While addressing a press conference in the capital today, CSE Director Anil Agarwal stressed that CSE’s intervention has become necessary to challenge the recent attempts by the automobile industry to make profits at the cost of citizens’ health. The industry had organised a press conference recently to misguide people about the proposed ban order on the registration of non commercial diesel vehicles in the NCT. The media has reported the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has been discussing such a ban.

Predictably, the automobile industry is furious at the proposed ban as it hurts their business interests. The NCT is a major market for the automobile companies. The major diesel vehicle manufacturers, particularly TELCO, Mahindra and Mahindra, and Hindustan Motors, have joined hands to get the ban stalled, and present diesel as a "green fuel". Last week in their press conference, V. M. Raval, Vice President TELCO, and also the president Association of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (AIAM), espoused diesel’s virtues such as "fuel efficiency,... low carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbon emissions" to the media.

CSE has taken a strong note of how the industry has chosen to ignore the health fall out of toxic diesel emissions and is confusing people about the proposed ban order. The industry, in effect, has failed to mention that diesel is notorious for highly toxic particulate emissions and emissions of harmful nitrogen oxides, also a precursor to forming of ozone -- yet another harmful gas.

CSE has amassed enough evidence based on the studies conducted world-wide to prove beyond doubt that diesel emission is extremely toxic. Diesel particulate matter has been found to be carcinogenic by Air Resources Board of California, WHO, and the Ministry of Occupational Health in Germany. Scientists in Japan have even isolated a deadly compound in diesel fumes which is known to be the strongest carcinogen known till now.

The level of suspended particulate matter and the NOx levels in Delhi have remained consistently higher than the prescribed limit over the last 10 years. Though CPCB does not monitor ozone in India, limited monitoring done by a few research organisations like Central Road Research Institute have indicated high ozone concentration in Delhi.

Despite these evidences the industry has belittled the problem on the ground that new diesel cars have better technology, and being few in number, a ban on them would not help to clean up air.

Clearly, this is a case of missing the wood for the tree. The EPA’s proposal to ban diesel cars is a proactive approach to control the problem of dieselisation in Indian cities. It will be suicidal to allow diesel cars, a historically insignificant category in India, to grow when diesel consumption has reached an all time high. What is alarming is that Delhi uses far more diesel than petrol --more than two-thirds of the petroleum fuels in Delhi is diesel. Delhi diesel is 250 times dirtier than the world’s best which is Swedish diesel.

The industry is meanwhile rallying support for their position on a plea that diesel car sales have increased in Europe.

But a CSE study on a comparison of European emission standards for petrol and diesel cars for 2000 and 2005 clearly shows that even Europe has not come into grips with the problem of particulate and NOx emissions from diesel cars -- the limits for which are more than three times that of petrol cars. Environmentally conscious countries like Sweden and Germany have increasingly been focusing on developing fiscal measures to dissuade people from using diesel cars.

In India, meanwhile, the government pricing policy of keeping diesel prices cheap has been a major incentive for automobile manufacturers to go in for more diesel models.

CSE therefore demands that both the government and the automobile industry take responsibility for contributing to the problem of dieselisation. The government needs to promptly address the flawed fuel pricing policy in order to get to the root of the problem. The industry, similarly, needs to put aside their short sighted business interests that kills.