Environmental Protection Agency officials announced Athens-Clarke County, University of Georgia, and Washington County were awarded $1.7 million to install pollution control devices on diesel transit buses and municipal vehicles.

The grant will fund pollution control retrofits for ACC’s transit and fire and emergency vehicles, UGA’s transit buses, and a variety of municipal diesel vehicles in Washington County.

The project is expected to result in the reduction of .50 tons of particulate matter per year, as well as 13 tons of hydrocarbons and 91 tons of carbon monoxide.

The funds are provided under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance Program.

Diesel soot contains particulate matter, black carbon, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and more than 40 hazardous air pollutants – all of which are dangerous to human health, especially to the developing bodies of children. The fine particles in diesel soot are so small that they penetrate deep into the lungs and get into the blood stream.

Breathing diesel exhaust can contribute to both chronic and acute human health problems such as asthma attacks, reduced lung function, lung disease, cancer and even premature death. EPA’s recent analysis of 181 toxic air pollutants concluded that diesel exhaust poses one of the greatest cancer risks of any form of air toxics.