Urban Air Initiative?

A new promising but also questionable campaign called the "Urban Air Initiative" has been launched http://urbanairinitiative.com

We are looking forward to see how this campaign will develop.

There are some signs that the Diesel-Lobby is trying hard to 'white-wash' Diesel Exhaust with the help from Burson-Marsteller and bought "Scientists". One of the alleged Junk-Scientists, "Consultant" and Meteorologist is Loren Carl Marz, who already in 2002 suggested - against all scientific evidence - that Diesel was less harmful than petrol. More alleged Junk-Science is now produced and released by the American Geophysical Union including Roya Bahraini... unfortunately the urbanairinitiative.com has no problem with citing Bahraini as a credible source. Well maybe we must defend Baharaini a bit, the study focuses on Secondary Organic Aerosol Mass: from a Clean Air Perspective (as from where the urbanairinitiative.com claims to be looking things) this is just the wrong premise: From a toxicological point of view overall particulate mass isn't the relevant public health threat: On the alveolar level this means: the smaller and therefore lighter the particles the more dangerous. Thats why health experts today focus on Particle Numbers or even better on the LDSA (Lung Deposited Surface Area). Diesel Exhaust is far more toxic than gasoline exhaust and contains far more noxious nano-particles from which many are PFR's (Persitent Free Radicals).But Bahraini seriously concludes that only gasoline emission should be reduced, ignoring all relevant and recent science on diesel exhaust... Even from a climate change perspective Diesel is worse than gasoline (see Mark Jacobson et al., Stanford, Ca). The urban air initiative doesn't allow comments yet, but we d'like to discuss this issue with them.