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• Environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth has called on European Commissioners to impose tough new anti-pollution standards on trucks to bring Europe into line with the US.
The US standard sets a particulate emissions limit of 0.15g/kWh for truck and bus engines, and becomes law in 1994. FoE wants Europe to meet the same standard by early 1993, and sets out its arguments in Pollution From Diesel Vehicles, a 40-page report published this week. It says diesel engines emit tiny particles, which the World Health Organisation suspects of being a probable cause of cancer. Diesel produces 100 times more particles than petrol.
The FoE report also recommends that the maximum sulphur in diesel should be reduced to 0.05% and that a particulate trap retrofit programme should be applied when urban bus engines are rebuilt.