There has never been in the entire history of mankind a force as relentless as technology. With the leaps and bounds that various fields have already achieved, particularly those that figure prominently in the automotive industry, as in the progression of newer developments and novel approaches to car design and engineering, the pace with which we find ourselves caught up with in current society is certainly and occasionally confounding. But though perspectives seem positive on the matter, die-hard critics and dyed-in-the-wool luddites out there still have a lot of things to say, specifically when it comes to resulting waste products of a number of automotive makes and models that get introduced into the market every six months or so. It’s a regular circus, to be sure but one of the chief points in the rallying cries of the “we can live without machines” or “machines are evil” crowd has to do with catalytic converters.

So if you’ve got a Volvo parked along the curb outside your house and you’re wondering if you have a Volvo catalytic converter somewhere in that vast, confusing expanse of under the hood engine, then brace yourself because yes, you do have one right there. Before consigning that catalytic converter to forgotten depths and recesses of your mind, you had better examine the situation first.

The functions of volvo catalytic converters basically have to do with clean-up. That Volvo catalytic converter that you have is one of the myriad components that make up the exhaust system of your car. The exhaust system, as most people know, is responsible, in turn for disposing of the dangerous, possibly even lethal engine gases produced by cars. This is one of the vital tasks that the exhaust system—of which the catalytic converter is part of—performs.

Where does the converter fit in this scenario, you may ask? The converter is extremely dependable when it comes to diminishing the amount of dreadful tailpipe emissions. Thus, the gases that do manage to escape through your muffler and out into the world outside your car carry a concentration of noxious gases that has already been greatly reduced. With such tasks, a catalytic converter may seem to be the least item you would ever think of throwing out of your car’s engine system. Just pinning down and learning all about what it can do and what it makes possible—the notion of a pollution-free environment—it does appear that issues with catalytic converters are all in order.

That is, except for one detail—or two: first, the design inherent in most engines requires for it to operate beyond the point that “lean burn” engines run. This is to say then that the pace at which the engine performs entails for the use of considerable quantities of fossil fuels. And fossil fuels, as most of us learned in biology, are among the dwindling natural resources in our environment that we have no way of reproducing. This accounts for the mad scramble that oil companies are constantly engaged in.

Second, the processing plants that manufacture these catalytic converters let out high concentrations of dangerous gases that end up residing in our atmosphere. Who will get them out of there? No one—we haven’t the suitable manpower or current capabilities to control the widespread penetration of these gases into the atmosphere.

Such is the situation that from one perspective, it seems we only managed to exchange one kind of devil for another. So that for all the good we spout about the cars we have and the technology that made them possible—until better safety standards for the environment are formulated—the luddites may still be up a few points over the rest of us.