As a cure for our addiction to oil, ethanol turns out to have
some nasty side effects. Concerns that the nation's cars are
contributing to global warming have led automobile manufacturers
and policy makers to promote ethanol as the fuel of the future,
since it is made from crops such as sugar beet. Pollution from
gasoline engines accounts for 10,000 deaths in the US each year,
along with thousands of cases of respiratory disease, and even
cancer. The widely touted ethanol-based fuel E85 (15% gasoline,
85% ethanol) could result in similar numbers of deaths, or even
make matters worse, according to a new study. Mark Jacobson at
Stanford University in California, US, modelled emissions for
cars expected to be on the road in 2020. An E85-fuelled fleet
would cause 185 more pollution-related deaths per year than a
petrol one across the US the model predicted - most of them in
smoggy Los Angeles, California. The findings run counter to the
idea that ethanol is a cleaner-burning fuel. Cars running on
gasoline emit a