New Delhi, January 22, 2004: While the recently concluded Auto Expo in Delhi touted green models run on alternative fuels, the city itself has resolutely kept – in fact, increased -- its distance from less-polluting cars. Right to Clean Air campaigners from the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), after surveying vehicle registrations done by the capital’s State Transport Authority, have unearthed a shocking and deadly trend: increasing numbers of Delhi residents are buying diesel cars. And these cars can kill. Recent disclosures about the cancer risk from diesel fumes are alarming (see the appended fact sheet).

There has been a veritable explosion in diesel passenger car registration in Delhi -- a shattering 106 per cent annual incremental increase since 1998-99 as against 12 per cent for petrol cars. The enticing gap in the prices of diesel and petrol is the lure: Delhi, with the highest per capita income among all the metros, has the lowest diesel prices. Government refuses to correct this distortion.

The share of diesel cars, a mere 4 per cent of the total new car registration in 1999, has climbed to 16 per cent in 2003. The bigger jeeps or SUVs, taken separately, show a growth rate of 18 per cent. Officials warn that the actual numbers of SUVs on Delhi’s road could be much higher due to their daily influx from the surrounding satellite towns. While public transport buses, three-wheelers and most taxis in Delhi have been effectively kept away from dirty diesel, it is the personal car segment which is riding high on the cheap and toxic fuel.

"This is very disturbing because deadly facts about diesel toxicity and evidence of the acute cancer-causing potential of diesel pollutants are pouring in from around the world. Diesel fumes have been found to bear a lot more particles than petrol exhaust and are several times more toxic. Most of the recent studies emanate from the US and Europe that have superior diesel fuels and technology" says Anumita Roychowdhury, Associate Director, coordinating Right To Clean Air campaign at CSE.

Our government, of course, remains oblivious to these reports and concerns. It is obsessed instead with giving sops – such as tax cuts for three consecutive years -- to the car industry. This, along with cheap diesel prices, has led to this deadly dieselisation of the small and medium car segment.

CSE had predicted this trend way back in 1998 and had called for restrictions on diesel car registration in the city. Around the same time, India had removed direct subsidy on diesel fuel, but had no policy to eliminate the cost advantages of diesel cars. Result: A whopping 300 per cent increase in diesel car models. Customers were hopelessly spoilt for choice.

Today, as the diesel mania hits the high road, our regulators flag Euro-II standards as adequate safeguard against the high health costs associated with diesel. They also swear by steps such as a combination of reduced sulphur levels (500 ppm to 350 ppm) and oxidation catalysts, ignoring the fact that these are likely to enhance the health risk from diesel emissions. These would oxidise almost all fuel sulphur. Even at the 350 ppm level, emissions of deadlier and more toxic sulphates would increase over engine out levels. This could be worse than diesel vehicles with oxidation catalysts. Sulphate emissions from the young, expanding fleet would be a large part of the total PM emissions, closely linked to the fuel’s sulphur content.

Regulator’s obsession with intermediate approaches like Euro-II and Euro-III standards will only serve to delay the process of getting clean diesel standards. Our regulators do nothing to warn us about the inconsistencies of European norms: successive stages of European standards, though tighter, are still lenient on diesel. Diesel vehicles are legally allowed to emit more NOx and PM compared to petrol vehicles – and this is the most serious of our worries. Euro-II norms allow diesel cars to emit 40 per cent more nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbon than corresponding petrol cars. Euro-IV norms allow diesel cars to emit three times more NOx than their petrol counterparts. As PM emissions from petrol cars are negligible it is not regulated.

Global warming concerns made some European countries to encourage diesel vehicles to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. But this is changing. In Germany while diesel technology has resulted in some carbon dioxide reduction benefits, it is estimated to result in 60 percent higher particulate emissions than previously projected for the year 2020. The emerging science now implicates particulates even for global warming. The future norms in Europe (Euro V and Euro VI) will be led by concerns over PM and NOx and are expected to be more stringent. Both US and Europe are taking aggressive action and setting stringent emissions targets to force innovation. The new US standards are 60 percent more stringent than the Euro IV standards that Europe is implementing from 2005. Near zero sulphur diesel and advanced emissions control technologies are the priority actions.

• Indian cities that have already moved to Euro II standards, and, facing serious threat of dieselisation, must implement Euro IV standards and 50 ppm sulphur fuels without delay.

• Implement the recommendations of the Raja Chelliah committee set up by the ministry of environment and forests immediately that seeks to eliminate cost advantages of diesel cars. The report proposes the regulator should levy a tax based on average costs that emissions from diesel vehicles inflict on the society. It further proposes an excise duty on diesel cars to neutralise its price advantage and an additional annual emission tax.
• Implement a fiscal policy to bring forward clean diesel standards in critically polluted cities of India. Or else, stop them. Public health cannot be taken for a ride on devil’s engines!

• U.S. studies have concluded that diesel particulate matter is responsible for 70% - 89% of the total cancer risk caused by air pollution in the U.S. A study by Environment and Human Health Incorporated on children’s exposure to diesel particulate matter on school buses found that PM2.5 levels measured on school buses were often 5-10 times the levels recorded at monitoring sites, with the worst measurements recorded when school buses were idling to pick up and drop off children. Due to their smaller size, children breathe proportionately more air than adults – nearly 50% more per unit of body weight - further increasing their inhalation of diesel particulate matter. Because children’s organs and respiratory and immune systems are still developing, they may have increased sensitivity to diesel particulate matter. (Wargo, John, Children’s Exposure to Diesel Exhaust on School Buses, North Haven, CT: Environment and Human Health, Inc. 2002).

• In 2000 State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials evaluated the U.S. nationwide cancer risk from exposure to diesel particles. The report’s conclusion was that lifetime exposure to diesel particulate matter results in over 125,000 excess cancer cases over a lifetime. (Source: Cancer Risk from Diesel Particulate: National and Metropolitan Area Estimates for the United States (Washington, D.C.: STAPPA/ALAPCO, 2000: 1).

• The U.S. EPA estimates that the emissions reductions resulting from their new emissions standards for heavy- duty engine/diesel fuel (sharply reducing PM and NOx emissions from diesel vehicles by nearly 95%, and sulphur levels in diesel fuel to 15 ppm) will prevent 8,300 premature deaths, 5,500 cases of chronic bronchitis, 361,400 asthma attacks and 7,100 hospital admissions per year by the time it is fully implemented. The new standards will prevent 17,600 cases of childhood acute bronchitis, 193,400 cases of upper respiratory symptoms in asthmatic children, and 192,900 cases of childhood lower respiratory symptoms per year. The U.S. EPA estimates the monetary benefits of the new standards to be at least US$70.4 billion.

• In 2002 the National Environmental Trust calculated the cancer risk to children in the five most populated air basins in California. The report found that exposure to diesel particulate matter will cause infants to reach the U.S. EPA’s one-in-one-million lifetime cancer limit in 17-32 days, depending on the air basin they live in. By the age of one, children will have exceeded this benchmark by 11 to 21 times, and by age of 18, they will have exceeded this benchmark by 121 to 252 times. Adults reach the U.S. EPA’s one-in one- million lifetime cancer limit in 35-71 days from exposure to diesel particulate matter. The California EPA’s cancer unit risk estimates were used in this study. (National Environmental Trust (NET). Toxic Beginnings: Cancer Risks to Children From California’s Air Pollution. California: NET, 2002).

• Earlier in 1998 California Air Resources Board had declared diesel particles as Toxic air contaminant.

• The lifetime excess cancer risk posed by exposure to average ambient diesel particulate matter levels in Canada may be as high as one in 2,300. This is equivalent to an estimate of as many as 13,600 excess cancer cases in Canada over a lifetime, from exposure to diesel particulate matter.

• A recent report by Germany’s Environmental Agency estimates that between 8,000 and 16,000 people die prematurely in Germany every year- one to two per cent of all deaths- from exposure to diesel exhaust. (Wichmann et al. 2003. Commissioned by the German Federal Environmental Agency. June. Cited in UBA, 2003).

• Even after meeting the Euro IV emissions standards and 10 ppm sulphur diesel target the German environmental organizations along with the German Environment Protection Agency have launched a campaign "No diesel without filter" to make auto manufacturers voluntarily fit diesel particulate filters on all passenger cars to make them significantly cleaner. The national German long term target is to reduce the additional lifetime cancer risk for humans in congested areas below 1:5000 by 2020. This effectively means reducing particulate emissions by 99 percent by 2020 from 1998 levels.

• The WHO used four different studies of the carcinogenic impact of diesel exhaust on rats to estimate unit risk values for cancer. Its conclusion: the lifetime excess cancer risk ranged between 1.6 and 7.1 in 100,000 excess cancer cases per µg/m3 of diesel particulate matter. This translates into one excess cancer case in a million from a lifetime diesel exhaust exposure of 0.014 to 0.0625 µg/m3 of diesel particulate matter.