Home › Contributors › Rich Kassel › Back to School Special: Free Diesel Fumes in Class

Rich Kassel's Blog

Back to School Special: Free Diesel Fumes in Class

September 3, 2008

Posted by Rich Kassel in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment , U.S. Law and Policy

Tags:

diesel, epa, simplesteps, smartgrowth, universityofcincinnati, urbanplanning, urbanpollution

 An important, new study just came out that addresses the effect of urban planning and road development on the health risk of students attending schools near major roadways.  

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati looked at the proximity of public school students and major highways in nine large Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) around the country.  In sum, they found that more than 30 percent of the students in these MSAs went to schools that were within 400 meters of a major roadway and more than 10 percent went to schools that were less than 100 meters than a highway.  For some MSAs, almost half of the student population attended schools near major roadways, resulting in a potentially increased risk for asthma and other chronic respiratory problems.  

The authors concluded that proximity of major roadways should be an important factor in considering sites for new schools and developing policies for reducing the exposure in existing schools.

I think this is only half the story.  

Sure, we need to do a better job coordinating future urban development, transportation and environmental policies.  We must do this.

But we also have to speed up the replacement or retrofitting of the older, smoking diesel buses that service these schools and the trucks that pass by on all of those nearby highways.

Here’s why:

Despite one EPA rule that lowered smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) by 40 percent in 2004 (and a consent decree that required most engine makers to start selling those engines in October 2002) and another EPA rule that reduced diesel NOx by another 40-50 percent and particulate soot by 90 percent in 2007, more than half of all of the trucks and buses on the roads predate both of these rules and the consent decree.  

From the perspective of eliminating the diesel soot particles that can trigger asthma attacks and other emergencies, the picture is even worse.  We don’t have bombproof data yet, but it’s safe to say that at least 80 percent of the trucks and buses on the roads today lack the particulate filters that became standard equipment in 2007, thanks to the latest EPA diesel rule.  These filters are the only technology that removes almost all of the fine particulate soot from the tailpipes of today’s diesel engines.  

And, here’s another important piece of information: According to EPA and other studies, every dollar spent to retrofit an existing diesel engine with a particulate filter yields $12-16 in health benefits.  It’s hard to find an example of a more cost-effective pollution expenditure.

As we look to ensure that the diesel problem actually gets solved anytime soon (as compared to waiting 30 years or more for all of today's dirty-yet-durable diesels to die a natural death and be replaced by engines that meet the 2007 or upcoming 2010 standards), as we think about how to best spend transportation and air pollution-related moneys in the next transportation funding bill that Congress will consider next year, and as we think about how to incorporate what we know about diesel exhaust into what planners, governments and developers are doing with smart growth and related land use issues, accelerating the clean-up of the existing diesels should not fall off the radar screen.

• permalink

Comments are closed for this post.

© Natural Resources Defense Council