Guardian of Mistakes
As the price of oil continues to rise, low-emission diesel cars are being seen as a cheaper, greener alternative, and demand is soaring. But there are fears that the fuel’s health dangers are being ignored. John Vidal reports
Breathe deep outside Ford’s new engine plant at Dagenham in east London and you are likely to choke on a mix of pollutants. Minute flecks of soot and ash from the clogged traffic on the nearby A13 get up your nose and down into your lungs; acrid whiffs of burning sulphur and nitrogen
Nitrogen is really rather un-reactive and can’t really be described as flammable; it also comprises about 80% of the atmosphere at ground level….
drift in from ships on the Thames and planes flying into City airport; and nearby sewage works and power stations all pitch in to make a foul atmospheric soup. Postcode RM9 6SA stinks.
But it is another world inside the factory. While Ford Dagenham makes Jeremy Clarkson-approved, gas-guzzling, V8 turbo-powered petrol engines for Land Rover and Jaguar cars in the traditional dirty way,
No petrol engines are made in Dagenham; the last was several years ago, and this was an inline 4 cylinder 2.3 litre. The last “large” petrol engine with a turbo was probably built there as part of the WWII war-effort and ended up in an armoured vehicle (link).
a separate area of the factory, about the size of six football pitches, is quite spotless. Here, breathing only filtered air, 500 people wearing gloves, masks and special shoes turn out vast numbers of low-emission car engines for all Europe. “It’s like a hospital, but without the MRSA,” says one of the men on the factory floor. “We don’t even have to start the engines. We simulate running them without any fuel.”
….
Europe’s cleanest, and one of its largest, diesel engine factory can barely keep up with new orders. Ford, which sells one in six of all the vehicles in Britain, last year built 150,000 low-emission diesel engines for the European market. This year, it will be over 450,000, and in 2009 it expects to ship 575,000 of these sub-130 gram per kilometre (g/km) engines out of Dagenham to assembly works in Spain and Germany. Nearly one in four of the engines will come back to Britain as Ford Fiestas, Fusions and Focuses. Some already do 65 miles per gallon (mpg), but later this year there will be models that return 70-plus mpg. All will qualify for London’s new low-emission zone, and an attractive government tax break.
Not being incorrect here, but certainly not imparting useful info as none of the above-mentioned cars are even affected by the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) [link].
…Britain expects diesel emissions to grow by about 50% between 2002 and 2020, but the relentless drive away from petrol has one major downside, overlooked by the government, ignored by many environment groups and barely known by the public. A written answer last year by then transport minister Stephen Ladyman showed that diesel engines for passenger cars produce 16.9 times more particulate matter and over 83% more nitrogen oxides than the petrol equivalents, albeit with 4.3% less carbon dioxide.
Indeed, the rise of diesel engines is the principal reason why London and possibly other UK cities have breached legal air quality legislation every year since 2005. Air pollution near many of London’s busiest roads averages well over twice the World Health Organisation’s maximum recommended levels.
Concern centres on particulate pollution - the tiny specks of dust, ash or soot spewed out by vehicles, homes and industry. There are, says the government, more than 1,000 premature deaths a year in London from air pollution, and there is considerable evidence that particulate pollution from diesel engines is associated with death, and admissions to hospital for the treatment of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and asthma. Transport for London’s consultation for the the capital’s low-emission zone showed that 1,392,000 people were affected by breaches of EU legal limits for particulate matter in 2005.
“Diesel emissions from road transport are by far the biggest single cause of air quality legal breaches,” says Simon Birkett, chair of the cross-party Campaign for Clean Air in London. He urges mayor Johnson and the government to take radical action to meet the demands of the new EU air quality directive, which is due to come into force very shortly and will require the UK to achieve much higher air quality standards for emissions of particulates by 2011.
“Unless the government sets, belatedly and soon, national standards for the abatement of emissions of oxides of nitrogen from older diesel vehicles of all main types, these vehicles must be banned from the most polluted parts of London if the UK is to comply with air quality laws,” Birkett says. He wants to see all car advertisements show, in grams per kilometre, the emissions of the hazardous oxides of nitrogen and particulate matter, as well as carbon dioxide emissions.
Inevitable trade-offs
There is a real danger, he says, that in the rush to achieve carbon dioxide targets, other forms of pollution that can be highly injurious to health may be ignored or compromised. “Air pollution needs to be tackled holistically, with sensible judgments being made in the inevitable trade-offs between air quality and climate change,” Birkett says.
“A classic example is the latest Department for Transport’s CO2 calculator, which is likely to encourage people to choose cars with diesel engines because of their small climate change advantage, even though they generate substantially more of the hazardous particulate matter and nitrogen oxides. We should question whether there is still a place for diesel engines in large cities while there is such a serious public health problem.”
Back in Dagenham, Ford keeps a collection of its finest old models. Pride of place goes to a pristine Model T Ford, circa 1908. It still does 25 miles to the diesel gallon, more than many of the gas guzzling engines that Ford makes.
Errrm, a diesel Model T? That’s quite rare. Very rare in fact. Try searching with google for a mention of one and you won’t find one. (What’s a diesel gallon? Is it different from a petrol one?)
Ironically, its diesel engine was designed to be driven on vegetable oil, and, 100 years on, its particulate emissions would have been significantly less than almost any engine the factory now makes.
What utter shit. Mr Vidal is living in a dream-world if he thinks a diesel engine built in 1908 has a cleaner exhaust than one of the engines being currently being shelled out of the factory by the Thames. Look at wikipedia for how much tighter the car emission regulations have been getting of late!
That a pseudo-scientific article can be so badly informed is dismaying. That many readers will believe its inaccuracies is inevitable. Be careful out there kids!
