While this all sounds good, I wonder what the impact will be if almost everyone meets the standard already (per the article). EPA Lowers Soot Pollution Standards by 20% by Paul Riegler Read the full story »
We should probably move this to Environmental thread. I tend to highly favor particulate reductions, believing health impact and soot possibly accounts for a portion of the arctic ice melting we are seeing. The main sources I am aware of is diesel and coal buring. Diesel has been partially addressed with the ultra low sulfur diesel roll-out in the last 10 years. I wish the Kyoto global warming treaty accords could be modified to give more attention to global particlates and methane controls, since I am not sure mankind will be able to reduce CO2 enough.
It's a shame that even EPA seems to be compelled to single out diesel exhaust as a primary source of PM2.5 when even its own data suggests that diesel will contribute an increasingly minor portion. According to EPA data, PM2.5 from "Highway Diesel" sources will fall from an estimated 110,000 tons/year in 2001, to 15,800 tons/year in 2020, to 10,000 tons/year in 2030 just from the regulations that are currently in place. PM2.5 from "Highway non-diesel" sources is projected to fall from 50,300 tons/year in 2001, to 47,300 tons/year in 2020, but then RISE to 57,000 tons/year in 2030. Even more revealing is that "Highway Diesel" is projected to contribute 0.8% of the total anthropogenic PM2.5 in 2020 and 0.5% in 2030. When is EPA going to start to focus on the other 99.5% of anthropogenic PM2.5?
CARB is the tail wagging the EPA dog, and they have an anti-diesel agenda, as evidenced by the truck rule. Still the EPA new standards seem pretty good. They really single out 6 MSAs where particulates are high. One of them - Chicago - is high because of old coal plants, but the worst of these are already scheduled to close before implementation date. In Houston diesel particulates were major contributors, and perhaps routing truck traffic around the city may help. Then again here in texas, we don't seem to want to raise the fuel taxes to pay for new or expanded roads. In Austin as well, routing trucks on the new toll road that goes around the city would help, but they likely won't remove the tolls to get the truck traffic. LA is simply a mess no matter how you slice it.
Bummer for Diesel passenger cars. Misdirected legislation pisses me off. I totally agree, but here's the crux of the issue. Their hands are politically tied because [probably] all the Congressmen are in big [polluting] companies pockets. As soon as the corruption gets tempered, the obvious sources of pollution can be reigned in. In the meantime, the general public gets screwed out of some amazing Diesel offerings the RoW gets to enjoy.
