EPA to cut air pollution from off-road diesel vehicles
Date: 17-Apr-03
Country: USA
Author: Chris Baltimore
The Environmental Protection Agency will require fuel refiners to produce cleaner diesel, and will order manufacturers to build engines that strip out more harmful particles in emissions linked to asthma and other serious respiratory ailments.
The agency said in a statement that its proposal, to be unveiled by EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman later this week, will "achieve enormous air quality improvements throughout the country."
The EPA will have to finalize the rules at a later date before they take effect.
The rules will apply to 1 million vehicles that operate off-road, including bulldozers, tractors, portable generators, forklifts and aircraft service equipment.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, hailed the rules as the biggest public health advance in a generation. Richard Kassel, an attorney for the group, said the proposal was similar in impact to the EPA's decision in the 1980s to remove lead additive from automobile gasoline.
The EPA drafted the rules in consultation with large fuel refiners and environmental groups.
Last year, the EPA unveiled rules to cut diesel emissions from trucks, automobiles and on-road vehicles by 90 percent by 2007.
The rules for off-road vehicles were expected to cut emissions beginning in 2007, with full reductions reached by 2010.
Studies show that the new rules could prevent about 9,500 premature deaths a year and reduce asthma and other respiratory ailments linked to the air particles contained in emissions.
Equipment that will be affected by the new rules make up less than 5 percent of the U.S. vehicle fleet but accounts for about 30 percent of sulfur emissions. By 2007, off-road sources will emit about 70 percent of all vehicle-related soot, according to the National Resources Defense Council.
Urban areas with heavy road construction like Atlanta and Houston are especially plagued by dirty exhaust from those sources.
The new rules will require fuel refiners to produce diesel with a sulfur content of 500 parts per million (ppm), down from about 3,000 ppm currently, starting in 2007, according to environmental groups who were briefed on the EPA plan.
Yearly reductions would take sulfur content down to 15 ppm by 2010.
The EPA plan will also require manufacturers to reconfigure diesel engines with better devices to remove exhaust particles.