It’s no secret that cars contribute a significant amount of air pollution in NYC due to the sheer number of cars here. Apparently, motor vehicles contribute around 28% of nitrogen oxide emissions (aka one of those nasty greenhouse gases). An issue that I’ve noticed is definitely not as widely discussed but it is another form of pollution: oil leakages from cars.
I remember when I was a kid, I used to see these huge rainbow splotches on the roads after an afternoon of raining. Some of my friends would say that it was a melted rainbow. Not surprisingly, these rainbow splotches were not melted rainbows, but rather the aftermath of motor oil separating from water.
I never really thought about the implications of these oil leaks until I realized most of these leaks aren’t exactly visible until you see the rainbow splotches, so the magnitude of this pollution is probably much larger than what we can see. Oils like this get washed away into storm drains and can end up polluting bodies of water that are hundreds of miles away. This is very much a butterfly effect – it seems like such a minuscule thing but it has such big impacts elsewhere.
This is just a reminder of how detrimental cars can be to the environment. I’m not saying for everyone to go out and buy a new electric car (ie. Tesla cars not only are electric – which is better for the environment – but they also don’t rely on motor oil, or at least a very minimal amount of it), but it is important to be aware and responsible for the damages caused to the environment by their cars.
