They are called "fossil fuels" to distinguish whether their combustion increases the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (on timescales less than tens of thousands of years). That's a pretty important distinction to keep track of...

Except that this article is about pollution, not CO2.

And if you are talking about CO2 there are better ways.

We use fossil to mean old regarding water too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_water

"If I burn plant derived ethanol the same hazards exist."

You are claiming that burning alcohol releases fine particulates?

Of course. Why wouldn't it?

Remember you are not burning it with a nice flame, you are exploding it. You don't always have complete combustion.

And fine particulates are not the only hazard, there is also ozone which is catalyzed by VOC in the air, and ethanol is a VOC.

You also get NOx which is caused simply by high temperatures in an engine, and ethanol is no different.

Yeah. About the only thing you don't get from ethanol compared to hydrocarbons is... volatile hydrocarbons, and of course (unsunk) CO2.

The combustion outputs are quantitatively different, but the same compounds are present. Whether ethanol produces cleaner combustion products compared to gasoline is debated in the literature.

Of course, when it comes to particulates, things like diesel or bunker oil are much worse than either gasoline or ethanol.