Outboard motors, skidoos, petrol-driven chain saws, motorised lawn-mowers and other equipment using small internal combustion engines are far worse polluters of the environment than the car.

   

The hydrocarbon, carbon monoxide, and small particle emissions of these devices that are found in a great many households are a health hazard, but thus far there have been no limits whatsoever placed on their use. The high emission levels stem from primitive technology that the manufacturers have favoured on the grounds that it makes for a product that is cheap, light and simple to use for the consumer.

   

"It would be perfectly easy to adopt newer technology, but this would up the price substantially", explains Esa Elonen of Agrifood Research Finland (MTT).

If a catalytic converter

were to be added to such small motorised devices, then hydrocarbon emissions could be reduced by around 25% and NOX emissions by 10-20%. For example, the typical four-stroke lawn-mower motor of today is at much the same technological level as it was in the 1930s.

   

An hour's boating with a large outboard powered up puts around the same amount of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere as 20,000 kilometres driven in a car with a catalytic converter. An hour skimming over the snow on a motorised sled is little better, with emissions equivalent to 10,000 km in the car, and just using a chain saw to take down a few trees is equivalent to driving 900 kilometres in a modern car.

   

These are shocking figures, and made more so by the fact that there are around 1.6 million of these portable or hand-operated petrol engines in the country. Their carbon monoxide emissions are of the same order as those of all vans, buses, and trucks combined, and the hydrocarbon emissions are around 25% greater than this grouping. Such is the progress that has been made in other fields.

Thus far the United States

is the only country to have adopted norms and limits for such machines, in spite of widespread acceptance of their major pollution potential.

   

The EU is planning to introduce a directive that would limit emissions, and discussions are going on at present over what levels should be set. According to Elonen, when similar moves were made in the United States the manufacturers protested and a transition period was allowed for product development work to go ahead.