Also discussed here: Transcript of “File On 4” – “Diesel Pollution” (20 page pdf, British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4, Aug. 7, 2012)
Today we review a broadcast on the BBC that includes interviews with leading British scientists involved with monitoring air quality, vehicle emissions and their impacts on health. Among several startling assertions is the observation that 40 out of 43 assessment zones fail to meet Euro 5 standards. Also, despite attempts by manufacturers to reduce diesel exhaust tail pipe emissions by improved filters, nitrogen dioxide emissions have increased five times due to start and stop driving and idling in increasingly congested
urban areas.
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Key Quotes:
“While local measures to combat air pollution don't come cheap, it's the impact of bad air on health that costs the taxpayer most. Britain has the second highest death rates from some common respiratory diseases”
“Modern diesel vehicles, to attempt to clean up the emissions of particles, they have had particle filters added and these are there with a primary purpose of reducing the tail pipe emissions of particles…But in urban driving conditions, with lots of stop-start driving and emissions during idling phases, they're not effective and therefore emissions of oxides of nitrogen are much higher”
“at how many other sites in the city are the EU limit values being breached, do you think? PARRY: All the sites that we‟ve got on main arterial roads into the city, there's problems with the nitrogen dioxide”
“a major or the major factor prompting bronchiolitis among babies in the winter here is nitric oxide and most of it comes from vehicles? EVERARD: That would be our expectation”
“Forty out of the UK‟s forty-three assessment zones are failing to meet EU targets”
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