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Cars and Atmospheric Pollution

Car Manufacturing and Disposal Pollution

Reduce your Impact

Clean Air Legislation

Why Go Electric?

The typical American devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gas, tolls, insurance, taxes and tickets.

source: www.carbusters.org

Exhaust fumes cause acid air, pollution, cancer, lead-poisoning and a variety of bronchial and respiratory illnesses. The average car emits a cocktail of more than 1,000 pollutants.

Tetraethyl Lead: added to fuel to increase the output power of the engine. It is extremely toxic and can effect almost any organ of the body. Low level exposure over a long period most commonly effects the nervous system and blood. Can impair the mental abilities of children. 7 out of 10 children in Mexico City have had their development stunted by lead poisoning from cars.

Benzene: occurs naturally in crude oil. High benzene crudes sometimes added to fuel to improve the properties of premium unleaded gasoline. Highest concentration levels outdoors are in urban areas, and especially near gas stations, gas tanks and benzene producing/handling industries. Effects: a proven carcinogen. Studies on benzene-exposed workers show statistically significant association to acute leukemia. No safe level of airborne benzene can be recommended, as benzene is carcinogenic to humans and there is no known safe threshold level.

• Carbon Monoxide: cars are the major source of carbon monoxide, accounting for over 65 percent of emissions. Effects: one of the most directly toxic substances, it affects human health by impairing the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood causing impaired perception, slowing reflexes and drowsiness. It can increase occurrence of headaches and effects the central nervous system, the heart and the transference of blood around the body. In large doses, it is fatal.

• Nitrogen Dioxide: Effects humans and plants, reducing growth and causing lesions in sensitive crops, while in humans causing irritation to the respiratory tract, reducing lung function and possibly increasing susceptibility to viral infections.

• Nitric Oxide and Nitrogen Dioxide: together play major role in formation of acid rain and are thought to contribute up to half of the acidification of rain. About 47 percent of nitrogen oxides come from road vehicles. They also contribute to the formation of ground level ozone, affect the acidification of soil and cause changes in ground flora—the development of nitrogen loving species at the expense of other species—and the over development of micro-flora in seas and lakes, creating a lack of oxygen in the water which kills wildlife.

• Low Level Ozone: The production of ozone is an indirect consequence of car pollution. It results from photochemical reactions between hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides. Ozone is the main ingredient in photochemical smog, which effects eye irritation, headaches, coughing, impaired lung function and eye, nose and throat irritation. Asthmatics and children are most at risk. On a single bad day in Athens the smog can kill 8 people and send up to 200 people to hospital. Background levels of tropospheric ozone are thought to have doubled in the northern hemisphere over the past century. Ozone is also the single most important pollutant affecting vegetation. It damages food crops, particularly potatoes, tomatoes, wheat and spinach, with leaf diseases. This causes farmers to switch to less sensitive crops, leading to loss of biodiversity. Ozone damage also affects forests in America and Europe—pines and larch are particularly sensitive.

• Sulfurous Emissions: cause soil and water acidification, damage to plants (especially trees, mosses and certain lichens), and smog.
  
  A WHO report found that long term air pollution from cars in Austria, Switzerland and France triggered an extra 21,000 premature deaths per year from respiratory or heart diseases—more than the total number of annual traffic deaths in the three countries.

The Institute for European Environmental Policy has published a report showing that car drivers breathe in up to three times more toxic exhaust fumes than pedestrians or cyclists. Cars do not protect drivers from pollution, as motorists are driving in a "tunnel of pollution." Car drivers in the center or outside lanes are subject to a huge buildup of toxic gases. Cyclists and pedestrians who stay close to the curb avoid the worst of the pollution as they are not in the pollution tunnel.