NASCAR is still using leaded fuelCLEAN AIR ACT PASSED IN 1970, BUT NO ALTERNATIVE FOUND YET
By Viv Bernstein
Posted on Tue, Jul. 12, 2005
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
There is growing frustration that in the decades since the Clean Air Act of 1970 required a switch from leaded to unleaded gasoline for automobiles, NASCAR has not found a way to make that change, too.
The fill-up station in the infield at each racetrack, which looks like any other gas station along the highway, continues to pump only leaded gas. Auto racing is one of the few industries -- along with airlines -- that are exempt from the Clean Air Act regulations.
The open-wheel Indy-style racecars switched to methanol in the 1960s, and the Indy Racing League is planning to move to ethanol, a cleaner fuel, completing the transition by 2007.
But NASCAR continues to use a fuel that the Environmental Protection Agency says is linked to health problems.
Frank O'Donnell, the president of the nonprofit group Clean Air Watch, said he was stunned to learn earlier this year that NASCAR did not use unleaded fuel in its racecars. So he wrote a letter to the NASCAR chairman and chief executive, Brian France, in January to ask for change.
"By permitting the continued use of lead, your organization may be putting millions of spectators and nearby residents at unnecessary risk of suffering serious health effects, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency," O'Donnell wrote. "Because of the clear public health threat, lead is being eliminated from gasoline throughout most of the world.
"If Kazakhstan can eliminate lead from gasoline, why can't NASCAR?"
O'Donnell received a response from Gary Nelson, a vice president for research and development for NASCAR.
"NASCAR has been actively working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for several years and more recently with our new fuel supplier, Sunoco, to come up with possible alternatives to our current fuel formula," Nelson wrote.
When the EPA began working with NASCAR in 2000 toward a voluntary solution, there was a three- to five-year plan to make the changeover. It has been five years since those discussions.
NASCAR did test unleaded fuel in its racecars in the late 1990s, but found that the lead provided better lubrication for the valves of the engines. Without that lubrication, the engines would fail. A fuel additive, methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or MTBE, appeared to work but was found to contaminate ground water. It is currently banned in many states.
Nelson said NASCAR was looking at an ethanol mix, but the latest research showed the mix destroyed the fuel cells that hold it.
Meanwhile, there is no penalty for NASCAR to continue using leaded fuel while it seeks an alternative.
"NASCAR is such a behemoth that if it decides it wants to stonewall, it may well get away with it," O'Donnell said in a telephone interview. "It's not for lack of technology, it's inertia on NASCAR's part in part because the government is asleep at the switch."
Nelson, who is working on projects involving the car of the future and the engine of the future, bristled at suggestions that NASCAR was not trying hard enough to eliminate leaded fuel from racecars.
"I don't think it's fair to say that somebody who hasn't invented something to improve in any area can be criticized for not coming up with the idea that fixes it yet," Nelson said.
Neither Nelson nor O'Donnell could say with any certainty that there are dangerously high levels of lead in the air at racetracks. Nelson said he believed there was less likely to be pollution in the air because racecar engines run more efficiently and produce less waste. He said the fumes quickly dissipated, so it was less likely to be a danger to those at the racetrack and in surrounding neighborhoods.
But Nelson acknowledged that NASCAR had never tested the air at a racetrack. Nor has the EPA, according to Enesta Jones, a media relations officer with the association.
That should be the start, said O'Donnell, who has not ruled out legal action against NASCAR.
"The lead certainly can carry not only within the track itself, but could certainly go into nearby neighborhoods," he said. "And I think monitoring is completely appropriate in this situation given it was the government itself that identified this as a potential problem."
Author
