How Catalytic Converters Helped Transform Automotive Pollution
The automobile was developed in a period of human history where we paid very little attention to the environmental impact of the things we did. As a result, the hazardous waste products expelled into the air by internal combustion engines were ignored. This worked for a while because there were so few internal combustion engines chugging away. As the number of automobiles exponentially increased, the danger from toxic fumes grew alongside a growing awareness of environmental concerns. The solution to the problem of these toxic gases was the catalytic converter . The first catalytic converters came into popular use in the United States during the mid 1970s. These were two way converters used to eliminate the two pollutants that came directly from the engine – carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons. Carbon Monoxide is deadly because our bodies can not differentiate it from Oxygen. We can breathe it and our bodies do not panic even though we are being deprived of air. A person succumbing to Ca