“The battle over air pollution caused by cars is far from over, despite statements issued by auto-industry public relations departments. Research at Ohio State University indicates that present automobile engines spew about 29 pounds of deadly carbon monoxide into the atmosphere for each ten gallons of gasoline burned. OSU’s studies, sponsored by the National Air Pollution Control Administration of the U.S. Public Health Service, are aimed at determining the chemical reactions and rates of removal of carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and other common pollutants from the atmosphere.
‘Right now,’ says OSU chemistry professor Jack G. Calvert, ‘we don’t know exactly how or how fast carbon monoxide removes itself from the air. We’re trying to find out what happens.’ Calvert says monoxide’s potential threat comes fro the length of time it stays in the atmosphere and the toxicity of the transition products occurring as it passes into a harmless substance. ‘Naturally occurring reactions in the atmosphere remove most pollutants,’ Calvert points out, ‘but if they are dumped in faster than they are taken out, they can build to toxic levels.” And Calvert thinks carbon monoxide — to mention just one pollutant — is being dumped in the air faster than it’s being taken out, with the main culprit being internal combustion auto and truck engines.
His contention contrasts sharply with that advanced earlier this year by Charles M. Heinen, Chrysler’s chief engineer for emissions control and chemical development. Heinen claims that the main battle against car-caused air pollution has been won, that if there were no cars on the road except 1969-70 models, ‘we would — overnight — breath the same clean air we had in 1940 as far as the automobile contribution is concerned.’ But Calvert says a perfectly-tuned test car, regardless of model, has little relation to the average vehicle on the road. So, despite the government’s recent and apparent go-easy attitude on carmakers regarding air pollution, the issue is far from dead and you can look forward to the exchange of some hot charges and counter-charges. One possible upshot? The end of leaded gasoline.”
— Bill Kilpatrick, Popular Mechanics (1969)
RE:SOURCES
- Kilpatrick, Bill; 1969. “Detroit Listening Post.” Popular Mechanics. Nov. issue: pp. 11, 20.
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Also see ‘It’s a big deal that Ford and GM knew about climate change in 1960s’
The problem with the automobile-truck-internal combustion engine economy as we know it is that we in 2024 are still dishonest with ourselves: Net-net, we are still not paying the true economic costs of single car / truck use: Not even close ! Even with the infrastructure that exists, most units of government are in arrears of paying for the annual upkeep of what they encompass. This country’s methods of mass transportation have been allowed to atrophy and the costs to restore them to pre-W.W. II levels is also beyond our ability to pay back in a reasonable time period. This evening, I heard that in my home state, Indiana, our state government is at least one-billion dollars in arrears to simply keep current with maintenance issues. Meanwhile, the roads and highways lobby want ever-increasing appropriations for their constituents. We cannot keep adding highway lanes that cannot be maintained !