"Accounts of Chemical Research" is a chemical journal usually devoted to
reviews of basic research in chemistry. The November issue (1996, Vol.29,
p.489, "Measuring the Emmisions of Passing Cars") contains a great report
on measuring pollutants from cars by "on-road remote sensing". The good
part is that it is based purely on scientific experimental results, not
some policiticians idea of a way to make Greenpeace happy.
Here's part of the conclusions:
"To our surprise, our data, USEPA data, indeed all the data we could find,
showed half the pollution from less than 10% of the vehicles. These
vehicles we call gross polluters. Very few new cars are gross polluters
(about 1% of 2-year-old cars), but for even the oldest cars (1974 and
older, all without catalysts) the majority (60%) are *not* gross polluters.
When a distribution this skewed is observed, it is easy to justify an air
pollution program which identifies the gross polluters and targets them for
treatment. IT IS CORRESPONDINGLY HARD TO JUSTIFY PROGRAMS WHICH TREAT ALL
CARS AS EQUAL (oxygenated fuels, periodic mandatory emission testing,
ride-sharing, etc.)" [emphasis mine]
[...] "20% of the early 1970s, noncatalyst cars have *lower* emissions than
the broken 1990s cars." [...] "The large difference between the
low-emitting cars and the high-emitting cars is thus shown to be caused by
poor maintenance/tampering." (and it goes on to imply that well-maintained
older cars, i.e. YOU AND ME, are certainly not the proper targets for
pollution controls.)
This is real science, friends. (As opposed to "junk science" --- see the
"Junk Science Home Page" at http://www.junkscience.com/ --- one of my
favorite sources of foolishness!!)
Measuring the emissions of passing cars works pretty well. Now if my kids
can just find a way to measure the emissions of passing Dad after my
favorite meal of fajitas with frijoles...
Lee M. Daniels Laboratory for Molecular Structure and Bonding
daniels@tamu.edu Texas A&M University
'74 TR6 '77 MGB
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