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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Rentech(RTK) - gas-to-liquids and cleaner fuel -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lord Smooth who wrote (2210)	3/18/1998 1:56:00 PM
From: Allen Sampson	Respond to of 14347

California Air Resources Board.... The following article was run in today's California edition of the Wall Street Journal. For those unfamiliar with the Cal Air Resources Board, think mandated vapor recovery, catalytic converters, unleaded fuel. Mandating clean diesel is well within their purview. Scientists Closer to Recommendation on Diesel Exhaust By Marc Lifsher Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal Los Angeles - Industry efforts to prevent diesel exhaust from being labeled a "toxic air contaminant" look to be going up in smoke. After an all day meeting here last week, scientists who advise the California Air Resources Board appear to be one step closer to recommending that diesel exhaust be formally identified as a cancer causing toxic air contaminant. If that happens, regulators are required to come up with a plan to mitigate the pollutants effects. For the first time in its fifteen year history, the state Scientific Review Panel took testimony from out of state experts as it explored the matter. The visiting academics included a pair of researchers who had tangled with the Air Board over how staff members had interpreted their work. The California Trucking Association, which bitterly opposes the listing of diesel exhaust, had seized upon the criticism from Harvard University's Eric Garshick and Joe Mauderly of the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in New Mexico as proff that regulators hadn't done their homework. But the trucking industry's hopes for help from the two scientists largely evaporated when panel member Stanton Glantz, a University of California - San Francisco cardiologist, asked, ` Does anybody among the speakers think that diesel exhaust does not meet the definition of a toxic air contaminant?" California law, he noted, defines such a contaminant as an air pollutant that may pose a hazard to human health. Dr. Glantz's query was met with silence from all of the visiting experts. As previously reported, the debate over deisel exhaust has centered in part on whether a study of railroad workers by Dr. Garshick supports the view that long term exposure to diesel fumes causes cancer. Dr. Garshick had warned that regulators weren't taking into account "the uncertainty" inherent in his findings. Dr. Mauderly had issued a similar note of caution about his work. Industry representatives say they thought Drs. Garshick and Mauderly had gotten their point across. "They did exactly what we expected them to do - explain their original science", says Stephanie Williams, the trucking industry's director of environmental affairs. Dr. Garshick says he also feels he effectively made the case that more research is needed. Yet it was clear that the two scientists hadn't challenged the panel with the intensity that some state officials had anticipated. Meanwhile, the industry has begun raising new questions about the impact of diesel exhaust, this time by pointing to Australian government data on the health of coal miners. 30