Suggested changes to petrol could cause serious damage to cars, have health risks

Suggested changes to petrol in South Africa could cause serious damage to cars, have health risks Proposed changes to petroleum regulations means South Africans won’t have a metal-free fuel, resulting in damage to vehicles and more pollutants being pumped into the atmosphere. For the past 10 years, drivers have filled their cars with unleaded petrol. The need for it is clear: lead-containing petrol causes permanent damage to catalytic converters, which are designed to reduce exhaust emissions that cause health problems as a result of higher levels of lead in human blood. Leaded petrol has been phased out worldwide; in countries such as the United States its sale was banned in 1996. The beneficiaries of changes to petroleum regulations will be the global chemicals magnate, Afton, and powerful local manganese interests and mine owners. The draft amendments, issued in June, to the Petroleum Products Specification and Standards regulations propose to change the current definition of unleaded petrol mean “all petrol that does not include metal additives, but including or excluding manganese …” The key issue here is that the allowing of manganese to be added to unleaded fuel in South Africa could risk damaging the expensive catalytic converters in cars. If such damage is not covered by vehicle warranties, and emissions are not tested during roadworthy tests for second hand vehicles, the knock on effect is that owners may just bypass the catalytic converter instead of replacing it at a cost of R10,000 or more. The final effect is that vehicle emissions would rise, which is the very last thing we want to happen as it has taken many years of legislation and technology improvements to slowly improve this situation. The Worldwide Fuel Charter states clearly that manganese increases carbon emissions by adversely affecting the operation of vehicle emissions control systems. Several studies reviewed by the… http://bit.ly/2bgeHKT