Your Catalytic Converter and the Environment

People buy cars for different purposes and different reasons. The most important quality that a car should possess is it should be driver friendly. Qualities like style, performance and safety come next. But one feature that a car has that sometimes an owner takes for granted is its being environment-friendly.

In different countries around the world, there had been laws formed for car manufacturers to follow when designing a car. Since air pollution is the most common car caused environmental hazard, car owners should always be mindful of the cars they choose not to add to this serious environmental problem.

Cars contribute or do not contribute to air pollution can be traced mainly by having catalytic converters. This part of the internal combustion system is responsible for converting the harmful carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide to be released by the car in its exhaust system.

With this very important function, a car cannot pass for quality checking if it doesn’t have a catalytic converter. Stretching this importance, in 1998 as part of the United States Clean Air act, the United States Environmental Protection Agency required all industries involved in auto repair and other services to not sell after market catalytic converters that have not met EPA standards. The EPA considers the catalytic converters to be the most important pollution control device in a vehicle.

Since the laws regarding pollution control concerning vehicles are passed in the eighties, it affected most car brands existing at that time. Although almost all car manufacturers in the eighties like Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Toyota and their catalytic converters are still easy to find even at this time, there are also few that had already phased out. Some car brands like that of Triumph are now rarely found making it hard for their owners to comply to these laws because their car parts including the Triumph catalytic converter are also hard to find.

Recently, there had been competition for the most environmental friendly car and the new Acura RSX bagged the award. The contenders of the said award were most likely newly manufactured car models, products of the new and modernized technology of the new millennium. These cars are what we commonly see in the streets and their car parts are manufactured almost everywhere. These days, environment-friendly cars are not hard to come by, and it’s a easier to do our share for the environment given the myriad of choices we have.