Deadly diesel
State, county, suffer from worst diesel particle pollution in nation

by Jim Gordon Highland Mid Hudson Post Wednesday, March 3, 2005

New York leads the nation in premature deaths because of diesel pollution, according to a report issued Feb. 22 by an environmental group using the same methodology as the federal government in compiling such data.
And seemingly bucolic Ulster County is among the most polluted in the state and nation when it comes to toxic particulates emitted by diesel engines.
But the complexity and uncertainty of the issue were illustrated last week, when a Woodstock woman asked a Trailways bus driver why he was idling his machine longer than the five minutes called for in state regulations. She was not allowed to ride the bus.
The study by the Washington-based Clean Air Task Force estimates 2,332 New Yorkers per year die prematurely from breathing tiny particles, or soot, from diesel engines. An estimated 1,767 are residents of New York City and another 182 are Long Islanders. The remaining premature deaths are spread throughout the state.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency considers that one cancer death per million is an "acceptable risk" - that's the threshold to which it aspires in setting clean air regulations. However in Ulster, cancers from diesel particulates occur at a rate of one per 3,885, a risk more than 250 times greater than the official acceptable risk.
That risk, 257 cancer cases from diesel soot per million deaths, is far greater than the 37 deaths per million attributed to all other forms of air pollution in Ulster County combined.
Looked at another way, with the 100th percentile being the worst, Ulster County is in the 85th percentile of counties nationally, ranking 440th of the 3,109 counties in the nation. And it ranks as 15th worst of the 62 counties in New York state, according to data from the American Lung Association of New York State, derived from the study by the Clean Air Task Force.
"I was a bit taken aback when I read the report and saw the statistics for death and disease in New York. But when I dug a little deeper into the data, I wasn't that surprised that diesel pollution is causing problems for upstate communities," said Peter Iwanowicz, director of environmental health for the American Lung Association of New York, in Albany. "We've seen the same thing with ozone and other fine particles in general."
"With diesel, it's a factor of commerce," said Iwanowicz. "It would be the growing building boom, with a lot of construction vehicles in the area and the influence of the increased truck traffic on the New York State Thruway."

POISON GAS
Diesel exhaust is a combination of harmful gases and particulates - including nitrogen oxides, heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons - a list that includes a stew of suspected carcinogens. It is often spewed as visible toxic particles from exhausts of heavy equipment, trucks and buses, but is dangerous even when unseen. It is particularly problematic because it is released at or near ground level, usually in heavily populated areas and along busy roads and streets.
The EPA has set new rules requiring much cleaner engines and fuel for diesel trucks and buses starting in 2006 and for off-road equipment in 2007. But those tough restrictions will apply only to new vehicles, while diesel equipment can last for decades and literally run for a million miles.
So officials with the Clean Air Task Force and other activists are pushing for retrofitting of the existing 13 million diesel engines, saying the technology is relatively cheap and readily available, and could reduce cancer deaths from diesel particulates by some 100,000 lives or more over the course of coming decades.
"There are 13 million diesel engines out there and none of those will be subject to the new rules .So our approach is to retrofit that whole fleet," said Bruce Hill, the senior scientist for the Clean Air Task Force He said the group has tested "two technologies that are readily available off the shelf." He said a particle air filter installed as part of a diesel's muffler and exhaust system costs "ballpark, about $5,000," on vehicles that cost upwards of $50,000 and said the retrofit reduces particle pollution by about 90 percent. He said diesel oxidation catalysts are less expensive but only reduce diesel particulates by about 20 percent.
He said the particle filter has shown itself to be extremely effective reducing diesel particulates and pollution in the cabins of buses, especially school buses. Diesel fumes often end up inside buses with the passengers when the bus is idling or making stops to pick up passengers.
Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum, said in a statement released the same day as the Clean Air Task Force report that diesel exhaust particulates account for only 4.3 percent of fine particulates nationally. Hill did not dispute those figures although he said he was not certain of the source of them. There is no source listed in the statement. But Hill suggested that figure is averaged over the entire landmass of the continent and said people living in cities or near roads suffer a much higher percentage of diesel pollution than that figure suggests.
In his statement, Schaffer said that: "The diesel industry agrees with the CATF conclusion that diesel emissions can be virtually eliminated by the application of emissions control strategies available today." He said the industry is working with the EPA "to expand the agency's voluntary retrofit program and identify new sources of incentive funding. More than 160,000 retrofits have occurred thanks to these and other efforts."

NOT GOING TO TAKE IT
But in Kingston the day the report was released an incident highlighted the complexities of urban living in pollution zones. Woodstock resident Dee Dee Halleck, noting the sign at the Kingston bus terminal reminding drivers that state Department of Environmental Conservation regulations requiring buses idle their engines for no more than five minutes, asked a driver of a Pine Hill Trailways bus why he had allowed his machine to run for the entire half-hour it had awaited its scheduled departure time. The driver summoned other Trailways officials and Halleck was not allowed to ride the bus.
"That was an incident between a passenger and us I don't think should be aired in the press, quite frankly," said Pine Hill vice president for transportation Paul Provost. But in general, he said, the fleet maintains its engines to among the highest standards in the nation, and said it must take into account passenger comfort when it decides whether to idle an engine while picking up passengers.
The company is on firm legal ground, according to DEC spokeswoman Wendy Rosenbach. "There is an exemption for passenger comfort over that five-minute idling limit," she said. "So if there are people on the bus, it is reasonable to keep running the bus to keep people comfortable, especially if it is very cold or very hot."
But Halleck still worries about the health effect from running the diesels, especially at the Kingston bus terminal on Washington Avenue, which has a large overhang that can accommodate two buses directly outside the door to the waiting room and ticket counter.
"There will be two buses under that overhang and they'll both be idling. So it [the diesel pollution] is contained in there and it goes right into the lungs of people who work or are waiting there. And when they open the [bus] door, they are sucking in all the exhaust so the air inside is diesel," said Halleck.

 

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