Everything’s not all rosy for ethanol. First there are concerns about the amount of petro-chemicals it takes to grow the corn in the first place, then there’s the concern about using the food supply as fuel, and now this:
Stanford University professor Mark Z. Jacobson has concluded that switching from present-day cars to vehicles powered by an 85 percent ethanol blend could actually worsen air pollution, because of higher ozone. Jacobson’s computer simulation compared air-quality scenarios for gasoline and E85 in the year 2020 and found that U.S. deaths would be 4 percent higher using ethanol and Los Angeles deaths 9 percent .higher.