SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- A state agency voted unanimously Thursday to regulate cancer-causing chemical particles in diesel exhaust, a move that could force the industry to produce cleaner-burning fuel or engines.
The California Air Resources Board had originally considered declaring diesel exhaust in general to be harmful to the public but amended its action to focus on individual components of the exhaust, a compromise that won industry backing.
The 11-member board voted unanimously to declare 40 chemicals found in diesel exhaust -- including benzene and dioxin -- as toxic air pollutants.
That makes California the first state to specifically target these cancer-causing chemicals in diesel exhaust, the board said.
The vote requires the board to draft a plan to limit human exposure to the chemicals, including setting limits for emissions of each one.
There was no immediate comment from diesel-engine makers on the possible effects of the board's move, but California is one of the biggest markets for diesel-powered vehicles.
More than 2 billion gallons of diesel fuel is burned each year in California, according to the Air Resources Board.
Just 2 percent of the state's motor vehicles, including trucks, use diesel fuel, but they produce 60 percent of the harmful exhaust particles in the air, said board spokesman Jerry Martin. Diesel engines also create 30 percent of the state's emissions of nitrogen oxides, a building block of ozone.
The trucking industry had fought efforts to make a blanket condemnation of diesel exhaust.
"The only thing you can do to get rid of diesel exhaust is get rid of a diesel engine," said William Bunn, of Navistar International Transportation Corp., the nation's largest truck maker.
Board members and others compared the vote to the U.S. surgeon general's 1964 report on tobacco.
"This issue is as simple as cigarette smoking and cancer -- the issue is diesel and lung damage," said Bonnie Holmes-Gen of the Sierra Club.
The trucking industry says advances in engine design and fuel over the past decade already have done away with once-common clouds of black diesel exhaust from new vehicles. However, older, less efficient diesel-powered trucks still roll along California's roads.
"When the public sees big, black smoke coming out of a truck, that's a reality," said Allen Shaeffer, vice president of the American Trucking Association. "We have to deal with that reality."
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