The air inside your car may be dirtier than what's outside. I've heard this about homes before, but not cars. I'm sort of skeptical.

MSNBC Article

 

Wow ! I am an engineer by degree and even I am having a problem following the logic behind this one!!

I would only speculate this report failed to mention the results were based on the vehicle re-circulating the cabin air, much as is done in an airplane cabin, (where opening the windows is not an option )? I am basing this on the comment:

Quote:

“We release gases, bacteria and fungi into the air. The more people there are in an enclosed area, the more harmful it is,”

The only way that air coming from a cars vents is any "dirtier" then the air coming in your window, would be if there was dust, mold, toxic waste, etc, in the cars ducts or on the filter.

 

Speaking of which, with winter coming, here's my question. Does the Prius have the same carbon monoxide concerns as a regular car?

The Prius uses its electric motor while idling so seems like CO2 wouldn't be much of a problem. However, draining the battery would!

 

The article was about cars in general.

The Corvair had serious problems Ralph Nader noted in Unsafe at Any Speed. Carbon monxide leaked into the passenger area....

 

The Corvair also had a heater that burned gas to generate the heat !

 

I think at least most of the Corvair models circulated air directly from the engine, rather than using the coolant hoses. The Corvair was air-cooled.

On a tangent, air-cooled engines would lighten ICEs.

 

As Porsche finally admitted when they abandoned air-cooling in 1998, it's way too hard to regulate engine temperature on an air-cooled engine when you really want to have consistency in performance and emissions. I know with aircraft engines, there are now a few liquid cooled engines coming on the market that are very competitive with air-cooled engines in terms of total mission weight. A lot of the aircooled engines have to be more overbuilt in order to deal with thermal shock or overcooling during low power, high airspeed descent from high altitudes. Liquid cooled engines can simply recirc engine coolant and bypass the radiator by means of the thermostat (how all liquid cooled engines work) and maintain far tighter control of engine temperatures, thus improving reliability in a wider range of conditions.

 

I have also wondered about all the asbestos brake pads that were in use and how much of that dust we all breathed in while driving heavily congested roadways along with the lead dust from leaded fuels. It's gotta go somewhere, in our lungs, into the water supply, into the air as vehicles spew it out and stir it up along with the wind... Most older cars did not have cabin filters (except for the people breathing it in)....Yeeesh.