Home
«	A Cleaner Clunker?	Downside of Organic Produce?	»

Dear Umbra,

Steve

Dearest Steve,

Let's recall some stale high school stereotypes: the cruel football player and the catty cheerleader. Diesel oil is the football player — big, strong, lunk-headed, unwashed, and mean. Gasoline is the cheerleader: slimmer, well-groomed, and socially manipulative. They're both toxic to the school atmosphere, but people are more inclined to avoid the bully, because he is more immediately physically hazardous.

In California, diesel exhaust is listed as a known carcinogen, is the most significant source of airborne toxins, and accounts for 70 percent of the cancer risk from air pollution. So, we can see what your neighbors to the south think of your decision.

As for the refining process: When you refine a barrel of crude oil, you get some gasoline, some diesel, and some other stuff, including such nasties as chlorinated wastewater and the gaseous chemical byproducts of combustion. It's all the same process, so you can't avoid the manufacture of diesel by buying only gasoline. The toxics created by oil refineries are bad for the environment at large and disproportionately affect the people -- mainly poor people — who live nearby. Good ol' Environmental Defense gives a pithy description of the environmental impact of refineries and suggestions for actions to get them cleaned up.

Although refinery pollution is bad, pollution from vehicles is considered a more pressing environmental issue, as most of us are closer to the tailpipe than to the smoke stack. As we toodle along the road, our tailpipe exhales carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and sulfur dioxide. Such chemicals bring us ozone, particulate matter, acid rain, nitrification of water bodies, respiratory ailments, lung disease, cancer, smog, and of course climate change; these are the shadows that trail behind our cars.

Diesel engines are more culpable than gasoline on almost all counts. This is in part because diesel is dirtier. Also, gasoline-powered engines have been targeted for cleanup in the past several decades, with regulatory standards such as unleaded gas and the catalytic converter resulting in somewhat cleaner emissions. Diesel is just beginning that process, but currently, the allowable emissions from diesel exhaust are rather horrifying.

By way of summation, all diesel cars are considered 'inferior' in the ACEEE's Green Book, mentioned above. I feel this may not be welcome news to you. My apologies.

Yours truly,

Umbra

[Originally appeared in Grist Magazine]

Home
«	A Cleaner Clunker?	Downside of Organic Produce?	»