Groups urge tough standards on sulfur in gasoline

Health and environmental groups called for a crackdown by the Environmental Protection Agency on sulfur levels in gasoline at the National Conference of State Legislators on Monday.

Representatives of the Clean Air Trust, American Lung Association, Citizen Alert and the Sierra Club met at the Las Vegas Convention Center and agreed that sulfur is a public health problem.

"The sulfur in gas acts kind of like dirt," said Frank O'Donnell, spokesman for the Clean Air Trust. "It gets into a car's fuel system and poisons the catalytic converter causing more smog and soot to come out the tailpipe."

The average sulfur level in gasoline around the country is approximately 330-340 parts per million. California already has sulfur regulations in place lowering that state's level to around 30-40 ppm.

Much of Nevada's gas comes from California giving the Silver State an average sulfur level of 80 ppm.

"If we were to lower the standard to 30-40 ppm, the results in Nevada would reduce air pollution equivalent to taking 50,000 cars off the road," said Richard Nielsen, executive director of Citizen Alert. "If the reduction was enacted federally it would be like having 54 million fewer cars on the road across the country."

Car manufacturers are behind the plan, said General Motors spokesman Gary Herwick.

"We are ready for the EPA to move forward with this," Herwick said. "The new generation of cars will have technology to lower pollution but it may not be available without the low sulfur gasoline."

Some of those new technologies, like fuel cells and direct injection engines, are already in use in Japan which has low sulfur requirements for gasoline. The technologies increase mileage, while decreasing pollution, O'Donnell said.

Oil companies oppose the plan and have said that the cost of removing sulfur would raise gas prices, Nielsen said.

"When the plan first came out there were estimates that the removal of the sulfur would increase prices about 10 cents at the pump," Nielsen said. "But as the months have gone by those price estimations have dropped to a one- or two-cent increase."

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