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Clean Air Reports
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Executive Summary
As the new home of NJPIRG's environmental work, Environment New Jersey can be contacted regarding this report.
Everyone has experienced it: getting hit right in the face by a cloud of acrid
diesel smoke.
Perhaps you were standing on a street corner when a bus or truck
whizzed by. Or maybe you were standing at a bus stop or stuck behind a dump
truck grinding up a hill. But breathing diesel exhaust isn’t just unpleasant.
It is hazardous to your health. In fact, health research indicates that the
portion of the exhaust you can’t see may be the most dangerous of all. Asthma
attacks, respiratory disease, heart attacks, and even premature death—all of
these are among the most serious public health problems linked to emissions
from the nation’s fleet of diesel vehicles. The good news is that the technology
exists right now to clean up emissions from these engines, so that most of the
adverse health impacts can be prevented.
Today in the U.S. more than 13 million diesel vehicles help to build our cities
and towns, transport our food and goods, and take us to and from work. More
than three quarters of all Americans live near intersections, bus stops, highways,
bus and truck depots, or construction sites with heavy equipment—all of which
are concentrated sources of diesel exhaust. In rural areas, those who live near heavy diesel agricultural
equipment suffer their share of exposure to diesel as well.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued important regulations that
will require dramatic reductions in emissions from new diesel vehicles starting
in 2007—but
only the new ones. These regulations, to be phased in over the next quarter
century, apply only to new engines. What about the diesels on the road today?
The lifespan of the average diesel vehicle is nearly 30 years. Many diesels
are driven over a million miles. Because of this longevity, we will be left
with the legacy of pollution from dirty diesel vehicles for decades to come.
That is, unless we take action to reduce emissions from vehicles currently on
the road. We don’t have to wait. Control technologies exist right now that can
significantly reduce deadly fine particle emissions from diesel vehicles, in
some cases by upwards of 90 percent.
American know-how, witnessed by the success of the manufacturers of engines,
control devices, and fuel refiners in developing innovative solutions for reducing
diesel exhaust, provides a lifesaving opportunity we can seize today. Pollution
from dirty diesels on the road now can be dramatically reduced using a combination
of cleaner fuels, retrofit emission controls, rebuilt engines, engine repowerings,
and accelerated purchase of new, cleaner vehicles. Unlike so many other vexing
environmental issues, these affordable solutions present a highly unusual opportunity
to actually address a major risk to public health and the environment. In fact,
we could virtually eliminate this problem if diesel manufacturers, fleet owners,
environmentalists, concerned citizens, and government regulators make the commitment
to work together.
What are the health impacts of these dirty diesel vehicles? What benefits will
we realize if we act now to clean them up? The Clean Air Task Force commissioned
Abt Associates, an highly-respected consulting firm that U.S. EPA and other
agencies rely upon to assess the benefits of national air quality policies,
to quantify for the first time the health impacts of fine particle air pollution
from America’s diesel fleet. Using this information, we were able to estimate
the expected benefits—in lives saved—from an aggressive but feasible program
to clean up dirty diesel buses, trucks, and heavy equipment across the U.S.
This report summarizes the findings of the Abt Associates study. It then reviews
the degree to which diesel vehicles increase the level of fine particle pollution
in the air we breathe, and recommends reduction measures that will save thousands
of lives each year.
Key findings include:
- Reducing diesel fine particle emissions 50 percent by 2010, 75 percent by
2015, and 85 percent by 2020 would save nearly 100,000 lives between now and
2030. These are additional lives saved above and beyond the projected impact
of EPA?fs new engine regulations.
- Fine particle pollution from diesels shortens the lives of nearly 21,000 people
each year. This includes almost 3,000 early deaths from lung cancer.
- Tens of thousands of Americans suffer each year from asthma attacks (over
400,000), heart attacks (27,000), and respiratory problems associated with fine
particles from diesel vehicles. These illnesses result in thousands of emergency
room visits, hospitalizations, and lost work days. Together with the toll of
premature deaths, the health damages from diesel fine particles will total $139
billion in 2010.
- Nationally, diesel exhaust poses a cancer risk that is 7.5 times higher than
the combined total cancer risk from all other air toxics.
- In the U.S., the average lifetime nationwide cancer risk due to diesel exhaust
is over 350 times greater than the level U.S. EPA considers to be "acceptable
'(i.e., one cancer per million persons over 70 years).
- Residents from more than two-thirds of all U.S. counties face a cancer risk
from diesel exhaust greater than 100 deaths per million population. People living
in eleven urban counties face diesel cancer risks greater than 1,000 in a million
C one thousand times the level EPA says is acceptable.
- People who live in metropolitan areas with a high concentration of diesel
vehicles and traffic feel their impacts most acutely. The risk of lung cancer
from diesel exhaust for people living in urban areas is three times that for
those living in rural areas.
The vast majority of the deaths due to dirty diesels could be avoided by an
aggressive program over the next 15 years to require cleanup of the nation's
existing diesel fleet. Practical, affordable solutions are available that can
achieve substantial reductions in diesel risk. The only thing that stands between
us and dramatically healthier air is the political will to require these reductions
and the funding to make it a reality.
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