53 am EST February 23, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Emissions from old diesel engines cause more than 20,000 Americans a year to die sooner than they would have otherwise, an environmental group estimated Tuesday.

An industry group criticized the findings as outdated and misleading.

The states with the most deaths were New York with 2,332, California with 1,784, and Pennsylvania with 1,170, according to the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force.

The group ranked Ohio eighth among the 50 states, with an estimated 769 preventable deaths, 1,002 non-fatal heart attacks and 14,464 asthma attacks each year.

"Diesel exhaust may be the single most severe air pollution threat to people's health here in Ohio," said Staci Putney McLennan, director of clean-air programs for the Ohio Environmental Council.

The metropolitan areas with the highest number of early deaths from diesel engines were New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, according to the task force. The study included the surrounding suburbs, so New York's estimated total of 2,729 deaths included parts of New Jersey and Connecticut.

The group said it based its figures on the most recent government emissions data - from 1999 - and from public health studies of the effects of various types of air pollutants.

Conrad Schneider, co-author of the report, said regulations designed to make new diesel engines cleaner don't affect millions of older trucks, buses and construction engines.

"Those are great rules, they will hold new engines to higher standards. ... In the meantime, we're stuck with a legacy of dirty diesel engines," said Schneider, advocacy director for Clean Air Task Force, a coalition of regional and local groups.

The Environmental Protection Agency last year required new diesel engines on trucks and buses to cut in half the amount of nitrogen oxides produced. In 2007 emissions are to be cut further.

Since many older diesel engines can run for 30 years, more action is needed by federal, state, and local governments to retrofit existing diesel engines to run more cleanly, the group said.

Retrofits for a typical transit bus can cost about $5,000 to $7,000.

The head of a Washington-based industry group criticized the report's assumptions and conclusions.

"I think they have overstated the risk here using data that's six years old," said Allan Schaeffer, executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum.

Schaeffer said it takes eight modern tractor trailer engines to produce the same amount of pollution generated by one such engine made twelve years ago, and that diesel exhaust comprises just 4.4 percent of fine particle pollution.

"Our industry is getting cleaner faster than most other industries out there," Schaeffer said.

Diesel pollution is blamed for contributing to asthma, respiratory diseases and heart attacks. The study estimates the risk of health complications from diesel exhaust for people living in cities is three times higher than the risk for those in rural areas.


Top 10
Estimated annual early deaths from diesel pollution, according to estimates from the environmental group Clean Air Task Force:

By State:

1. New York 2,332
2. California 1,784
3. Pennsylvania 1,170
4. New Jersey 880
5. Texas 879
6. Illinois 878
7. Florida 805
8. Ohio 769
9. Michigan 484
10. Massachusetts 475


By metropolitan area:

1. New York 2,729
2. Los Angeles 918
3. Chicago 755
4. Philadelphia 727
5. Boston 391
6. Houston 356
7. San Francisco 291
8. Miami 288
9. Baltimore 285
10. Detroit 279

Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The diesel produced now is much cleaner than the diesel from back then. There's a reason why it's booming in Europe and they're trying to bring it into the US.

The clean air nazi's spreading this FUD are undoubtedly the same folks who 25 years ago were pushing so hard for mass transit (i.e. dirty diesel buses and trains) in order to clean the air.

"14,464 asthma attacks each year."

As someone who suffers from asthma, I'd like to know how they can seriously attribute an attack to any one causative factor. :rolleyes:

Diesel is very nasty stuff, because the sulfur in the fuel results in fine particulates that get lodged in your lungs. Driving behind a diesel bus and breathing in those big black plumes of smoke is not a good thing. But with the new low sulfur diesel rules in effect by 2007, this should change. And yeah, diesel fuel in Europe is way cleaner than it is here. (sulfur content of 50ppm and 10ppm in Europe, 2005 vs. 250 ppm here). Without low sulfur fuel and without particulate traps, diesel is definitely polluting and definitely a root cause of many cardiovascular mortality/morbidity cases.

A consider the source and why the report. statistics always lie! Someone stands to benefit from this report.
The new deisels have very low particulates, unlike the old motors that cause the polution. new refining of fuel and high pressure common rail deasels are getting as clean as gasoline engines. More people will die from OVEREATING in USA than new deisel motors.
I always wondered why governments that passed such stringent standards for cars had fleets of smoke belching busses. And the anti SUV folks in DC drive suburbans?

Is it just the cleaner fuel in Europe? I don't think so. I go to England regularly - business and family. You will not see a truck there belching black smoke. If one did, the cops would pull it over. For many years the government went after so called "cowboy operators" - mainly small outfits and owner drivers who skimped maintenance and ran unroadworthy trucks, with the goal of getting these wrecks off the road. Annual inspections and harsh penalties have cleaned out pretty much all of these "bottom feeding" operators. Time to do the same here.

There's no excuse for a big rig or a bus to belch black smoke - it's either poor maintenance or deliberate "over fueling" to try to get more performance.

Plus, there are light years differences in techology between a modern car turbo diesel and the typical heavy truck/bus engines that cause the pollutiion this report refers to.

The diesel fuel in Europe certainly is much cleaner than in North America, to the point where you cannot run the most recent European diesel engines on North American diesel.

Also, most European cars/trucks are newer than their North American counterparts, probably partially due to more wear being incurred due to smaller displacement as well as different traffic conditions.

This just in - more than 20,000 Americans will die this year due to so many government funds being spent on FUD like this report instead of diverting those funds into something that would have a more positive impact (like drug prevention programs, education, or just plain cut the funding since our government wastes too much anyway).

And before you point out that this was not a government report I can bet you money that a government grant paid for it.

That study looks like unadulterated junk science. Very typical for environmentally-related "investigations". Garbage. :rolleyes:

i love all the "i don't eat anything with a face" tree-huggers who cry about this kinda cra-pola and then jump into their de-catted wrx/sti and drive off to the next protest...

why do diesel engines on old busses belch black smoke while my oil fired boiler runs perfectly clean? here in the US Diesel and Home heating oil are the same exact thing far as refining and formula goes. infact they are interchangable in a pinch.

why do diesel engines on old busses belch black smoke while my oil fired boiler runs perfectly clean? here in the US Diesel and Home heating oil are the same exact thing far as refining and formula goes. infact they are interchangable in a pinch.

They are two totally different processes.

i love all the "i don't eat anything with a face" tree-huggers who cry about this kinda cra-pola and then jump into their de-catted wrx/sti and drive off to the next protest...
Where did it state that? It seems that you read something different than everyone else, or, you just cannot reason well.

"why do diesel engines on old busses belch black smoke while my oil fired boiler runs perfectly clean?"

-----see my post above - lousy or no maintenance. And a lot have a high blue smoke content as well, and like any engine, that's because they need overhauling.

[QUOTE=NextCar] statistics always lie! [QUOTE]

Statistics never lie. Its just that liars use statistics.

This is junk science though... or more like junk propaganda really. Sadly There are probably folks who will read this and assume that it is true without questioning it.

I think now that there are "Performance" desiels coming out, like the new VW, they will gain popularity.

So even if this report is true it's about problems with old diesels, not new ones. It's really irrelevant to selling more new diesel cars in the US.

So basically what they are saying, is 'Look at this problem we had! Yeah, the new regulations will fix this so it will go away, but LOOK AT THIS PROBLEM WE HAD!' What a useless report.

Tom

i love all the "i don't eat anything with a face" tree-huggers who cry about this kinda cra-pola and then jump into their de-catted wrx/sti and drive off to the next protest...

I'm glad steak, chicken wings and hamburger don't have faces!!

Peta
"People for eating tasty animals"

It's not a "useless report" as heavy diesels have around a 30 year life cycle - and the trucking lobby is resisting any attempts to require particulate filters to be added and especially resisting attempts that require any kind of retrofit. So, while technnologically it is an old problem, it won't go away any time soon, as those soot belchers will be with us for a long time.

The car makers will have to sell the public on the difference between car and truck diesels - whether they can succeed or not is another question.

I think the report does have legit point. Cleaning up or replacing old engines (gas as well as diesel) would get us more pollution reduction than tightening the specs on new engines.

While I can’t speak for the specific study cited above, the diesel-health effects link is well established and is not “sham” science or the product of some left-wing tree-hugging conspiracy to revert the world to pre-medieval days. Trust me, if you had to choose between breathing diesel fumes or not, you would want the latter. Of course if you had to choose between high sulfur diesel vs low sulfur diesel, you’d want the latter, and 2007 will be a good thing, esp. for passenger vehicles. The body of evidence is pretty strong, and its not from eco-groups, but from medical and health institutions around the world. For just a smattering, see:

http://www.dieselnet.com/papers/0203watts/

And this is a synopsis of carcinogenic exposure from NIH (again, not junk scientists)

http://ntp-server.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/roc/eleventh/profiles/s069dies.pdf

The key aspect that makes diesel exhaust problematic is that most of it is fine particles, often less than 1 micrometer. This is stuff that is so small it penetrates deep inside your lungs and rarely leaves. Whatever it picks up on the way, for example the combustion process, ends up deposited along with it.

Reading the piece above, I don’t see where they are making claims that new diesel engines are bad, in fact just the opposite, they seem to recognize the benefits of the newer rules. I also don’t see what this has to do with anti-SUV folks who drive Suburbans (if there is such a thing). The problem isn’t new diesel, its existing diesel and long lifecycle turnover.

Are they injecting hyperbole in their arguments? Probably. Are they some eco-group with ulterior motives? Maybe. Its impossible to assess the epidemiology that went into the conclusions of the report, and I’m sure folks will do that in time. But none of this changes the root medical science behind the fact that diesel exhaust IS unhealthy and can be linked to a variety of lung diseases. Industry certainly doesn’t deny this, and the case they make in the article is simply that diesel is getting cleaner, but it doesn't mean that old diesel is good for you.

I don't see why this has to turn into an anti-PETA or anti tree hugging or enviro-bashing session.

I don't see why this has to turn into an anti-PETA or anti tree hugging or enviro-bashing session.
Because this is NASIOC ;)

Because Peta like cigarettes killed my father and raped my mother!! Ok, seriously, I remember visiting Laos a few years back. The big logging trucks that where flying down the roads looked like a freaking forrest fire comming down the road. You couid barely make out a truck, you just see some big logs and smoke that would make a forrest fire blush!! It was insane the amount of pollution one truck made!! :huh:

It's been long known that if you really want to be effective against hydrocarbon pollution, you go after the polluters - and there are roadside test kits that can pick out the vehicles concerned - rather than the EPA approved scheme of testing all modern cars, i.e. the ones with low pollution. If you really want to take the next step, you would go after the older, poorly maintained vehicles and get them off the roads.

Same with diesel trucks - make it an offence to emit visible blue or black smoke, and issue the ofending vehicle owner with a "fix it or scrap it" order.

It's been long known that if you really want to be effective against hydrocarbon pollution, you go after the polluters - and there are roadside test kits that can pick out the vehicles concerned - rather than the EPA approved scheme of testing all modern cars, i.e. the ones with low pollution. If you really want to take the next step, you would go after the older, poorly maintained vehicles and get them off the roads.

Same with diesel trucks - make it an offence to emit visible blue or black smoke, and issue the offending vehicle owner with a "fix it or scrap it" order.

nice double post :lol:

I think it is an offense in many places to have obvious smoke; don't know how often people get nailed for it though.

Reading this post makes me proud to be the owner of a 1985 Chevy K10. Its whopping 8 mpg is way too efficient. I think I'm gonna swap in one of those 7.something liter hummer diesels just so it will look like a logging truck in laos. :lol:

http://forums.pickuptruck.com/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=UBB23

Why don't we just convert everything to greasecars?

I am a graduate of the school of environmental studies at the minnesota zoo and as a senior year discussion I studied deisel engines and currently modern deisel engines can produce much less harmful emissions then most other automobiles.

Double post - don't know how that happened, I went back in via "edit" and fixed a typo.

If it is an offense to have noxious smoke, the law is not enforced as far as I can tell. Seems to me the local cops in my area studiously avoid pulling trucks over even when the problems are blatant, e.g. thick black smoke, non working lights, obscured plates, bald tires, etc., and I live (for good or bad) in what would generally be considered a "lefty" environmentally conscious jurisdiction.

Here's the thing...so we had a law passed that just now required diesel engines to cut their emissions in half, the article states. It says they will get even lower by 2007.

Now, we all know that manufacturers won't spend huge amounts of money changing the engines unless they are forced to, but do you think they all waited until this year to do it? Maybe to meet the "cut in half" standard, but I bet they've been improving the emissions for quite some time. I also bet that the heavy polluters they tested were all 15 years old or so. If I took a moderately well-maintained diesel bus engine from 8 years ago, I bet it would put out significantly less emissions than a moderately well-maintained diesel bus engine from 15 years ago.

Like was posted earlier, this study sounds like bunk. Unless they can show me how they calculated this information, I don't really buy it.

I'm all behind putting some rules on maintaining the older engines, to keep their emissions to a minimum...but in the U.S., I think this would only affect a few major cities...and most vehicles would probably be public transportation vehicles. The trucking industry has been buying a lot of new trucks recently. With fuel prices up, a more fuel efficient $75,000 rig sounds like a good deal. I bet it won't take as long as they think to get most of the offending vehicles off the road. They say the vehicles are on the road for up to 30 years. How many last that long? Do most get replaced or have a major overhaul(i.e. rebuild...which probably addresses a decent amount of emissions concerns) after 20 years? That's a big difference. Many of the big offenders might be gone in ten years from now. Doesn't sound so bad to me.

I don’t think that’s entirely true. There is probably not much difference between an 8 year old vehicle and a 15 year old diesel vehicle unless one has been retrofitted. Yes newer diesel is better than older diesel, but that mostly due to regulatory changes over the past few decades, from the first Clean Air Act to Tier 1 standards, to TLEV to LEV to the 2004 Tier 2 standards (California LEV II). But there are some long gaps between those standards. There have def. been incremental steps and improvements in emissions quality over the years due to these standards, to the point where a typical car in Bangkok or Beijing probably pollutes as much as 3 or 4 new US vehicles. There is nothing like a traffic jam in Asia to give you a real appreciation for how lucky we are to have cleaner cars and cleaner air here. Think of twice the density of vehicles, each polluting 3 times as much as an American vehicle … yikes!

The biggest hindrance to more improvements in diesel emissions quality is sulfur content in US fuel. A nice VW TDI will not be as clean in the US as it is in Europe, until the 2007 rules take effect. The aftertreatment devices to make diesel engines cleaner, including older ones, all require low sulfur fuel. Bear in mind diesel engines are more durable than IC engines, therefore the average fleet age is much older, so turnover is, as the article suggests, pretty slow. So there may be some continuous improvement from industry, over the last decade or 2, but all of it hits the sulfur content wall.

I think the 30 year figure isn't that far off. For example, according to the Bush administration, the average diesel engine remains in a fleet for 25 years, and the average age of the US diesel schoolbus fleet is 10 years, comprising 400,000 diesel buses and 24 million kids who ride them. While that means there are lots that are 8 years old, there are also plenty that are 15 years old. According to government figures, with new rules in place by 2007, it will not be until 2030 at the earliest that the diesel fleet has completely turned over, including retrofits of older engines.

In addition to road diesel, there is a tremendous amount of nonroad diesel, like agricultural and industrial equipment, more than 6 million vehicles in all. When the Bush administration promulgated the latest road and nonroad diesel rules, they estimated that something like 65 million people would benefit. In their reports to Congress they estimated that a full turnover (by 2030) of the nonroad diesel fleet would prevent 12,000 premature deaths, 6,000 childhood asthma-related emergency room visits and 200,000 cases of asthma symptoms in children. This is basically looking just at nonroad diesel, current vehicles, and a 30 year timeframe for replacing them. So the assumptions in the article may not be that far off.