U. N. wary of used car export, pollution

Secondhand autos are affordableway to go, but have health risks.

WASHINGTON— Inrecentdecades, theUnitedStatesandEuropehave gone to considerable lengths to mandate cleaner, more efficient cars at home. But at the same time, they are shipping millions of their oldest andworst- polluting vehicles to poorer countries overseas in a largely unregulated trade that now poses serious health and environmental hazards, the United Nations warned Monday

The report, by the U. N. Environment Program, is the most detailed look yet at the global trade in secondhand cars, which has historically attracted little scrutiny.

From 2015 to 2018, the report found, theUnitedStates, the European Union and Japan exported 14 million used passenger cars abroad, with 70% ending up in low- income countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, LatinAmerica and the Middle East.

In theory, this trade can be beneficial: Once older cars are no longer desirable in wealthy nations, they can have a second life as an affordable transportation option in other countries. In countries like Kenya and Nigeria, more than 90% of cars bought today are secondhand imports.

But in practice, the report found, many of the cars exported to low- income countries don’t meet even minimum standards for air pollution and are often unsafe to drive. There are few rules in place to govern the quality of the vehicles.

In the Netherlands, investigators recently determined, some exported cars have had their pollution controls removed and harvested for the valuable metals they contain, before being shipped abroad.

“Whatwe found is not a pretty sight,” saidRobDe Jong, anauthor of the report and head of theU. N. Environment Program’ s Sustainable Mobility Unit .“Most of these vehicles are very old, very dirty, very inefficient and unsafe.”

If left unsupervised, the global trade in used vehicles could have stark consequences for both climate change and public health in the decades ahead, the report’s authors said.

Today, about 1 billion cars are on the road globally. Thatnumber is projected to double by 2050, withmuch of the growth coming from sales of secondhand vehicles in lower- income countries.

Transportation already accounts for one- quarter of

humanity’s carbon- dioxide emissions, which are rapidly heating the planet.

AndinmanyAfrican cities, cars and trucks have become a dominant source of outdoor air pollution, which already kills more than 3 million peopleworldwide each year.

Afewcountries are taking steps to crack down on the oldest and dirtiest used cars: Kenya, a rapidly growing market, nowaccepts only imports of vehicles younger than 8 years old, mainly from Japan. As a result, its vehicle fleet is about one- third more fuel- efficient than that of neighboring Uganda, which only last year set anage limit of 15 for importedcars. But such restrictions are rare. The report looked at 146 countries that import used cars and concluded that 86 of them had “weak” or “very weak” laws around the age or environmental performance of used vehicles entering their markets.

RAJESH KUMAR SINGH/ AP Many of the auto industry’s oldest, most environmentally unsound motor vehicles are being resold as affordable transportation in lower- income countries and pose a risk to the health and safety of millions, according to theUnitedNations.