Diesel vs. Petrol, environmental pollution ..

Modern research states that if you are owning a diesel car expecting to save some money in the bargain, you are doing a great disservice to the country. You are polluting the environment four times more (4x) than a petrol car and doing a great disservice to your society and surroundings.

SUVs and other high powered vehicles run on diesel and pollute the environment heavily. Look at the situation practically, do private commuting vehicles require all that power ?

Though Diesel has a higher calorific value and Diesel engines are more efficient than Petrol engines, Diesel engines have higher emissions of NOx and particulate matter in comparison to Petrol vehicles with catalytic converters. (Catalytic converters help mostly oxidise the CO to CO2 besides NO to NOx and unburnt hydrocarbons which otherwise cause smog)

Pollution , pollution everywhere ..

Especially when these toxic emissions like NOx and SOx, have higher fatal health repercussions, diesel cars are a disaster ! In addition, the cost of fatal health repercussions like cancer is immeasurable !!

Ships too need to control their pollution

The general public look smartly at the parochial picture of keeping the running costs of vehicles low. To help industrial grow, mass use of public transportation and to control costs, most countries price diesel cheaper than gasolene (petrol) by way of subsidies. For instance it costs less for diesel than petrol in India, unmindful of the bigger picture of the damages it does to the environment..

Contrasting with earlier reports which found CO and CO2 to be detrimental to human health, recent research points to NOx emissions which are the main culprit in deaths related to automobile emissions.

Click on this Guardian newspaper link to read of how almost 38,000 people across the world (mainly from China, Europe and India) die every year to diesel pollution (or diesel vehicles failing to meet pollution regulation standards). These studies also point to the fact that excess NOx (having escaped regulators' lenses) will still be responsible for about 70,000 deaths annually by 2040 AD.

Click here for the interesting link . 

Another link stressing on airquality is here ..

A BBC report on Diesel vehicles and their emissions 

Studies point that For unit pollution, every diesel-km is equivalent to four petrol-km.

Let us be more responsible and leave enough of our beautiful environment for our future generations to enjoy and live in healthily. Let us dump those beasts and go for less polluting vehicles, still better electric vehicles in the very near future .

George..