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Executive Summary
As the new home of NCPIRG's environmental work,
Environment North Carolina can be contacted with any questions regarding this report. Toxic air pollutants—including
those from light-duty cars and trucks—pose a major public health threat
in North Carolina. This report concludes that North Carolina could enjoy significant
reductions in emissions of those pollutants, as well as emissions of smog-forming
chemicals, were it to adopt California’s Low-Emission Vehicle II (LEV II) vehicle
emission standards.
Mobile sources—defined
as cars, trucks and other non-stationary machinery—are major contributors
to the toxic air pollution problem. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
estimates that mobile sources emit 41 percent of all air toxics by weight and
that on-road vehicles are responsible for approximately half that amount. Mobile
sources are responsible for the vast majority of emissions of certain air toxics,
such as benzene.
Analysis of 1996 data from
the EPA’s National Scale Air Toxics Assessment shows that residents of most
of North Carolina’s 100 counties suffer from levels of toxic air pollution that
pose excessive cancer risks to the population and may jeopardize the respiratory,
reproductive and developmental health of residents as well.
Specifically:
• Ambient concentrations
of 1,3-butadiene in 96 North Carolina counties exceed EPA standards for cancer
risk. Concentrations of formaldehyde exceed the EPA’s cancer benchmark in 65
counties, benzene concentrations exceed the benchmark in 63 counties, and acetaldehyde
concentrations exceed the benchmark in three heavily populated counties: Mecklenburg,
Durham and Guilford.
• All four chemicals are
known or probable human carcinogens. North Carolina ranks seventh, ninth, 10th,
and 12th, respectively, among the lower 48 states in on-road emissions of 1,3-butadiene,
benzene, formaldehyde, and acetaldehyde.
While the past several decades
have seen increasingly stringent limits on air pollution from automobiles, the
effect of those tighter standards has been muted by dramatic increases in vehicle
miles traveled. In North Carolina, for instance, the annual number of vehicle
miles traveled has increased more than 160 percent since 1970.
In 1999, the EPA and the
state of California adopted separate standards to further limit emissions from
cars and light-duty trucks. Those standards were intended to address a variety
of air pollution problems, including the emission of toxic chemicals into the
air.
The California standards,
known as LEV II, are much stronger than those of the EPA, known as Tier 2. LEV
II includes tight limits on tailpipe and evaporative emissions of several air
pollutants, including air toxics. It also includes a provision that ensures
that a certain percentage of cars sold in future years will be zero-emission
or near-zero-emission vehicles.
The LEV II program holds
the potential for substantial environmental and public health benefits for North
Carolina—over and above the benefits gained through Tier 2.
Specifically:
• LEV II would result in
significant reductions in emissions of air toxics.
• Should North Carolina
adopt the LEV II program beginning in model year 2006, light-duty vehicles
would annually release about 42 percent less toxic pollution by 2020 than
vehicles certified to today’s emission standards, and 14 percent less toxic
pollution than vehicles certified to Tier 2 standards.
• Those emission reductions
are the equivalent of taking approximately 1.67 million of today’s cars off
the state’s roads.
• LEV II would result in
lower emissions of other important pollutants.
• Emissions of smog-forming
nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) would both decline in
the long run under LEV II. By 2020, VOC emissions from light-duty vehicles
would be approximately 36 percent less under LEV II than today’s emission
standards, and 12 percent less than under Tier 2.
• Unlike Tier 2, LEV II
does not “make room” for the expanded use of diesel in the light-duty vehicle
fleet. Diesel is responsible for a significant portion of the toxic particulate
matter in the nation’s air.
• The zero-emission vehicle
(ZEV) requirement is an integral feature of the LEV II program.
• The ZEV requirement
in LEV II makes the pollution reduction goals of the program more attainable.
About half of the projected reductions in air toxics emissions attained from
LEV II can be attributed to vehicles covered by the ZEV requirement.
• The ZEV requirement
would also fuel the development of even cleaner technologies such as electric,
fuel cell and hybrid-electric vehicles. ZEV technologies are the only ones
that offer the potential of a permanent solution to the state’s mobile source
air toxics and smog problems and are the only ones that couple those benefits
with significant reductions in global warming emissions.
The LEV II program will
come at some additional cost to automakers and consumers. However, those costs
are minor when compared to those of other air pollution reduction programs and
average vehicle costs. Moreover, the rules will result in a net economic gain
for the state over the long term by reducing public health costs and enhancing
the state’s energy security. With its concentration of research facilities and
high-tech businesses, North Carolina is also well-situated to take advantage
of the economic investment in advanced vehicle development that will be stimulated
by adoption of the ZEV program.
We recommend that the state
of North Carolina adopt the LEV II program and ZEV requirement at the earliest
opportunity. Further, we recommend that the state take additional actions to
encourage the deployment of ZEVs and other ultra-clean vehicles and to reduce
air toxic health threats from other sources in the state.
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