The other day I was stuck behind one of my neighbor’s 1958 Ford Fairlane, on a hot sunny day. A beautiful classic car, it really stunk of partially burnt hydrocarbons, as was the case of most cars from the pre-automobile pollution control era.

I was curious how much progress we’ve made an automobiles in 2010, versus the pre-control era of model years 1968 and earlier. In 40 years, we’ve taken some serious steps to reduce the tailpipe emissions of our automobile fleet.

The four major pollutants from automobiles are nitrous oxides (NOx) that create smog, carbon monoxide (CO) which is a deadly human posion that replaces oxygen in human blood and causes heart attacks, particulate matter (PM) or soot that coats human lungs and creates smog, and carbon dioxide (CO2) that is acidifying our oceans and inducing climate change.

1968 Vehicles – Pre-Clean Air Standards

Nitrogen Oxides – 3.00 gram/mi
Carbon Monoxide – 39.00 gram/mi
Particulate Matter – 12.80 gram/mi *
Lead – 0.06 gram/mi *
Carbon Dioxide – 840.00 gram/mi *

* Estimates based on the following, previously used to test emissions.

Total Hydrocarbons – 8.80 gram/mi
Miles Per Gallon – 12.5 miles/gallon
Lead Per Gallon – 0.80 gram/gallon

2010 Vehicles – Bin 3 (Average “Bin” Required Across All Vehicles)

Nitrogen Oxides – 0.03 gram/mi
Carbon Monoxide – 2.10 gram/mi
Particulate Matter – 0.01 gram/mi
Lead – 0.00 gram/mi *
Carbon Dioxide – 329.00 gram/mi *

* Estimates based on the following, previously used to test emissions.

Miles Per Gallon – 27.5 miles per gallon
Lead – Gasoline is 100% lead free now due to catalytic converters being poisoned by leaded gasoline. Lead has been replaced by ethanol and synthetic anti-knock oxygent agents such as MTBE and ETBE.

A Significant Improvement.

Here is the improvement in pollution control in the past 40 years for automobiles in times.

Nitrous Oxides – You can drive a 2010 model year car 100 miles and create the same amount of nitrous oxides as a 1968 model year car puts out per mile.

Carbon Monoxide – You can drive a 2010 model year car 18.5 miles and create the same amount of carbon monoxide as a 1968 model year car puts out per mile.

Particulate Matter – You can drive a 2010 model year car 1287 miles and create the same amount of particulate matter as a 1968 model year car puts out per mile.

Carbon Dioxide – You can drive a 2010 model year car 2.1 miles and create the same amount of carbon dioxide as a 1968 model year car puts out per mile.

Hope for Even Cleaner Cars.

The fact is we’ve done a lot to clean up the automobile fleet. Today’s cars are nothing like the polluting cars of yesteryear, although on one key pollutant — carbon dioxide, we have a long ways to go. Carbon dioxide, while a very dilute pollutant, is produced in massive quantities by automobiles. Modern cars still produce over 320 grams per mile of carbon dioxide, and reducing that will require advanced technologies, many yet to be invented.

Yet, back in 1968, few would have believed that we would reduce nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, or particulate mater to such a great extent as we have today.