Emissions from lit-use Motor Vehicles in Los Angeles: A Pilot Study of Remote Sensing and the Inspection and Maintenance Program

Abstract

As part of a major field study to understand the causes of persistent, elevated carbon monoxide pollution episodes in Los Angeles, we performed a project to understand the emissions of vehicles in use. In this experiment, we assessed the accuracy of a remote sensing instrument designed to measure CO concentrations from vehicles as they were driven on the road. The remote sensor was shown to be accurate within ten percent of the directly measured tailpipe value. We performed a roadside inspection on 60 vehicles and demonstrated that the remote sensor could be used as an effective surveillance tool to identify high CO-emitting vehicles. We also compared the roadside data set to the biennial Smog Check (I/M) tests for the same vehicles, and observed that carbon monoxide and exhaust hydrocarbons from high emitters were much higher than when the vehicles received their routine inspection. Furthermore, for the high-emitting vehicles in this data set, the length of time since the biennial Smog Check had little influence on the cars’ emissions in the roadside inspection.