UN Panel Gives Diesels Mostly Clean Bill of Health

Diesel road vehicles are the cause of a relatively small percentage of particulate matter in Europe and the U.S., and the amount is continuing to decline.

A report issued by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe says 83%  of particulate matters emissions PM 2.5 and PM10 in European Union countries and 97% in the U.S. and Canada is generated by other economic activity, mainly the commercial, institutional and household sectors.

“We conclude with a high degree of reliability that it is misleading to claim that people’s exposure to diesel engines of road motor vehicles is the cause of increased risk of lung cancer,” the UN paper states.

“The claim that emissions from diesel-engine exhausts from road transport are the main cause of lung cancer in humans needs to be seriously challenged.”

But this does not mean measures to improve the environmental performance of the transport sector no longer should be pursued. “On the contrary, they must continue and in an aggressively well targeted way,” the paper states.

Diesel engines are at the heart of economic growth and of all economic activity, it says, and it is not now feasible to replace and eliminate them.

Allen Schaeffer, executive director-Diesel Technology Forum, says the development of new clean-diesel technology for cars, trucks, buses, construction and farm engines has reduced particulate matter and nitrogen-oxide emissions more than 90% in the past two decades.

“The UNECE paper provides an important perspective often overlooked in the environmental debate – that diesel vehicle engines have dramatically improved their emissions and are not a significant cause of (particulate-matter) emissions in developed countries,” Schaeffer says in a statement.