Category: Blog

What Have VW and Other Auto Makers and Government Officials Done To Our Health?


What Have VW and Other Auto Makers and Government Officials Done To Our Health?

October, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
The latest corporate crime against humanity – not seen by government officials for years – has now become visible to the world.  
Media Coverage
Photo of Obama and Auto Execs (except VW) revealing backdrop for NY Times article on VW and Obama Administration.   See   http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/business/international/volkswagen-sought-a-green-seal-for-its-diesel-cars.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
NY Times coverage of VW Hearing see
Insightful Interview On Prospects
German publication interviews Clarence Ditlow, leading lawyer and engineer, who has advocated auto safety advances for more than 4 decades.  See  http://www.dw.com/en/it-is-certainly-going-to-worsen-volkswagens-troubles/a-18774398
Infographic Summary Of VW Legal Situation
A Little History – The Finest Money Could Buy

In 1971, I edited an EPA Report titled “Our Urban Environment and Our Most Endangered People”.  

Little did I know then (I only learned decades later from the Nixon Tapes) that Lee Iacocca and Henry Ford II were lobbying Nixon and EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus to weaken air pollution controls by changing the test procedures.

See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/1970-PolutionControlEfforts.php

To this day more than 40 years later we read about VW selling vehicles designed to emit many times more pollutants on the streets than on the EPA test dynamometers.  The many health effects of automotive emissions have long been known.  See  http://www3.epa.gov/airquality/nitrogenoxides/health.html

I recall a 1970s research presentation funded by the oil industry that argued the EPA air quality standards could be exceeded ten fold without adverse health effects.  At the break I asked Dr. “Money” (that is the name I give him): How could this be?  He told me that his scientific study was very rigorous.  He used only the most carefully selected, healthiest and fittest monkeys that money could buy.  That these adult monkeys in their prime were exposed to tightly controlled levels of nitrogen oxides under stringent laboratory conditions.  When I asked about the bacteria that were used to determine the subsequent health effects, he said they did not do so (so as to not confound the scientific study).  Yet that was a common way to determine the reduction in resistance to respiratory infections due to inhalation of NOx.  No dose, no response, no problem.

To no avail, I pointed out that people living in urban areas were of all ages, all degrees of health and fitness, and exposed to a wide variety of pollutants and bacteria.

When will we ever learn?   Two types of ignorance: 1. To not know, and 2. To know and to not act.

Lou

 

State Attorneys General Investigating VW


State Attorneys General Investigating VW

October, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

NY Times reports:

“A bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from at least 30 states and the District of Columbia has joined a fast-moving investigation into the possibilities of consumer fraud and environmental violations by the German automakerVolkswagen.

At least two of the attorneys general, from New York and Illinois, have served subpoenas on the company, according to people briefed on the investigations.”  See

 

VW Pollution Scandal Grows Deeper & Wider


VW Pollution Scandal Grows Deeper & Wider

October, 2015

andhttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/business/international/volkswagen-germany-recall.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

 

Cash, Corruption, & Congress Endangering Us All For Years To Come


Cash, Corruption, & Congress Endangering Us All For Years To Come

October, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

An excellent article and comments produced to give us all important information on politics of truck safety has been published by Fair Warning.   See http://www.fairwarning.org/2015/10/trucks/ This is a fine article. It shows the tragic consequences of crashes and campaign finances corrupting government to endanger all Americans here, now, and long into the future.

People can find the shocking number of crash fatalities for each congressional district over the past decade. 

The number of lives destroyed in each district each year may help generate some empathy — at least among voters.

See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/CrashDeathMappingTools.php

 

Center for Auto Safety Sues VW & Audi Over Pollution Violations


Center for Auto Safety Sues VW & Audi Over Pollution Violations

October, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

Here’s a way to get some health safety from harmful air pollutants and some justice for past injurious pollutants we are being forced to breathe.

See Media Release below:

http://www.autosafety.org/sites/default/files/imce_staff_uploads/CASNewsImage.jpg

October 19, 2015

Center for Auto Safety Sues Volkswagen & Audi Over Emission Violations Using Defeat Devices

The Center for Auto Safety (CAS) sued Volkswagen AG, Audi AG, et al in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.  Unlike the numerous private class actions filed across the country that seek consumer damages over VW’s use of sophisticated computer software to cheat on emission tests run by the US EPA and CARB, CAS’ lawsuit seeks injunctive relief:

  • To remediate the environmental harm caused by VW’s emissions relief, 
  • To appoint an independent organization to monitor VW’s compliance with state and federal laws as well as other relief granted in this lawsuit,
  • To order VW to pay a portion of its annual net profits into an independent fund administered by third parties to non-profit organization to offset the environmental damage.
  • To order such other relief as may be just and proper.

CAS Executive Director Clarence Ditlow said:

CAS has sued VW and Audi because they committed an unprecedented corporate crime and fraud on the public that requires injunctive relief to remedy the harm caused by their violations of state and federal environmental and consumer protection laws.  Class actions and government enforcement actions result in headlines, penalties and settlements that do nothing to change underlying corporate behavior or remediate the underlying damage caused by illegal behavior.  The independent monitors and auditors sanctioned by the Justice Department and federal agencies are nothing more than corporate law firms and employees who all too willing to sign off on the behavior of their employers in documents filled with withheld redactions.  When so-called independent funds are set up as was done in the Toyota Unintended  Acceleration class action, they go to auto company designed programs that benefit the auto maker, not the consumer.

CAS will use its integrity and skills acquired through 45 years of battling the auto industry to ensure that this litigation will reform VW and Audi once and for all and set a precedent for all other auto companies in the future. 

#     #     #

CAS has a long history in working on motor vehicle fuel economy and emissions dating back to the early 1970’s. The Safe Climate Campaign headed by Dan Becker is a program of CAS. CAS is represented by Hausfeld LLP, 1700 K Street NW Ste 650, Washington DC 20006, 202.540.7200. Hausfeld is a leading global law firm with offices in Washington, DC; Philadelphia; San Francisco; Brussels; and London. The firm has a broad range of complex litigation expertise, particularly in consumer, antitrust/competition, financial services, sports and entertainment, environmental, mass torts, and human rights matters. For more information about the firm, please visit: www.hausfeld.com.

Center for Auto Safety v. Volkswagen – Complaint

Volkswagen Emissions Defeat Devices Violate EPA Emissions Rules

Clarence Ditlow

Executive Director

Center for Auto Safety

1825 Connecticut Ave NW #330

Washington DC 20009

 

“Cheating” Auto Companies Circle Their Wagons On Government Emission Testing


“Cheating” Auto Companies Circle Their Wagons On Government Emission Testing

October, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

“Cheating” is too weak a word to describe poisoning people for more than 4 decades by big auto and government policies.

This is a much bigger problem than is widely known.

The NY Times reports:

LONDON — Despite the cloud cast by the Volkswagen scandal, automakers are proposing that they be allowed a 70 percent increase in the nitrogen oxides their cars emit, unreleased documents show, as part of new European pollution tests.

Under the new plan, cars in Europe would for the first time be tested on the road, using portable monitoring equipment, in addition to laboratory testing.

The automakers, which include Volkswagen, General Motors, Daimler, BMW, Toyota, Renault, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Ford and Hyundai, are essentially conceding what outside groups have said for some time — that the industry cannot meet pollution regulations when cars are taken out of testing laboratories. The move is occurring as Volkswagen, the world’s largest automaker, grapples with fallout from the discovery that 11 million of its vehicles were equipped with software meant to cheat emissions tests.

Tests of car emissions required in the United States and Europe take place in laboratories, where vehicles are run through drills on a dynamometer, which is the automotive equivalent of a treadmill. Automakers have found ways to cheat the tests since emissions were first regulated in the early 1970s.  Seehttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/business/automakers-ask-europe-for-leniency-in-emissions-testing.html?emc=edit_tnt_20151002&nlid=37926955&tntemail0=y&_r=0

Disclosure:

In the 1971 I blew the whistle on EPA changes in the emission test procedures to favor auto makers.  I was fired and sued the National Academy of Sciences for access to information supporting my arguments.  Judge Sirica and judges up to the Supreme Court ruled against me denying me access to the documents.  See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/assets/EPA-Whistle-Blow.pdf

Decades later the Nixon Tapes revealed what I did not know at the time.  In April 1971, Henry Ford II and Lee Iacocca met with Nixon in the White House and pressed for relief on emission standards and had already met with EPA Administrator Ruckelshaus to change emission test procedures.  See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/assets/Nixon-Transcriptions.pdf

For more on history of emissions by companies and government failures to protect people, see the Center for Auto Safety statement:“The only way to change auto company behavior is to put the responsible executives in jail.  After a flagrant pattern across the auto industry of violating US health and safety laws, the Center for Auto Safety calls on the Justice Department to move to put the responsible VW executives behind bars as it just did with peanut butter manufacturers.”  Seehttp://www.autosafety.org/volkswagen-emissions-defeat-devices-violate-epa-emissions-rules

I am sorry to say that history teaches that we also have to hold government officials in all agencies and branches of government to the same standards of accountability.

Lou