Rethinking the Internal Combustion Engine

[Tsuyoshi Matsuo <matstsu@SC.LLU.EDU>]

I started subscribing to the EV list a few days ago, but I'm thinking of
getting off the list.  I'm overwhelmed by the number of e-mails I
receive, and most of them are not relevant to me.  Most of the
discussions seem to go around the issue of which is more efficient in
terms of energy consumption, the electric motor or the internal
combustion engine.  But I think the most important thing about the
electric motor is that it is zero emission of toxins.  And the best
benefit we can gain from transition from the ICE to the electric motor
is better health.  Before I get off the list, I just wanted the people
on the list to think about it.  The following is an essay I wrote last
summer about this issue.  I hope you'll take the time and read it.

Rethinking the Internal Combustion Engine                             =20

I=92m writing this to warn you that people are getting injured and killed
by the exhaust gases of internal combustion engines.  Virtually everyone
who lives in this country is getting injured to some degree by the
toxins contained in the engine exhausts.

Buses in the cities are poisoning everybody on the street with the
diesel exhaust.  Garbage trucks not only destroy the silence in the
morning but belch an enormous amount of diesel exhaust every time they
lift a dumpster with the hydraulic apparatus.  Diesel trains are making
everybody on the train sick as well as the people who live by the
railroad.  Construction machines are fouling the air of the neighborhood
with the diesel exhaust.  On a machine I saw at a construction site,
there was a sign which reads, =93Danger!  Air discharged from this machin=
e
may contain carbon monoxide or other contaminants which will cause
severe injury or death.  Do not breathe this air.=94  besides the sign
=93DIESEL FUEL ONLY.=94  If people should not breathe this air, why do th=
ey
emit such air into the air everybody is breathing?

Everybody is killing everybody else with the toxic emissions from their
own car which they love so much.  I saw a sign on the liftgate of a
minivan which reads, =93To avoid exhaust gas entry, keep liftgate closed
and latched when engine is running.=94  If they don=92t want to breathe t=
he
exhaust gas, isn=92t it selfish to make the people behind them breathe
that exhaust?  It=92s not just selfish but a stupid idea to emit the
exhaust gas from the tail pipe considering the fact that they are not
the only one who drives a car and they are very likely to be behind
other cars as well as in front of them.  And people use internal
combustion engines for countless other things.  Lawnmowers not only
destroy the peace and quietness of the weekends in the residential areas
with the noises they make but also poison the neighbors and their own
family and themselves with the exhaust gases they emit.

And the strange thing is that nobody seems to worry even if they are
exposed to this deadly gas at a concentration not high enough to cause
sudden death but high enough to cause such acute symptoms as nausea,
difficulty breathing, coughing, headache, fatigue, etc.  How can anyone
expect that there will be no long-term adverse health effects from such
repeated exposures to sublethal levels of lethal gases?  I believe that
we can say in general that the absence of apparent, acute ill effects
from an exposure to some toxins does not rule out the possibility that
the exposure is harmful but the presence of apparent, acute ill effects
from an exposure to some toxins does rule out the possibility that the
exposure is safe.  Or people who were born and grew up in this society
might not feel so sick from the exhaust gases of internal combustion
engines because they develop tolerance to them.  If a child gets sick in
a motor vehicle from the engine emission the adults think that something
is the matter with the child but not the air the child is breathing.=20
And they call it =93motion=94 sickness, which they believe is caused not =
by
the contaminated air but by the motion and the weak autonomic nervous
system of the child which cannot cope with the motion.  Children who
grow up in this society eventually learn to suppress the ill feelings
they get from the exposures to engine exhausts.

The emission of any toxin to our environment must be stopped.  If we
deal with toxins we have to use a closed-loop system and shouldn=92t
release them into the environment at large.  There are a lot of things
which need to be rethought.  But I decided to write this because the
hazards of the internal combustion engine emission is one of the most
obvious problems to me and yet the average American people don=92t even
seem to recognize it.

Rethinking the Internal Combustion Engine