I try to imagine the first guys who invented the internal combustion engine showing it off:

“So what do you do with all those toxic gases it creates?”
“Aw yeah, that. Well, we just blow them out the back. How could that possibly be a problem?”
“Ah, good point. Sounds good to me … Well, let’s mass produce it then! No problems here!”

Electric cars do help with this one though. Even though I really don’t think electric cars solve the main problem with cars (their contribution to the obesity epidemic, their inherently inefficient nature (3000 lbs to move 200 lb!), their dehumanizing effect on people, and the crappy unlivable urban design they require), at least it helps with the one issue of air pollution.

Remember PCBs – those chemicals that made everyone stop using nalgenes a few years ago? Those are in the dashboard and other plastics inside a car — and they heat up from being inside the car acting, ostensibly, as a greenhouse.

A/C’s in autos aren’t actually filtering out toxins/particulate matter, and sucking in from, basically, the same point of where a cyclist breathes in traffic. So, the polluted air enters the car cabin, but there’s no cross-winds to scatter the bad stuff — just straight in the cabin for drivers and passengers to sit in and inhale.

There’s more science behind this than ‘car exhaust is stinky’ — http://www.scribd.com/doc/9574922/InCar-Pollution-Report

For those who don’t want to read the full report:
- [exposure to VOCs] are 1.7 times higher [in the car cabin] than at the side of the road. Concentrations inside and immediately outside vehicle [where bikers are] were roughly the same.
- most in-car VOCs come from outside exhaust not self-pollution (except from smoking)
- Research shows that CO levels inside cars are consistently higher than in the ambient air.
- On urban streets, interstates, and rural roads the median concentrations [of CO] were 13 [inside the car], 11 [immediately outside the car (where bikes are)], and 4 [on sidewalks] ppm.
- [the range of exposure to NOX ranged on] average in-city in-car concentrations from 31 to 90.8 ppb. In-city bikers breather 49.6 to 81.4 ppb and pedestrians breathed 55.3 ppb, on average.

So, yeah — I’ll take the reduced pollution OUTSIDE the car and get my exercise, sunshine, and fun to boot.

See, cars used to pollute a lot. Like a whole lot. Now they pollute much less. As older cars die off, they’ll pollute even less. The problem has been and is being solved by the heavy, heavy hand of government.