Carbon Monoxide For Breakfast

A common question asked of scientists investigating carbon monoxide pollution in Fairbanks is: "How can a town as small as Fairbanks, with so few cars compared to the large metropolitan areas of the lower forty-eight, rank so high as a city severely affected by carbon monoxide pollution?" It doesn't seem right, does it? Even with an inversion, you would not expect Fairbanks CO levels to be as high as Los Angeles.

The truth is that Fairbanks in the winter normally has CO levels higher than Los Angeles. Why? There are several reasons; one is that, as you know, Fairbanks is cold in the winter. When automobiles are started with cold engines they produce remarkably large quantities of CO until they reach normal operating temperature. In fact, a good estimate of how much CO is produced during a cold start when the temperature is 0° F is 1 gram for every cubic inch of engine displacement. Since a typical car might have a 350 cubic inch engine, estimate 3/4 pound of CO produced during a cold start. It would take a warmed-up vehicle about 20 miles of driving to produce as much CO as a 5-minute warm-up.

One way to help is to plug your car in when it's cold. An all-night plug-in will usually eliminate the cold start effect, but then there goes the electric bill. At 0 F, your car will probably start without a plug-in. But the next time you're sitting at the kitchen table having that last cup of coffee and watching your car warm up, think about this: there are about 50,000 cars in Fairbanks and most of them start up cold every morning. That is a lot of C0 for breakfast.