Boston Globe diesel editorial Press

Boston Globe editorial, 10.27.07

The Air is Everywhere

OF ALL 3,109 counties in the United States, only two have a higher risk of diesel soot pollution than the Boston area's Suffolk County. The fine particulate matter in diesel exhaust is blamed for cancer, heart attacks, strokes, asthma, and other respiratory ailments. Each year, diesel soot in the air we breathe causes 21,000 premature deaths in the nation, and 205 in Suffolk County alone. That's according to an analysis done for the advocacy group Clean Air Task Force by Abt Associates, which used the Environmental Protection Agency's methodology.

With the federal government still unwilling to lead a full crackdown on diesel emissions, Massachusetts should join other states in requiring state vehicles, and the vehicles of firms doing business with the state and local governments, to install filters that catch more than 90 percent of the soot.

Washington has not been completely negligent. This year, the EPA began requiring that new diesel-powered vehicles include emission-control equipment, and last year an EPA rule went into effect requiring that all diesel fuel sold be ultra-low sulfur. Even with the cleaner fuel, however, the country's existing 11 million diesel vehicles and generators continue to spew dangerous levels of pollutants.

Massachusetts has already put in place a $22.5 million program to install filters on all school and transit buses by 2010. The filters ensure cleaner air both inside and outside buses. Now state Senator Jack Hart of South Boston is cosponsoring a bill that would require filters on all state-owned, leased or contracted vehicles by 2011 and on all municipal-owned, leased or contracted waste haulers by 2012. The bill would also establish a special fund that would offer grants on a competitive basis for private-sector firms seeking to retrofit their fleets. Texas and California already have such funds. The filters can cost between $5,000 and $7,000.

Suffolk County is laced with interstates carrying diesel-powered trailer trucks. Making a significant dent in the emissions of interstate long-haul truck fleets will require action by the EPA. According to the Clean Air Task Force, the EPA has the authority under the Clean Air Act to force companies to install filters whenever they rebuild engines on the trucks. The engines are typically driven for up to 1 million miles and are rebuilt several times. The EPA should mandate retrofitting on rebuilt engines, much as it requires highly polluting power plants to install smokestack scrubbers whenever they are rebuilt.

Reducing diesel pollution across the board will involve both state and federal action. With 15 percent or more of children in many of the state's urban schools already diagnosed with asthma, Massachusetts has too much at stake to wait for Washington. The Legislature should act quickly to ensure that public-sector vehicles, at least, are part of the diesel solution and not the diesel problem.