Everyone understands that fossil fuels emit carbon dioxide, which threatens the global climate. The introduction of biofuels under the “renewable fuel standard” has helped cut some of those emissions, with cleaner-burning ethanol replacing about 10 percent of the gasoline in the U.S. fuel mix. But the day-to-day threat facing many communities doesn’t come from carbon. It comes from airborne chemicals with less attention-grabbing names like volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and ozone.
As with carbon, the most effective solution is to simply replace more of the fuel in today’s cars and trucks with renewable biofuels – only we should be doing it much faster. A landmark eight-year study published July 18 by the American Medical Association shows that children and adults are four times more likely to be treated for asthma if they lived near fracking – a technique now used on more than 90 percent of oil and gas wells. Read the full Sacramento Bee article here.