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Diesel Background & Highlights

America's 13 million diesels – buses, trucks, trains, ships, and construction equipment – are, next to power plants, the nation's largest source of particulate matter soot air pollution. Heavy diesel is also a major driver of climate change, representing about 40% of the nation's "black carbon" emissions – a global warming agent that, pound for pound, is estimated to be 200 times more potent than CO2 – and 24% of the nitrogen oxides that lead to ozone smog. While the U.S. EPA will impose tighter emissions rules on new diesel engines starting in 2007, these regulations will do nothing on their own to address the widespread air quality and global warming impacts of the current fleet of heavy diesel vehicles, whose polluting engines typically last 30 years or more.

CATF's State Diesel Initiative was launched in 2002 to address the growing public health and climate change threat represented by this serious regulatory gap. Using a strategy that combines the latest science with grassroots action, campaigns in states such as Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut are focused on prodding local, state, and regional agencies to implement engine-retrofit, reduced idling, in-use testing, and other policies that, if duplicated nationwide, could reduce existing U.S. diesel emissions by 50-85 percent or more over the next 20 years.

• CATF and its partner groups released Diesel and Health in America: The Lingering Threat, a report that quantifies for the first time diesel's toll on human health and the benefits of cleaning up the national diesel fleet.
• CATF and its partner groups released a new website: Diesel and Health in America: Diesel Soot Health Impacts


Above:Monitoring in CATF's Chicago project shows that retrofitted buses (magenta line) emits substantially less deadly soot - close to ambient background levels - than do conventional buses. Below: A diesel particulate filter may cost as little as $5,000 per bus and reduce diesel particulate by 90% or more.



• CATF and its partner groups in four states initiated diesel soot emissions monitoring projects that directly involve local community members – including school children – to measure pollution exposure during school bus rides and in the community at large. We have completed studies in Chicago, Atlanta and Detroit that were covered extensively by local media. The studies found and demonstrated that diesel exhaust exposures in existing conventional school buses can be substantial, but that tailpipe emissions in the cabin drop to nearly undetectable levels in buses using low sulfur fuel and retrofitted with particle traps. Read CATF's School Bus Particulate Matter Study.
• CATF has helped launch campaigns in Atlanta, New Jersey, and Ohio for diesel clean-up, and sustain earlier campaigns in Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Texas, and Connecticut. These campaigns scored some early victories: In Ohio and Georgia, the Cleveland and Atlanta schools agreed to work with our local allies, Ohio Environmental Council, and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, to advance retrofits and refueling options. In New Haven, the Mayor's office has agreed to work to develop a plan for transit and school bus retrofits. And in New York, the Governor has committed to retrofitting all the state's school buses. In New Jersey, legislation is pending that would require a 20 percent across-the-board reduction in diesel particulate matter.
• CATF has conducted extensive outreach with diesel engine and pollution control equipment companies like Caterpillar and Cummins, and with the Diesel Technology Forum, to explore how retrofit of the existing fleet might be best accomplished and to discuss potential cooperative activities.
• CATF designed a comprehensive plan for federal funding of state diesel retrofits, on which we briefed key Congressional decision-makers.