[email protected] "More than half the cars now sold each year run on diesel. They presently make up a third of the total car fleet, compared with just 7.4 per cent only nine years ago. The dramatic rise has been explicitly encouraged because they emit slightly less carbon dioxide than their petrol-driven counterparts. And big environmental groups that used to campaign noisily against them have remained largely silent, possibly because of their overwhelming, if understandable, concern with climate change. This is a serious matter. Tiny particulates, one of the two most serious pollutants emitted from car exhausts, are officially calculated to kill 29,000 people a year, over 10 times as many as die in car accidents, in a toll only exceeded by smoking. And the Government’s Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollution has also suggested that they may play a part in 200,000 more deaths. No one has yet worked out a similar fatality figure for the other big danger from exhausts, nitrogen dioxide, but it is strongly linked with asthma, and a major 25-city study has suggested that living near main urban roads could account for up to 30 per cent of all new cases of the disease in children. Much the worst problem is in London, shamefully the European capital city most polluted by nitrogen dioxide. Vehicles are responsible for half of this pollutant, and 80 per cent of the particulates, in London air. And of these – according to a groundbreaking report by Policy Exchange, the Prime Minister’s favourite think tank, last year – no less than 91 per cent of the particulates and 95 per cent of the nitrogen dioxide come from diesel exhausts. Nor is this all. Last year the World Health Organisation officially designated diesel fumes as a cause of cancer alongside asbestos and plutonium. And the most deadly particulates are largely made of black carbon, which is emerging as one of the most important causes of global warming. So the saving in carbon dioxide emissions is almost certainly outweighed. Instead of combating climate change, the dash to diesel is likely to be making it worse."
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 14:41:12 +0000
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