Contact: Doug Durante, Executive Director, Clean Fuels Development Coalition
Doug.Durante@cleanfuelsdc.org – 301-538-8830
Related Story: U.S. air quality was improving. Now it’s getting worse – Bloomberg – October 22, 2019
Washington, D.C. October 23, 2019 – Add fake air to fake gasoline and fake gasoline testing. Fake air quality testing is the latest chapter in Gasolinegate. The Gasolinegate Report chronicles how EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality and oil companies colluded to concoct designer fuels designed cheat vehicle emission tests (here’s the emails between EPA and Big Oil). Now data shows EPA’s air quality monitoring is not real-world either and the impact on public health is devastating.
The highest exposure to toxic pollution consumers are exposed to is likely in their car. People are exposed to 1.5 to 10 times higher pollution levels in their cars when compared to nearby monitoring stations that capture data for the U.S. EPA’s air monitoring system. Recent reports all conclude the real-world air consumers breathe at ground level in their cars and homes are worse than what EPA reports. The outcome is continued disease and death and skyrocketing healthcare costs – thus more taxes. So we hope consumers and the media will finally ask the obvious – most of the EPA’s pollution estimates are unreliable so why is everyone still using them?
Why has EPA resisted the use of real-time measurements—using real-world fuels under real-world driving conditions? The European Union learned their lesson with Dieselgate and moved beyond fake fuels, fake fuel and vehicle testing and fake air quality monitoring. Yet the EPA still relies on a manipulated and defective MOVES Model to “help” states clean up their air and automakers clean up their vehicles.
The critical piece of the puzzle that appears to have escaped the experts and media is that the most immediate and cost-effective solution to this worsening public health hazard is to fix the fuel – and that will fix the vehicle. For example, increasing the octane to 100 RON would enable automakers to increase thermal efficiency and reduce greenhouse gases by 7% (see Ford date in appendix H).
Our mission is to educate policymakers, the media, and the public about this simple fact. The means of achieving these elusive public health and environmental benefits exists in the form of a mandatory provision that EPA refuses to enforce – and the stroke of the presidential pen that can fix it (#DearMrPresident).
The evidence for cleaning up gasoline to saves lives and money continues to mount in the media. Saving the planet is important, but we need to “Save the Humans” first – or the later won’t matter.
- Air toxics from gasoline kill and so does climate change. The Most Detailed Map of Auto Emissions in America, By Nadja Popovich and Denise Lu, Oct. 10, 2019 – Transportation is the largest source of planet-warming greenhouse gases in the United States today and the bulk of those emissions come from driving in our cities and suburbs.
- In Climate Action, Don’t Neglect Air Pollution, Oct 7, 2019 – Annual deaths from US air pollution (about 90,000) today are still higher than deaths from car accidents (44,000) and homicides (20,000). The air pollution problem is still so large, it actually offers a better rationale for transitioning to cleaner energy than even climate change.
- VIDEO: Who breathes the most pollution on the school run? The air quality inside cars was 44% over the limit. Children runners in the same neighborhood were inhaling the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes per week.
- Children’s School Bus Exposure and Mitigation Studies found that after trying to clean up the diesel they still found the high concentrations of pollutants already present on roadways, especially if traffic was heavy; the direct influence of other vehicles being followed, had a direct impact.
- EPA can’t but Minnesota will track urban air pollution by ZIP code, Jennifer Bjorhus Star Tribune, October 10, 2019. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) aimed at understanding the relationship between common air contaminants and public health effects, such as asthma and early deaths, broadening the state’s effort to tackle the issue known as health equity. Minnesota “has some of the largest health disparities in the country,” according to the state’s second “Life and Breath” report released in June
- CFDC Calls on Particulate Panel to Recognize Dangers of Mobile Source Toxics: President Trump dumped the EPA advisory panel on particulate pollution (in case you want to know why) but they reconvened to continue their work to blow the whistle on the need for air quality improvements to save lives because What’s In Our Gasoline is Killing Us.
- Air Pollution Is Linked to Miscarriages in China: A new study adds to growing evidence of the negative health effects of air pollution on pregnant women and their fetuses. In the United States alone, 48.9 million people (1 out of 5) have at least one form of disability. From physical impairments to mental ones, these challenges pose limitations on their lives and the world’s accessibility. Add that to the true price of gasoline.
- If Warren [or other presidential candidates] want to elevate environmental justice, they need to start by cleaning up gasoline and that needs to start by cleaning up EPA.
- An article in The Guardian Revealed: air pollution may be damaging every organ in the body, work by Dr. Schraufnagel connects this body of work directly to each one of ours.
What’s it going to take to unleash Gasolinegate? Let us know at safe.gasoline@cleanfuelsdc.org
Why is it that after 50,000 people die each year from transportation fuels Consumers Still Don’t Know Jack about What’s in Their Gasoline – and EPA won’t tell them?