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Clean Air and Water Reports
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Executive Summary
Air pollution—including that from light-duty cars and trucks—poses a major public health threat in Maryland. Maryland could enjoy significant reductions in emissions of smog-forming and toxic pollutants if it adopted more stringent vehicle emission standards.
Ground-level ozone, better known as smog, and toxic air pollutants threaten the health of Maryland’s residents. • Smog, which forms from emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), can lead to asthma, bronchitis, increased susceptibility to bacterial infections, and other respiratory problems.
• The Maryland Department of the Environment estimates that mobile sources emit 38 percent of the state’s NOx and 27 percent of its VOCs.
Maryland residents are exposed to levels of toxic air pollution that pose excessive cancer risks and that may jeopardize the respiratory, reproductive and developmental health of residents as well.
• In the most recent data available from the EPA’s National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment, human exposure levels of formaldehyde and benzene in every Maryland county exceeded cancer risk limits established by the EPA.
• On-road sources were responsible for 62 percent of the cancer risk from benzene pollution and 78 percent of the cancer risk from 1,3-butadiene pollution.
The U.S. EPA and the state of California have developed separate emission standards to further limit pollution from cars and light-duty trucks. Those standards address a variety of air pollution problems, including the emission of NOx, VOCs, and toxic chemicals.
The California standards, known as LEV II, are much stronger than those of the EPA, known as Tier 2. LEV II includes tight limits on tailpipe and evaporative emissions of several air pollutants. It also includes a provision that ensures that a certain percentage of cars sold in Maryland include advanced technology to further reduce emissions.
LEV II holds the potential for substantial environmental and public health benefits for Maryland, over and above the benefits gained through Tier 2.
• Were Maryland to adopt LEV II beginning in 2008 (when model year 2009 vehicles go on sale), light-duty vehicle emissions of both smogforming
NOx and VOCs would decline. By 2025, VOC emissions from light-duty vehicles would be approximately 13 percent less than under Tier 2. Emissions of NOx would be 11 percent lower.
• Further, light-duty vehicles would annually release 12 to 15 percent less toxic pollution by 2025 than vehicles certified to Tier 2 standards. On a pollutant by pollutant level, LEV II produces air toxics emissions reductions of 57 to 79 percent versus today’s pollution levels.
• Those emission reductions are the equivalent of taking approximately 190,000 of today’s cars off the state’s roads in 2025.
LEV II provides additional benefits.
• Unlike Tier 2, LEV II ensures that any new light-duty diesel vehicles meet strict standards for emissions of toxic particulate matter. Diesel is responsible for a significant portion of the particulate matter in the nation’s air.
• The advanced technology requirement in LEV II makes the pollution reduction goals of the program more attainable. In addition, this requirement helps fuel the development of even cleaner technologies such as hybrids and fuel-cell vehicles. These types of technologies are the only ones that offer the potential of a permanent
solution to the state’s mobile source air toxics and smog problems.
To reduce pollution from cars and light trucks, the Maryland Department of the Environment should adopt the LEV II program. Further, the state should take additional actions to encourage the deployment of clean vehicles and to reduce air pollution health threats from other sources in the state.
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