The demonstration was simple, if stark: on one handkerchief, black soot from the exhaust pipe of a diesel excavator; on the other … well, nothing.

Federal, state and regional smog regulators used the “clean hanky” test at the Puente Hills Landfill on Monday to show off newly retrofitted construction equipment — tractors, bulldozers, earth movers — that use cleaner-burning engines and diesel soot filters.

They fired up two excavators, one with a regular diesel engine, the other with the retrofits. Wayne Nastri, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator for the Pacific southwest region, stood atop the vehicles with his handkerchiefs, holding one to each exhaust pipe (left; photo courtesy U.S. EPA).

Diesel soot isn’t just ugly. It is listed as a toxic air contaminant, and is believed to boost cancer risk for people exposed to it.

That would be most of us in coastal Southern California, especially along freeway corridors. The $500,000 cost to retrofit 29 vehicles, including those showcased Monday, was drawn from a $700,000 settlement of EPA enforcement actions against refineries owned by Chevron and Valero for alleged air-quality violations, according to the state Air Resources Board.

The regulators say the vehicles are part of a statewide effort to cut diesel emissions. A 2007 regulation requires that 180,000 such vehicles, classified as off-road vehicles, be replaced with cleaner-burning equipment in the construction, mining, airport support and other industries.

The goal is to cut fine-particle diesel emissions by 74 percent, and smog-forming nitrogen oxides by 32 percent, by 2020, from what those emissions would have been without the new rule.

That will eventually mean an estimated 4,000 fewer premature deaths statewide, and a savings of $18 billion to $26 billion in health and other costs, the regulators say.

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