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End game

  • 14/02/1998

For a city which is choking on the vomit of its vehicles, the recent auto exposition in Delhi was grotesque. The exposition revealed trends which will make matters much worse for our air and health. It is not just the sheer number of brands which will hit the Indian market but the fact that a large proportion of new vehicles will be fuelled on diesel. Dirty, toxic and highly subsidised diesel.

Indians want mobility on the cheap. Industry wants to maximise its profits. The cost to our health does not figure in their balance sheets. Nor in the minds of our mindless regulators. Only in India can we have such a vile, double-faced game being played out in public. On one hand, industry cries out its commitment to our health using its advertising clout. Government goes on a rampage checking the backsides of city vehicles. On the other hand, an insidious shift is taking place in the automobile sector which will make breathing even more dangerous. The government and industry are partners in this effort. But it suits them to keep the public deluded.

Just look at the new vehicle plans. Diesel, which is subsidised in the name of the poor, is going to fuel the brand new TELCO sizzler, which Ratan Tata proudly unveiled at the fair. TELCO, which already produces diesel cars, is now planning the ultimate "car with the poor person's fuel", a deluxe model called Safari, to be priced at a modest Rs 7.5 lakh. Maruti is planning diesel lines for Zen and the Gypsy. Mercedes-Benz already has a diesel version. Ambassador is completely on diesel production. In the three-wheeler sector, Greaves has come out with Garuda, which is diesel-driven. Afraid of losing its market share, Bajaj Auto has just announced its R E Diesel, its own killer autorickshaw fuelled on diesel. Industry will argue that diesel is a "green fuel".

This is total nonsense. Not only is Indian diesel one of the dirtiest in the world, there is worldwide concern about the toxicity of diesel emissions. Because of government subsidy, diesel consumption has grown by 42 per cent between 1991-92 and 1995-96. Indian diesel is the cheapest in the world, and remains so even after the nominal hike in prices this year.

Diesel exhaust produces large amounts of particulate matter (PM) from unburnt fuel, lubricating oil and from sulphur in the fuel. Particulate matter from diesel vehicles is coated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), which are carcinogenic. And what is better understood now is that it is not only the amount of particulate matter but the size of the particulate matter which makes it deadly. There is now evidence that diesel particulate emissions are extremely small which go straight into our lungs. Till about a year ago, scientists were concerned with PM 10s (particulate matter less than 10 microns or less). Just remember, one micron is a millionth of a metre. But today, the concern is more about PM 2.5 - smaller than 2.5 microns - which are very fine particles capable of penetrating deep into the respiratory tract.

As much as 90 per cent of particulate emissions of diesel are PM 10s. These particles have been associated with both premature mortality - death from respiratory and cardiovascular disorders - and increased morbidity - high incidence of chronic obstructive lung diseases, especially bronchitis. According to a World Bank report, a study documenting health and non-health related air pollution damages from various fuels in Asia found diesel to have the highest social costs per tonne of fuel. Recent research in PM emissions from vehicle sources, reveals that even state of the art diesel - with sulphur levels of 0.05 per cent - produced 20 times higher particulate matter than petrol. According to Michael Walsh, a former director of the United States Environment Protection Agency, diesel particulate matter has been found to be carcinogenic by the Air Resources Board of California and the World Health Organisation.

In Japan, a nitrated PAH was recently discovered in diesel fuel, which is suspected to be the strongest carcinogen discovered till date. Another powerful mutagen known to exist in the diesel exhaust is 1,8 dinitropyrene. Worse, in the case of diesel vehicles, technology for controlling killer emissions is still in a preliminary stage. Europe, which has a higher proportion of diesel-run vehicles than the US - where only 1 per cent of the vehicle fleet is dieselised - is in the process of setting higher standards for diesel vehicles for the year 2000 and 2005, so called Euro Step III and Step IV. And, under its proposed standards, nitrogen oxide (NOx) from diesel is three times higher than petrol because technology for controlling NOx from diesel has not worked yet. In the case of diesel, the presence of sulphur limits the overall usefulness of catalytic converters.

Consider the situation in India. Firstly, the quality of fuel is abominable. Sulphur is the primary cause of pollution from diesel. And the relationship between particulates and sulphur levels is linear, that is, for every 100 ppm (parts per million) reduction in sulphur, there is a 0.16-0.8 percent reduction in particulate emissions. Indian diesel has one per cent by weight of sulphur content and after a lot of chest beating, the petroleum industry has accepted that it will bring down sulphur to 0.25 per cent, as against world standards of 0.05 per cent. Even neighbouring Thailand has diesel with 0.05 per cent of sulphur. Sweden, in fact, produces 'urban diesel' with 0.001 per cent sulphur. In 2000, Indian diesel will be 250 times worse than the best diesel available today. And nobody uses as much diesel as we do in comparison to petrol.

Secondly, we have no standards for controlling particulate matter as yet. The first standards have been set are for the year 2001. But the standards we have adopted for 2001 are essentially Euro I standards. That is, standar

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