My personal view on a diesel fueled car & its worrisome fantastic four {PM10, NOx, SOx, PM2.5}

1. Is diesel the new asbestos?
294.501 km. That’s the mileage on my car, a 2nd hand bought Audi A4 diesel from 2005. So, I decided to buy a
new one and wanted to select the most eco-friendly car, or should I say, by essence, “the less eco-harmful”.
So went through a selection process, visiting showrooms, talking to vendors, all this based on my
work/residence/family situation, looking at cradle to grave implications, evaluating Compress Natural Gas
(CNG), pure electric, hybrids and conventional fuels.
A diesel Opel Insignia, with 98 g CO2 was to be my choice when a good friend pointed out the negative health
implications of diesel’s micro particles. I was aware of it, Brussels’ air quality is very poor for a start, but never
stood still at the scale of the problem.
Digging into this topic with some “google science”, that’s when it occurred to me that diesel could very well be
our current and our kids’ asbestos. Without pinpointing a single company, there were many active with
asbestos previously, I remembered that a trial took place in Italy earlier this year, relating asbestos poisoning
to the deaths of nearly 3.000 people worldwide. And that is just for one, single company...
Similar to asbestos, or asbestos’ dust to be more precise, people and companies were not very concerned with
the health implications. There is a loss in life expectancy attributable to the exposure to fine particulate
matter, mainly less than 2.5 micrometers (PM2,5). In Belgium, the “loss in statistical life expectancy that can
be attributed to the identified anthropogenic contributions to PM2.5 (in months), for the emissions of the year
2000” was 14,9 months. In plan language, that’s a big year. And in cities, diesel cars seem to be responsible for
40 to 85% of the PM2,5 emissions.
Carmakers have been offering a root filter on their diesel models for some years now. To quote a salesman on
that subject: “I am not sure it works well, given how it should be used for optimal filtering”. Do they correctly
work for the nano-particles (PM2,5), not only for PM10? And what about at low exhaust heat, i.e. slow driving
in urban areas?

2. Some cities are taking some first steps to ban diesels, like Paris (“Nous ne voulons plus de diesel à Paris”),
Brussels and Antwerpen.
Comparing a graphic from a ten-year old paper by Austrian’s International Institute for Applied Systems
Analysis (IIASA), with an overview particles concentration in 2014 do not visually differ very much... (see
above). I am not a scientist: one is for PM10, the other for PM2,5, but I believe you can extract a general
negative message.
Now, there are obviously different causes and reasons, giving way to several possible solutions. As often in
this integrated world of ours, picking one solution impedes the benefits of one of the parties involved. A
related example, from a single CO2 point of view, is the fact that downtown taxi-drivers from Brussels who
drop somebody at the national airport in Zaventem are not allowed to bring another person back to Brussels,
to protect those taxi-drivers registered in Zaventem.
However, from a grass root point of view for my own, little contribution to improve the air quality, I bought a
regular gas powered car (Audi A3 1.4L), notwithstanding the promoted and thus cheaper unit price of 1 liter of
diesel.
Did I do the right thing?
Many power sources alternatives have good and bad points, depending on underlying characteristics and
assumptions, but the real answer is “No”. From a pure ecological view I should do all my traveling with my
bicycle, period. Unfortunately, today, with my current constraints, that is unfeasible... Maybe in a near future
it will be feasible, but that is another story.
P.S. Next time you or your friends will buy a car, please double check the harmful micro particles related to a
diesel choice so you can make a well-informed choice. Thanks.
References:
[Left] 2000 (pm2): http://ec.europa.eu/environment/archives/cafe/activities/pdf/cafe_scenario_report_2.pdf
[Right] 2014 (pm10): http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particules_en_suspension#mediaviewer/File:Carte_PM10_Europe_20140314.JPG
https://twitter.com/MvanWunnik/status/541640304248750080
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/archives/cafe/activities/pdf/cafe_scenario_report_2.pdf
http://www.euronews.com/2014/11/20/italian-court-frees-swiss-asbestos-polluter-accused-of-involvement-in-3000-/
http://www.lejdd.fr/JDD-Paris/Anne-Hidalgo-Nous-ne-voulons-plus-de-diesel-a-Paris-705124
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30368504
http://www.notre-planete.info/actualites/actu_3399_diesel_cancerigene.php
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particules_en_suspension
http://www.respire-asso.org/pollution-diesel-ces-voix-qui-se-font-lavocat-du-diable/
http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/env/documents/2004/eb/wg1/eb.air.wg1.2004.11.e.pdf