NASCAR fans are not going to find many Greenpeace signs, Nature Conservancy banners or hybrid electric car displays along the Nextel Cup circuit. Somehow, the environmental movement has never quite gained a foothold in those exhaust-fumed NASCAR garages.
"I'd say the majority of the people in here are the farthest thing from environmentalists, from my outside-looking-in perspective," the NASCAR driver Ryan Newman said. Asked if he was a tree hugger, Newman said, "I just touch the bark once in a while."
Newman said he was not worried about the air he breathes at the racetrack each weekend. But others are concerned. There is growing frustration that in the decades since the Clean Air Act of 1970 required a switch from leaded to unleaded gasoline for automobiles, NASCAR has not found a way to make that change, too.
The fill-up station in the infield at each racetrack, which looks like any other gas station along the highway, continues to pump only leaded gas. Auto racing is one of the few industries -- along with airlines -- that are exempt from US Clean Air Act regulations.
The open-wheel Indy-style racecars switched to methanol in the 1960s, and the Indy Racing League is planning to move to ethanol, a cleaner fuel, completing the transition by 2007.
But NASCAR continues to use a fuel that the Environmental Protection Agency says is linked to health problems.
Frank O'Donnell, the president of the nonprofit group Clean Air Watch, said he was stunned to learn earlier this year that NASCAR did not use unleaded fuel in its racecars. So he wrote a letter to the NASCAR chairman and chief executive, Brian France, in January to ask for change.
"By permitting the continued use of lead, your organization may be putting millions of spectators and nearby residents at unnecessary risk of suffering serious health effects, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency," O'Donnell wrote. "Because of the clear public health threat, lead is being eliminated from gasoline throughout most of the world.
"If Kazakhstan can eliminate lead from gasoline, why can't NASCAR?"
O'Donnell received a response from Gary Nelson, a vice president for research and development for NASCAR.
"NASCAR has been actively working with the US Environmental Protection Agency for several years and more recently with our new fuel supplier, Sunoco, to come up with possible alternatives to our current fuel formula," Nelson wrote.
When the EPA began working with NASCAR in 2000 toward a voluntary solution, there was a three-to five-year plan to make the changeover. It has been five years since those discussions.
"We've certainly been looking for alternatives to lead," Nelson said in a telephone interview last week. "We've been researching ways to transform to unleaded fuel."
NASCAR did test unleaded fuel in its racecars in the late 1990s, but found that the lead provided better lubrication for the valves of the engines. Without that lubrication, the engines would fail. A fuel additive, methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or MTBE, appeared to work but was found to contaminate ground water. It is currently banned in many states.
Nelson said NASCAR was looking at an ethanol mix, but the latest research showed the mix destroyed the fuel cells that hold it.
Meanwhile, there is no penalty for NASCAR to continue using leaded fuel while it seeks an alternative.
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