A Safer Ride

In the summer of 1995, NRDC launched its Dump Dirty Diesels Campaign, which eventually helped reduce diesel emissions from New York City Transit's bus fleet by 97 percent. When cities across the country followed suit, the federal government took notice and adopted strict tailpipe pollution standards for new trucks, buses, farm tractors, construction equipment, and almost any other vehicle with a diesel engine. Still, the job was not complete.

In 2001 a team of NRDC scientists in California showed that pollution inside school buses continued to be a problem. According to their study, students were exposed to four to six times more noxious diesel soot than passengers in cars traveling alongside the buses. Most school buses have open crankcases directly below the cabin, which allows pollution to travel into the space where children sit.

Armed with these data, the director of NRDC's Clean Fuels and Vehicles Project, senior attorney Rich Kassel, doggedly pursued his goal: to help craft a new law -- signed by New York mayor Michael Bloomberg in October 2009 -- which requires the city to filter the crankcase exhaust of school buses. Retrofitting this one part will reduce most of the pollution inside the buses, according to Kassel, who expects other U.S. cities will adopt similar measures.

"Even in the toughest of fiscal climates, cities can take these relatively inexpensive steps to virtually eliminate a serious pollution risk for kids traveling to school," Kassel says.