California Crack Down, Part Five: Bad Numbers
CALIFORNIA CRACK DOWN, PART V
by Tom Jackson
OPINION
Fuzzy math and incomplete science
O
ver the past decade the California Air Resources Board has engaged in a vast and unprecedented experiment. The aim of the experiment was to force diesel truck and heavy equipment construction operations to drastically cut their exhaust emissions by selling off older machines, or installing expensive new engines and/or exhaust after treatment devices. If construction and trucking did this, goes CARB’s theory, it would significantly reduce California’s smog, and lead to less cancer and improved health for its citizens. In the last four issues of Equipment World we’ve documented the devastating impact these regulations have had on the construction industry in California and how air quality regulators in other parts of the country are eyeing California as a possible model for their own regions. We also showed how CARB staff was surprised by public testimony at its April 22 board meeting with revelations that the agency had over-estimated the emissions from heavy equipment by anywhere from 200 to 400 percent. CARB is hinting that it may hold off enforcement of these regulations for a couple of years. But that still leaves tens of thousands of construction jobs and companies in limbo in a
What everything hinges on is whether or not the science justifies the policy. In our opinion it does not.
state devastated more than most by the recession. The core of this issue isn’t California’s or any state’s right to safeguard its air and the health of its citizens. That’s a given. What everything hinges on is whether or not the science justifies the policy. In our opinion it does not. Here’s why: Science uncertain If you’ve read any of the news articles about off-road emission regulations in recent years you no doubt have seen the statistic that – according to the EPA – Tier 4 reductions in diesel emissions will prevent 12,000 premature deaths, 8,900 hospitalizations and 1 million lost work days nationwide, saving more than
$80 billion dollars annually. This has been so often repeated that it is assumed to be a scientific certainty. The trouble is the numbers are wildly speculative. According to the Health Effects Institute, an independent research organization that provides impartial reviews of the science of air pollution and health, the science is anything but settled. Its 2003 study “Research on Diesel Exhaust and Other Particles,” said in essence that none of the current science could prove a link between diesel exhaust in the air we breathe and cancer, heart and lung disease or asthma. One of the studies reviewed by HEI (Garshick et al 1987, 1988) looked at lung cancer rates among railroad workers and has been trumpeted by CARB as evidence of diesel’s deadly health effects. Yet HEI recommended against using the data, noting that the study actually showed a decreasing risk of cancer the longer these workers remained on the job. In 2010 HEI published “TrafficRelated Air Pollution: A Critical Review of the Literature on Emissions, Exposure and Health Effects,” which said that nearly all the claims that exposure to emissions in high traffic areas harmed human health were “error prone” and “inadequate and