Study links heavy diesel exhaust to lung cancer

Study links heavy diesel exhaust to lung cancer

www.ctv.ca

There's new evidence that exposure to exhaust from diesel engines increases the risk of lung cancer.

Diesel exhaust has long been classified as a probable carcinogen. But the 20-year study from the National Cancer Institute took a closer look by tracking more than 12,000 workers in certain kinds of mines — facilities that mined for potash, lime and other nonmetals.

(visit the link for the full news article)



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Besides being carcinogenic, diesel fumes are linked to all kinds of heart and lung problems. The fine and ultra-fine particles breach the membrane in the lungs, and enter the blood stream. Inside the bloodstream, these particles can create clots and inflammation that lead to heart attacks and strokes, as well as asthma and emphysema.

So short term, kids and people with health problems are at risk for stroke, heart attacks and life threatening asthma attacks - long term, we're looking at lung cancer.

Unfortunately, most studies are suppressed, or subjected to stalling and other tactics. This one for instance was suppressed too.

Litigation from some mining companies had delayed release of the study findings.

The naysayers are quick to point out that "manufacturers have invested billions of dollars in research to develop and deploy technologies and strategies that reduce engine emissions." ...So, what? They didn't really need to cut emissions? They just didn't feel like fighting the regs?

A separate industry group not involved in that litigation said Friday that the study looked back at mines using decades-old equipment, and there's far less pollution from diesel engines today.

"Diesel engine and equipment makers, fuel refiners and emissions control technology manufacturers have invested billions of dollars in research to develop and deploy technologies and strategies that reduce engine emissions, now ultimately to near zero levels to meet increasingly stringent clean air standards here in the United States and around the world," said Allen Schaeffer of the nonprofit Diesel Technology Forum.

Oddly, the new Google does not return any results from the mainstream press, although thousands of articles have been written about diesel emissions over the past few years. Clearly, the issue is being censored at the corporate level.

Fortunately though, and thanks to NIH Open Access policies, some of the background research is still accessible although the corporate influence is much in evidence. Also, I know I've written about it here on ATS, but no search results here either. Here's a quick taste of what I did manage to find:

Why Diesel Particulates Cause Cardiovascular Disease

Håkan Törnqvist maps previously unknown mechanisms that may explain why air pollution in the form of particulates causes heart attacks, stroke, and increasing mortality…

Particulates in diesel exhaust are a substantial cause of the negative health effects traced to air pollution, above all in traffic environments. Diesel exhaust contains a number of extremely tiny particles about 1/10,000 mm in diameter, with chemical compounds bound to the surface that have been suggested to lie behind the ability of these particles to cause harmful health effects.

Individuals with lung or heart disease are especially vulnerable and are impacted most negatively during periods with high levels of air pollution. …

Air Pollution-Related Illness: Effects of Particles

...ultrafine air particles are linked to their ability to gain access to the lung and systemic circulation, where toxic components lead to tissue damage and inflammation.

Ultrafine particles and platelet activation in patients with coronary heart disease

Epidemiological studies on health effects of air pollution have consistently shown adverse cardiovascular effects. Toxicological studies have provided evidence for thrombogenic effects of particles.

Diesel Exhaust Particles in Lung Acutely Enhance Experimental Peripheral Thrombosis

The intratracheal instillation of DEPs leads to lung inflammation as well as a rapid activation of circulating blood platelets. The kinetics of platelet activation are consistent with the reported clinical occurrence of thrombotic complications after exposure to pollutants.

Urban pollution, especially by particulates, contributes to respiratory and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.1,2 To a large extent, the increase in mortality linked to particulate matter

No kind of "soot" is good to breathe, whether it's from wood in your fireplace, a wax candle with too long of a wick, or whale fat lanterns (if you're from the primitive Inuit or Eskimo nations ). All of these will cause carcinogenic effects and lung-cancer/emphysema.

I wonder how the exhaust chemical content from BIODIESEL, (most specifically algae-based biodiesel) would be in relation to mined petroleum based diesel fuel exhaust, which would have metals not present in vegetable oil.

I'm not trying to get into a discussion or debate over the sustainability of "biofuels" in general, (either based on Ethanol's failure, or corn/canola/soy-based Biodiesel negatively effecting food markets, or non-sustainability, due to supply lack, or soil depletion/nutrient run-off etc...) because you can forget about all that negative crap with ALGAE based vegetable fuels.

The sun does all the work, no irrigation, due to closed systems (transparent tanks). Algae is rich in lipids (hydrocarbon fuel) and is the fastest growing organism on Earth. The gallon per acre yield ratio is staggering.. like 100-1000x the yield of the best soil-based feedstocks like soy.

I am a diesel engine fanatic and have been running my cars & truck on used vegetable oil (filtered & from restaurants) for many years. I start & warm up on the biodiesel tank, then flip a switch and go to the waste veg oil tank. I am aware of the fact that the glycerine in vegetable oils isn't wonderful to burn and is an additional exhaust byproduct not found in BioDiesel or petro-diesel.

So my point is that I believe Biodiesel doesn't have the same harmful "cancer-causing" carcinogenic effects that petro-fuels have.
I will admit it has its own unique carbon (or NOx) footprint with its own, [(perhaps carcinogenic)] effects.

Also, gasoline engine emissions are carcinogenic too and they actually do rise up into the atmosphere and cause greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere.

Diesel exhaust sinks to the ground within minutes, because it's essentially soot, which is never good to breathe in huge quantities, even from burning wood or whale fat.
Lots of Eskimos died (years ago) from emphysema you know... caused by whale fat lanterns burning all night long in their igloos. Any burning of a hydrocarbon fuel source (could be any animal or vegetable flesh, since we're all carbon, lipid-based and the fats/oils are what burn) causes soot... and all soot causes cancer.
I'm not saying diesel soot doesn't have additional carcinogens in it though, due to the entire mining & refinement process and the raw petroleum's inherent chemical contents.

Guess we shouldn't be attending any diesel truck & tractor sled-pulling competitions. Haaaack!!!

very nicely presented post Crow
I think with all the bad news in the environment all we may able to do is strengthen our immune systems as best we can in the full knowlege that researchers cause cancer in test rats.

There was a time when Diesels were ment to run on biofuel and Mr D was bumped off and now we have Petro diesel. I would guess though even if Biodiesel was safer it would all be GMO now, and that would be infecting every thing it touches with DNA mutations.

Just a thought from the coroner of Frankenstreet and and Livingdead road, Damnationtown, Territory of New Corporotyranny, Dumbania Land.

Originally posted by Danbones
There was a time when Diesels were ment to run on biofuel and Mr D was bumped off and now we have Petro diesel. I would guess though even if Biodiesel was safer it would all be GMO now, and that would be infecting every thing it touches with DNA mutations.

Good post! That's kind of what I'm saying..

GMO wouldn't effect algae in closed loop tanks, (or clear vertically hung bags of water, in the sun) grown with sunlight as the energy input to grow. They go nuts in water in the sun.

Ever sit a water bottle on your window too long and it turns green? Imagine if you introduced a small culture of algae into it and let it sit. It'd be opaque and foaming within 2 weeks.

It also inhales and sequesters CO2 so they use this method to sequester CO2 from factory smoke stacks. This technology is already in place and being used to sequester CO2. Then the algae is used for fuel.

You can bubble CO2 into the tanks, like a diesel generator's exhaust output can bubble through water tanks with algae. It's like a giant water bong where the algae suck the CO2 before the smoke goes out the pipe to outside atmosphere.

It's god's gift to man and it's genius.

Exxon and BP have already bought Solazyme (first algae-oil producer to successfully fly a Jet airplane at altitude on their algae bio-Jet A, or any biofuel without it freezing).

So the big oil companies are getting in on algae before it can take off on a grass roots scale.

And one of many ways to harvest algae to produce biodiesel: you pump the water from the final tank, out through screens into a basin and back into the tanks.
The screens gather the algae as sludge, which you scrape into trays and dry until it has just under 10% water content (when oil is easiest to extract and highest yield).

You simply load chips, or dried chunks into the hopper on a hydraulic (electric-motor driven) fuel oil press. The same kind everyone uses for canola, soy, grasses whatever.

When you calculate how many gallons you get per hour vs electricity cost to run the tiny motor on the oil press, it costs pennies to squeeze the algae.

You can harvest 25-50% of the algae every 2 weeks and it will replenish itself in a couple weeks.

People run multiple tanks, with the water and CO2 ran in series, through all tanks. This is how you capture the most CO2.

The engine backpressure (created by the air pressure of moving exhaust through many tanks of water) on a turbocharged diesel is healthy for the engine. This diesel generator engine can be used to power your home.

reply to post by LeonoraTenen


Erm, soot is soot - and the thing about diesel is that there are ultra-fine particles in that soot. Which is what gets past the lung membrane into the bloodstream, causing clots that muck up the heart and brain, killing kids and our elders and so on.

I doubt even "natural source" diesel is safe - it might not have carcinogenic properties, but the other problems remain.


PS. Do you have shares in diesel algae products? A contract to promote diesel algae, or algae diesel? ...I'm only asking because you jumped all over a thread warning about the dangers and did some rather serious promotion.

PPS. Thank you though. I now realize all the mainstream coverage about diesel causing cardiovascular crises has been censored to pave the way for the all-new equally-dangerous but more-marketable natural-source "green" diesel.

Don't mean to bash the article or the OP
but this has always been known

also here's a vid that i'm sure many will appreciate

Ultrafine particulates come from all sorts of combustion - "soot" is not just "soot" and never has been.

What is happening now is we have he technology to see what it happening at nano-scales - something that has always been going on but not previously been able to be studied.

reply to post by ModernAcademia


Thanks so much for your as-always informed input, ModernAcademia. Hopefully, you can help me understand the issues better. Your video talks exclusively about carbon dioxide (CO) and carbon monoxide (CO) - but my references are concerned primarily with ultra-fine particles.

Diesel exhaust contains particulate matter (PM), hydrocarbons (HC), carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), as well as the unregulated carbon dioxide (CO2) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

Are you suggesting particulate matter (PM), hydrocarbons (HC), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are nothing to worry about? That we should simply not go anywhere, stay indoors and as the man says, rely on a CO monitor? (And a HEPA filter?) ...And that we should ignore the decades of epidemiological studies proving adverse cardiovascular effects from diesel exhaust, and the toxicological studies providing evidence for thrombogenic effects of particles?

This study is up there for me as smoking is bad for you lol . Sometimes im in shock and awe the people we have in charge and how long the obvious takes to understand .

Im not much fan of gasoline cars , let alone diesel we need to find alternatives fast. The smog , the air quality , the toxins need to go . I pity all those living in downtown in their condo's and exposing their new born to layers and layers of this .

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul


...Can't believe I didn't go straight to Wiki. Great entry on diesel exhaust.

Diesel particulate matter (DPM), sometimes also called diesel exhaust particles (DEP), is the particulate component of diesel exhaust, which includes diesel soot and aerosols such as ash particulates, metallic abrasion particles, sulfates, and silicates. When released into the atmosphere, DPM can take the form of individual particles or chain aggregates, with most in the invisible sub-micrometre range of 100 nanometers, also known as ultrafine particles (UFP) or PM0.1.

Health effects
Diesel combustion exhaust is a major source of atmospheric soot and fine particles, which is a fraction of air pollution implicated in human heart and lung damage. Diesel exhaust also contains nanoparticles. Since the study of the detrimental health effects of nanoparticles (nanotoxicology) is still in its infancy, the full extent of negative health effects from nanoparticles produced by all types of diesel are unknown.

The main particulate fraction of diesel exhaust consists of fine particles. Because of their small size, inhaled particles may easily penetrate deep into the lungs. The rough surfaces of these particles makes it easy for them to bind with other toxins in the environment, thus increasing the hazards of particle inhalation. Exposures have been linked with acute short-term symptoms such as headache, dizziness, light-headedness, nausea, coughing, difficult or labored breathing, tightness of chest, and irritation of the eyes and nose and throat[citation needed]. Long-term exposures can lead to chronic, more serious health problems such as cardiovascular disease, cardiopulmonary disease, and lung cancer[citation needed].

In 2001, the mortality within the German population (82 million people) was according to the official report 2352 of the Umweltbundesamt Berlin (Federal Environmental Agency of Germany) at least 14400 people because of Diesel soot exposure.

The study of nanoparticles and nanotoxicology is still in its infancy, but the full health effects from nanoparticles produced by all types of diesel are unknown. It is already clear enough, however, that the health detriments of fine particle emissions are severe and pervasive. Although one study found no significant evidence that short term exposure to diesel exhaust results in adverse extra-pulmonary effects, effects that are often correlated with an increase in cardiovascular disease,[1] a 2011 study in The Lancet concluded that traffic exposure is the single most serious preventable trigger of heart attack in the general public, the cause of 7.4% of all attacks; although, it is impossible to tell how much of this effect is due to the stress of being in traffic and how much is due to exposure to exhaust.[2][tsk]

I am astounded that this research was funded in the first place.

A while back I read in a journal that bbq'd steak is carcinogenic - you would think after that the noble scholars would just give up and admit that anything other than hugs gives us cancer and spent the money on looking after people that actually have it.

Well, im a diesel mechanic.. i"m screwed.. lol

Well , firstly the op source is referring to HEAVY diesel, also the same effect can be got from eating over improperly burning charcoals, , bbq , and coal and log fires etc, think something like benzene rings?

en.wikipedia.org...

"Poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), also known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, are potent atmospheric pollutants that consist of fused aromatic rings and do not contain heteroatoms or carry substituents.[12] Naphthalene is the simplest example of a PAH. PAHs occur in oil, coal, and tar deposits, and are produced as byproducts of fuel burning (whether fossil fuel or biomass). As a pollutant, they are of concern because some compounds have been identified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic. PAHs are also found in cooked foods. Studies have shown that high levels of PAHs are found, for example, in meat cooked at high temperatures such as grilling or barbecuing, and in smoked fish.[13][14][15]
They are also found in the interstellar medium, in comets, and in meteorites and are a candidate molecule to act as a basis for the earliest forms of life. In graphene the PAH motif is extended to large 2D sheets."


most european diesel is far cleaner than usa diesel , however this cleaness does make more of the small particles i think so mebbe a bit of a catch 22

reply to post by seedofchucky


why show a pic of a broken diesel?
my car gives less than 2.3 percent particles out of the exhaust on a high speed pass,no visible smoke at all...

Originally posted by gambon
reply to post by seedofchucky

 

why show a pic of a broken diesel?
my car gives less than 2.3 percent particles out of the exhaust on a high speed pass,no visible smoke at all...

That isn't a broken diesel.. it's a heavily modified Cummins with an older technology mechanical injection pump.
It probably only makes marginal power, but some hillbilly decided to heavily overfuel his pump and sit there in gear pushing on the gas, while holding the brakes in an obscenely overfueled situation.
SUCH A BAD EXAMPLE!!!
A stock one of these trucks puts out ZERO visible smoke. So you hippies can stop saying all diesels smoke just like that and stink and hurt your throat... WAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

People like the guy in that video are morons who are making a bad name for all diesel performance and it's a big problem. I have the same engine in my truck as that one, it makes 550HP and hardly any smoke. People are just idiots and those engines are way too easy to work on... plus Diesels have been smog-exempt in most states up until recently. So guys can get away with excessive smoke until a cop sees it at the wrong moment when they're rolling coal.

That's all changing in most states, so you can kiss those smokeshows goodbye pretty soon.

Just the thought of what diesel exhaust is like,

makes me feel like i've got a smokestack chimney for lungs!

Originally posted by soficrow
killing kids and our elders and so on.

What the hell? Killing kids and so on?
You sound like a caricature of a hippy on an episode of South Park.

Way to give "green" a bad name by emotional inflating & by melodramatizing things.. resorting to tugging at heart strings to make your point. It's too bad for you, this forum doesn't allow a sappy soundtrack so you could make this like that dang Sarah McLachlan dying dogs commercial.

Doesn't help the cause at all.. which I would see myself on your side of. Helping the planet.

Originally posted by soficrow
I doubt even "natural source" diesel is safe - it might not have carcinogenic properties, but the other problems remain.

Wow, you really like to jump to conclusions, with massive bias and no information.
You must not like diesels very much at all do you??

What I'm proposing is a way our country could replace un-sustainable fuel with SUN-GROWN fuel made from natural organisms that EAT CO2 (isn't CO2 bad??)... without replacing the 10's of millions of diesel engines which bring everything you buy to your local stores. Boats, Trains, Trucking, Air Travel... it's all diesel (jet A is similar).

You're proposing we need to throw away all of those engines and start fresh with all of it.
This is a ridiculous, childish notion and you can forget about it...
Where will this money come from and who will provide this infrastructure?? You??

Originally posted by soficrow
PS. Do you have shares in diesel algae products? A contract to promote diesel algae, or algae diesel? ...I'm only asking because you jumped all over a thread warning about the dangers and did some rather serious promotion.

I'm not selling anything, it's just something I believe in.. so stop acting like an insolent brat.

I happen to hate gasoline vehicles, they are inefficient, the emissions are NO BETTER for you or the environment and there's no way to run them off of biofuels that are sustainably made. Algae can be made into green gasoline, but it's a more expensive process.
Yes, I am quite attached to the amazing sustainability of algae fuels and no I'm not in any way benefiting from sales of it in any way...

For god's sake, I practically told you how to do it yourself you looney tuner.

Originally posted by soficrow
PPS. Thank you though. I now realize all the mainstream coverage about diesel causing cardiovascular crises has been censored to pave the way for the all-new equally-dangerous but more-marketable natural-source "green" diesel.

What the heck is this now?
You have just made this all up on your own and ran with it.. as though you've known it all your life.
Yet it makes zero sense. Should I bother right now?

I think there is a psychological problem found quite often in extreme liberally-minded individuals and they seem emotionally unstable and unable for the most basic discussions or challenges without immediately assuming you must be part of the conspiracy too and yelling out "SHILLLLLL!!!"

Again, it just hurts the cause and makes all of us educated hippies look really bad.

By the way, diesel engines often last over 1 million miles before needing rebuilds.
There's a guy with a Dodge diesel pickup (like the one smoking in the video above) that has 1.7 million miles. No rebuilds... it didn't smoke at all.

Try getting more than 200k out of your gasser.

And the reason our trucking, train and boat industries use diesel engines is because only diesel engines make the power that is necessary to move 50 tons of food to your store, without eating 2 gallons per mile (which is what big gas engines do).

Fact is, peanut oil (what Rudolf Diesel designed his engine to run on originally) wouldn't be making these ultra-fine particles that come from THE PETROLEUM, not the soot of burning just any old oil in a diesel engine.

Learn things before you bash science.