EPA Faults Emissions in 1985 Models : GM Ordered to Recall 491,000 Vehicles
The Environmental Protection Agency, unsatisfied with General Motors Corp.’s plans to reduce potentially hazardous emissions from some of its models, took the rare step Thursday of ordering the automotive giant to recall about a half-million 1985 cars and light trucks.
The recall is one of the largest ever imposed by the EPA, which began routinely testing vehicles for environmental threats in the mid-1970s under the Clean Air Act.
The 491,000 GM vehicles in question, all 1985 models, are the Chevrolet Impala, Caprice Classic, Camaro, Monte Carlo and El Camino; the Pontiac Firebird, Bonneville, Grand Prix and Parisienne, and the GMC Caballero.
EPA officials said their tests found that on average these vehicles gave out evaporative emissions from all parts of the car, which contribute to ground-level ozone that was 145% above federal health standards. Emissions for carbon monoxide, which can reduce the amount of oxygen to human tissues, were 38% above standards.
No Immediate Threat
Agency officials said the emissions from the GM cars pose no immediate threat to car owners and drivers. “It’s the mass of cars, cumulatively, that create the danger,” said Andy Brooks, who heads the EPA’s recall division.
But GM spokesman Jane Mott said: “The emissions do not pose a health or environmental problem. They won’t have any measurable impact on air quality.”
Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a Ralph Nader consumer group, said: “This may be relatively small in quantity (of emissions) but it’s big in principle, and GM ought to do what it should have done to begin with and fix the problem.”
General Motors, which has 45 days to either contest the order or comply by presenting an acceptable plan for calling back the vehicles and repairing them, did not immediately say how it would respond, saying its decision is under review.
Clash Over a Remedy
In negotiations in past months, federal and GM officials have clashed over a remedy to the problem.
Officials with the auto maker argued that replacing the cars’ thermal vacuum switch, a component in the evaporative-emission control system, would lower the emission to acceptable levels. They offered to recall the cars voluntarily and replace the valve, an offer that Mott said Thursday still stands.
But Brooks of the EPA said replacing that part alone “does not fix the problem” in its entirety. The agency has not proposed a satisfactory solution of its own. “It’s GM’s responsibility to come up with a fix and EPA’s responsibility to make sure it’s adequate,” he said.
The vast majority of car recalls are undertaken voluntarily by the manufacturer.
The EPA has resorted to a recall order in only 33 of the 376 recall cases that involved environmental hazards in the last decade. Agency officials acknowledged the possibility of a protracted battle over the order this time but said they do not expect one.
But Ron De Fore of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, another federal agency that has the authority to force a recall, said: “Win or lose, history shows that when you have to force a recall, it winds up in litigation--years and years of it.”
