Fatal Attraction

Fatal Attraction

Hell on wheels
Dieselmania hits the Indian private automobile sector. And why not? Diesel is cheaper than petrol, and car loans are available in plenty

it's sleek , it's mean, it races, it is not an aircraft. It runs on diesel. Some of them even run on petrol. The automobile industry has today become the victim of its own success and so has the successful urban professional. As cars crawl through a haze of smoke in the metro, few realise how they are paying for this success with their health.

Delhi has the largest market for cars in India and, since 1987, the annual rate of increase of cars in the city has even outpaced two-wheelers. The average annual rate of increase of cars from 1995-96 to 1997-98 was about 10 per cent, as opposed to 7 per cent in case of two-wheelers. Using these growth rates to project the future car population, by 2009-2010, we get a total car population of 2.39 million, thrice the number of cars registered by March 31, 1998. Assuming that 25-50 per cent of this increase is going to be diesel cars, by March 31, 2010 Delhi's car population could equal to the entire number of cars registered today. In other words, more than 800,000 new diesel vehicles could be plying in Delhi by 2010.

Parminder Singh, a computer engineer with a multinational company, is suffering from chronic chest pain and coughing. He agrees that pollution in Delhi has risen dramatically during the last two decades and that his health bill has shot up. To make up for his health costs, he has decided to curb other expenses. One of which is switching from petrol to diesel, a cheaper fuel, to run his car. "My car consumes a lot of petrol during a jam," he says, after a bout of coughing. Little does he know that as the number of diesel cars in the jam grows, his cough will only get worse. Unfortunately, no car salesman has told him that.

S L Bhatt, joint secretary, department of science and technology, New Delhi, drives a Maruti 800. As a second car, he has chosen Telco's Indica Mint (diesel). "Besides the fact that it is based on Indian technology, I have placed an order for the car mainly keeping the fuel efficiency in mind," he says.

Bhatt is among the 60,000 people who have booked an Indica. According to Tata Concord, an automobile agent in Connaught Place, New Delhi, in the first round of booking, there were 115,000 applications, of which 60,000 were actually booked. Of these, 15,000 were from Delhi alone. Over 90 per cent of all the orders booked were for diesel cars.

The other car manufacturers racing ahead with diesel cars include Premier Automobile Ltd's Fiat Uno, Mahindra-Ford's diesel Escort and Mercedes-Benz India Ltd's diesel variant of E250. Besides, General Motors and Hindustan Motors-Mitsubishi joint venture are ready with their diesel Astra and Lancer respectively. Even the public sector, Maruti Udyog Ltd has not been able to restrain itself from entering the diesel car race. It has already rushed in with the diesel Zen and has announced more diesel versions of their existing models like the Esteem in the near future. The trend towards dieselisation of the private vehicular fleet has grown rapidly over the last few years, and is extremely worrying for a variety of reasons, including the fact that diesel emissions are carcinogenic and it negates the Supreme Court order to keep a check on vehicular pollution in Delhi.

The sole factor responsible for the overwhelming demand in diesel cars is the low running cost, at times comparable with that of a scooter. And advertising agencies are promoting them in a big way. Says Indronil of Lintas, responsible for the print media ad for Maruti's diesel Zen model, "We have made the ad keeping all the Zen values, including diesel, in mind..." And what are the diesel values? "That it is less polluting than petrol," he says, unsure of whether the company had given him that brief or it is personal opinion.

Despite the confusion prevailing in the adman's mind, there is no ambiguity in the car-purchaser's. Gone are the days when diesel-run vehicles were treated as objects of contempt: noisy, unsightly, behemoths. All you need to do is "surprise yourself at the nearest dealer". Metallic reds, blues and silver colours add to the hype surrounding diesel cars.

If the price tag disappoints, there are several "buy now, pay later" options to the rescue. Low payouts (monthly instalments) and loans for longer durations make owning a car much easier. For instance, leading financiers like Tata Finance, Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India and Hong Kong Bank offer loans for a maximum of seven or eight years. This translates into people buying more cars at monthly instalments of around Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000, a small price to pay to satisfy the aspirations of a would-be car owner.

The growth in diesel-powered three wheelers and two-wheelers is no less alarming. Crompton and Greaves rolled out their diesel three-wheeler, Garuda, in 1996 while Bajaj Auto Limited, afraid of losing its market share, has developed a diesel model of its three-wheeler. Besides, there are a host of other diesel-run three-wheeler manufacturers already in operation for a long time. Some of them include Scooters India, Lucknow, manufacturer of the widely-used Vikram three-wheeler; Kerala Auto, Kerala, which manufactures a six-seater auto; and Atul Auto, Gujarat.

This trend is being encouraged by the enormous difference in petrol and diesel prices -- a result of the government's fuel pricing policy. Diesel prices are no longer subsidised and they fluctuate according to international standards. But diesel is not taxed, while petrol is taxed heavily to cross subsidise kerosene. The myth attached to government policy is that diesel prices should be kept cheap to help the agricultural sector and to support public transport. What the government does not know is that the biggest benefactor of cheap diesel are urban consumers. While the transport sector uses 70 per cent of the diesel produced in the country, the urban population consumes 70 per cent of the kerosene meant for the rural poor.

Take, for instance, Sukhinder Singh, a farmer in Hoshiarpur district of Punjab. Proud owner of 28 hectares of land, he owns a few pumpsets too. But his pumpsets run on electricity for the simple reason that he doesn't have to pay any electricity bills. He uses diesel only to run his diesel gensets. As the power goes off it is pitch dark outside. A diesel genset roars to life drowning out the noise of the crickets. Sukhinder Singh switches on the TV set with a gentle click of the remote.

Sukhinder Singh has limited use for diesel for agriculture. Instead, luxury cars are now mopping up all the diesel meant for people like him. All this is happening at a time when the Supreme Court is attempting to steer a large part of the public transport fleet in Delhi away from the use of diesel. The Court's July 28, 1998 order requires all commercial vehicles more than eight-year-old to run on compressed natural gas (cng) or other cleaner fuels by March 31, 2000, and conversion of the entire Delhi Transport Corporation buses to cng by March 31, 2001. The Environmental Pollution (prevention and control) Authority, an institution set up to monitor and reduce pollution in Delhi, has also asked the state government not to register any diesel taxis in the city. However, diesel will continue to remain a source of air pollution in Delhi mainly because of:

• large number of diesel vehicles, especially trucks, which will continue to enter and/or ply in Delhi;

• predictable exponential growth in public freight sector and private vehicles fleet; and

• increasing use of diesel generator sets. Many of them, available in the unbranded market sector, use discarded engines, with very high levels of emissions.

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The air is heavy

The euphoria over the growth in the diesel-powered private vehicular segment would evaporate if people were to open their eyes to the evidence on environmental and health hazards of diesel engines. Diesel engines are primarily responsible for harmful emissions of suspended particulate matter ( spm ) -- small particles which are respirable and extremely toxic -- along with oxides of nitrogen ( no x ) and ozone.

The Central Pollution Control Board ( cpcb ), New Delhi, has concluded that diesel is responsible for 100 per cent of the particulate matter produced by vehicles, 95 per cent of nitrogen dioxide ( no 2 ) -- considered the most dangerous of no x -- and 96 per cent of sulphur emissions. The cpcb does not measure ozone, an extremely harmful gas.

The World Health Organisation ( who ) has concluded that spm is the most serious air pollutant. Further, there is growing evidence that there is no safe level for particulate pollution. In other words, even if particulate levels are below the standards, they still remain dangerous to human health.

The Centre for Science and Environment ( cse ) conducted a detailed analysis of levels of diesel-related air pollutants in Delhi from data provided by the cpcb . The data is restricted to only three pollutants -- spm , no 2 and so 2 -- and is available for only the years 1987 to 1995. There is also data for 1996 for spm . The data shows the following:

SPM: In every breath you take
The annual average spm level in Delhi's air remained consistently high, much above national standards and total spm is constantly above the standard at all the monitoring stations almost every day of the year. The annual average maximum levels ranged from 7.6 times the permissible limit (140 microgramme per cubic metre) in 1988 to 16.7 times higher than the limit in 1992 (see graph: Total spm levels in Delhi ).

The cpcb does not monitor particles less than 10 microns (one micron is one-millionth of a millimetre) in size or pm 10 on a regular basis in Delhi. Called respirable suspended particulate matter ( rspm ), these particles cause the worst damage as they can penetrate deep into the lungs. The cpcb only monitors total spm . In other words, the quantity of all particles in the air. But short term monitoring of pm 10 levels by cpcb shows that, on an average, nearly 40 per cent of total spm in Delhi is pm10 . It is these particles which are most dangerous.

In 1998, cpcb monitored pm10 at the ito crossing. A cse analysis of the data shows that rspm levels were also well above the standard. In November, they went six times above the standard (see graph: rspm levels at ITO crossing ).

HEALTH EFFECTS:
A 1991-92 World Bank study on the health effects of air pollution in 36 Indian cities revealed that spm levels led to the premature death of 40,000 people every year in the cities surveyed. The study, repeated for the year 1995 by cse , showed that the number of deaths had increased to 52,000, a rise of 28 per cent in just three years.

The who has concluded that, on a worldwide basis, spm is the most serious air pollutant which is resulting in total excess deaths per year of 460,000 additional deaths. Scientists point out that not all particles are equally dangerous. It is pm 10 or less which are more dangerous. The worst, however, are fine particles which are less than 3.5-2.5 microns in size. Because of their size, these particles cannot be easily exhaled. They stay inside the lungs for a longer period corroding the cells, ultimately leading to the growth of a tumour.

According to a uk study conducted to understand which sources were contributing to airborne particulate matter in 1996, it was found that smaller the size of the particulate, the higher was their share in diesel emissions. While 17 per cent of pm10 and less was from diesel vehicles, as much as 52 per cent of pm 0.1 was from diesel vehicles (see graph: Size matters ).

The tinier the particulate matter the more harmful it is for human health. A recent uk study found that 90 per cent of the particles emitted by diesel vehicles are 1 micron or less. In other words, almost all particles produced by diesel are so fine that they penetrate deep into the lungs.

The California Air Resources Board ( carb ) formally designated diesel particulate as a Toxic Air Contaminant on August 27, 1998 which means that it has the potential to cause cancer. In addition, the Scientific Review Panel of carb has pointed out that chronic exposure to 1 microgramme per cubic metre (g/m 3 ) of diesel exhaust will lead to additional 300 cases of lung cancer per million people. Thus, for a population like Delhi, this means an additional 3,000 extra cases of lung cancer for a chronic exposure to 1 g/m 3 of diesel exhaust.

Further, particulate matter in diesel is coated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons ( pah s), which are highly carcinogenic. Japanese scientists have discovered a new pah called 3-nitrobenzathrone in diesel exhaust, and they have found it to be the strongest carcinogen till date. Another mutagen known to exist in diesel exhaust is 1,8 dinotropyrene.

NO2 : Slow and steady rise
The levels of no 2 , a highly toxic gas which attacks the lungs, recorded in Delhi have been rising rapidly and so has the annual average. Though the annual average level remained below the standard, it has been increasing rapidly in the nine years from 1987 to 1995 (see graph: no 2 levels in Delhi ).

At the ito crossing, except for the monsoon months, there are several days when no 2 reaches critical levels. In the month of January and February 1998, no 2 levels exceeded the permissible limits by more than 1.5 times.

Haemoglobin is known to absorb no 2 more easily than oxygen. About 80 to 90 per cent no 2 inhaled is easily absorbed into the bloodstream. This reduces the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. no 2 causes lung tissues to become leathery and brittle and can cause lung cancer and emphysema (or severe breathing problems). Emphysema occurs due to the breakdown of the air sacs in the lungs, which then progressively diminishes the ability of the lungs to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood stream. Thus, no 2 causes bronchitis and bronchopneumonia.

OZONE: The killer trend
Ozone is considered a secondary pollutant because it is produced as a result of the interaction of other air pollutants, particularly no x , which, in turn, the result of diesel vehicle emissions, and hydrocarbons, produced by both diesel and petrol cars. Because of a large number of two-stroke vehicles (two and three-wheelers), Delhi's air has high levels of hydrocarbons. In the presence of sunlight , no 2 reacts with hydrocarbons to produce ozone, a highly toxic gas, known to cause asthma. But the cpcb does not monitor ozone on a regular basis, except for one site, namely ito . A few studies done by the Central Road Research Institute ( crri ) and the School of Environmental Sciences of Jawaharlal Nehru University ( jnu ) show very high ozone concentrations in Delhi. In most cases, the maximum concentration of ozone has exceeded the upper limit of who guidelines by two times.

The 1989-90 study conducted by jnu reported high ozone levels during the summer months (June-August), especially around noon, and low levels during the winter months (November-January), which is in keeping with the trends noted worldwide. The maximum concentration was observed during August 1990.

Subsequent studies conducted by crri and jnu have revealed some unusual trends about ozone levels in Delhi. The crri study carried out in 1991 showed high ozone levels even during winter months, when "ground-based temperature inversion" is common. It appears that pollutants which lead to the formation of ozone get trapped in the inversion conditions which leads to high ozone levels even during the early hours of the day though traffic levels are low. As the day progresses, the pollutants get dispersed leading to reduced levels of ozone, which begin to build up again in the evening because of the inversion effect (see graph: Ozone levels in Delhi ).

A great deal of research has been conducted on the health effects of ozone which shows that it impairs the lung function and causes asthma. Ozone is absorbed by mucous membranes in the lungs by a process of dissolution in water. Since ozone is a powerful oxidant, it damages the nasal cavity and throat as well as sensitive parts of the lungs that are responsible for exchange of gases between air and blood circulation.

Children and young adults show greater risk to ozone exposure than older adults. And asthmatic children appear to be at special risk from ozone exposure.

Bad to worse?
The levels of pollutants in Delhi's air is already bad. And the unchecked growth of the dieselisation of the private automobile fleet and two-stroke vehicles means going from bad to worse. Already, diesel consumption has overtaken petrol in the last decade. Between 1980-81 and 1990-91, the growth rate of petrol consumption was higher than that of diesel but this trend was reversed during the period 1990-91 to 1996-97 when the use of diesel grew at a more rapid rate (see graph: Road rage ).

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Lack of options

Recent studies show that neither using clean diesel fuel nor improving the quality of the engine help in solving the threat of particulate matter in diesel emissions. So banning the manufacture of diesel cars may be the only option to counter the threats posed by particulate matter.

Fuel quality A recent study conducted in California comparing emissions from a new diesel engine running on older diesel fuel, and on a reformulated diesel fuel, revealed that the newer fuel only slightly reduced emissions of nox and particulates.

A report in the leading monthly review of worldwide developments in automobile technology, Automotive Environment Analyst, published in February 1999, goes on to state, "Contrary to most current thinking, switching to ultra-low sulphur fuel, so-called 'city-diesel', might affect exhaust emissions in such a way as to worsen, rather than ease respiratory health problems." The conclusion was put forward at an Institution of Mechanical Engineers' seminar held recently in London on "Diesel Engines -- Particulate Control" by Omar Hayat, managing director of ChemEcol (uk) Ltd, who conducted studies on diesel engines.

Why does Hayat say so? He says so because he found in his studies that while the total quantity of particles went down, the number of smaller particles increased. The greater the number of particles in the emissions, the smaller is their average size and more deeply they are able to penetrate the respiratory tract.

He concluded: "On aggregate, switching from regular to ultra-low sulphur fuel reduced average particle size significantly." This shows that even improving the diesel fuel quality does not help reduce the threat to human health. The cleaner the diesel, the tinier the particulate matter, increasing its toxic potential.

Engine quality
In India, it is not just diesel quality that is inferior. Diesel engine standards to be enforced in India from 2000 are the ones applied in Europe in 1992. Automobile manufacturers' only bemoan the fact that the diesel is of a very poor quality. But the fact remains that diesel engines currently produced and proposed to be produced in India are also extremely outdated and highly polluting.

The mass emission norms to be enforced in India in June 1, 1999 are the Euro i (1992) norms. Europe moved onto Euro ii norms in 1996 and will be enforcing Euro iii norms in 2000. (see table: Indian standards vs Western standards).

Amid growing evidence that even improving emission norms for diesel vehicles and improving diesel quality will not solve the problem of toxic particulate emissions, India is going to apply Europe's 1992 standards in the year 2000, though the recent Supreme Court has order has changed this for Delhi (see article: Applying the brakes, pg 13).

European norms themselves are very poor by world standards. The strictest standards for diesel engines in the world are in California which are even more stringent than the standards prevailing in the rest of usa. us standards, in turn, are much higher than European standards. These standards are low presumably because one of the world's biggest manufacturers of diesel engines, Puegeot, is a French conglomerate (see box: Paris: What diesel can do).

The Indian automobile industry says European countries have allowed the proliferation of diesel cars, but emerging evidence shows that other countries are also beginning to re-evaluate their diesel policies (see box: A wrong notion).

But will diesel engines become cleaner in the future? If we compare the standards that are being set in Europe for the years 2000 and 2005 for diesel and petrol cars, we find that even Europe has not effectively come to grips with the problem of particulate matter and nox emissions from diesel vehicles. This is evident from the fact that the limits set for these emissions are several times higher than the levels allowed to petrol vehicles. European proposals applicable from 2000 show that even in Europe, with the best of technology, diesel vehicles will emit 3.3 times more nox than petrol vehicles. At the same time, diesel vehicles have been set a particulate matter standard of 0.05 gm/km whereas no standard has been set for petrol cars because petrol cars have very small particulate emissions. In other words, particle emissions will be 10-100 times more in diesel than petrol cars.

Moreover, diesel engine manufacturers, too, are yet to resolve the problem of lowering both nox and spm emissions from diesel engines. Changes needed in the engine to reduce nox emissions tend to increase particulate emissions and vice versa, says a 1996 World Bank study. Therefore, a manufacturer who designs diesel engines has to choose between high nox or high spm emissions.

When efforts were made to design diesel engines to reduce the total quantity of particulate matter in the exhaust, the particles became smaller and their numbers went up dramatically. According to the Scientific Review Panel of carb, despite a substantial reduction in the weight of the total particulate matter in emissions, the total number of particles emitted from a 1991 model engine was 15 to 35 times greater than the number of particles emitted from a 1988 model engine, when both the engines were operated without emission devices.

After recognising diesel as a toxic air contaminant and a carcinogen in August 1998, the California government has adopted a plan making it mandatory for petrol and diesel-powered light duty vehicles to meet tighter emission standards beginning in 2004.

Emission control devices for diesel vehicles are still not commercially viable and their effectiveness is still to be proved. To reduce particulate matter, a device called a particulate trap is needed, but they are still in the experimental stage.

The only option
Thus latest scientific evidence suggests that neither improving the diesel fuel quality nor tightening the engine quality helps in averting the acute cancer-causing potential of diesel emissions, particularly particulate matter. Thus, it is necessary to ban the registration of new diesel-driven private vehicle fleet immediately because of increasing evidence of the cancer-causing potential of diesel emissions. And this ban should stay in place till the West has found a way to control the deadly particle emissions from diesel exhaust (see diagram: Are there any options but to ban diesel cars?).

Even if the government initiates measures to set new standards for diesel cars or equalise diesel and petrol prices, these measures will take time during which manufacturers will have increased their investments and many diesel cars would have already been purchased by consumers putting at stake the lives of about 250 million urban Indians.

In the Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum versus the Union of India (1996) 5 scc 647, the Supreme Court had stressed on the importance of the "precautionary" principles and the "polluter pays" principle. To protect the environment, the "precautionary principles" should be given priority over the "polluter pays" principle. Otherwise, polluters would be free to increase pollution on payment of large sums of money.

A ban on the registration of diesel driven private vehicles fits well with the precautionary principle.

(The article is based on a monograph prepared by Anil Agarwal, director, Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi)