Group Highlights Diesel Danger
By Riley Yates
WASHINGTON, Oct. 03, 2002–One in 3,250 New Hampshire residents may get cancer because of outdoor air pollution, with most of that risk produced by diesel soot in the air, according to a study released Thursday by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a consumer rights watchdog.
That puts New Hampshire well below the national average of one in 2,100.and puts it 28th among the 49 states (excluding Alaska) covered in the survey of potential cancer risk from air pollution.
The Clean Air Act of 1990 established the margin of safety for cancer risk from carcinogens at one in 1 million, said the study, which used Environmental Protection Agency data. The New Hampshire rate is 308 times higher than that standard.
The study blamed diesel emissions for much of the outdoor air pollution. In New Hampshire, the study said, diesel soot produces 88 percent of the carcinogens in the air.
More than half of diesel soot pollution comes from construction, industrial and farm vehicles that do not use the roads, the study said.
Emissions standards for those vehicles are much more lax than the standards for other vehicles, Emily Figdore, the clean air advocate for U.S. PIRG, said at a press conference Thursday.
The EPA in 2001 required that diesel fuel emissions for trucks and buses be reduced by 90 percent by 2010, Figdore said. They should ask the same of non-road diesel vehicles, she said.
“We see a great urgency to cleaning up these engines,” Figdore said.
Josh Irwin, the director of the New Hampshire PIRG, agreed, and said he hoped the Bush administration would maintain the EPA’s 2010 deadline for reducing truck and bus emissions.
Irwin suggested that New Hampshire work on its own to adopt more rigorous clean vehicle standards similar to those in place in most other New England states.
He said the current emissions standards in New Hampshire are “locked in place” until 2007. But, he added, “if we’re going to move to that tougher standard, we’re going to have to start working on it now.”
He said that given New Hampshire’s location and size, though, federal regulations are required, since much of New Hampshire’s pollution is blown in from other states. Weather patterns, he said, circulate pollution into the state from as far away as Ohio.
Allen Schaeffer, the executive director of Diesel Technology Forum– which represents oil and natural gas companies such as British Petroleum, as well as engine manufacturers– took issue with the report’s focus.
“The industry has made very significant progress” toward reducing emissions, Schaeffer said. Engines today, he said, pollute much less than those built even a dozen years ago.
He said he thought the lower standards for non-road vehicles reflected that they are used for heavy-duty work.
“The average person in Manchester would recognize the difference in a bulldozer and a delivery truck,” he said.
Gary Abbott, the executive vice president of the Bow-based Associated General Contractors of New Hampshire, highlighted the small number of construction vehicles compared to cars.
When deciding admissions standards, Abbott said, it must be borne in mind that “there’s only one bulldozer for X number of automobiles.”
Abbott said he would be concerned that new standards might lead to companies “putting useful equipment to rest.”
Published in The Manchester Union Leader, in New Hampshire.
