Here's a no, um, brainer: Diesel fumes are bad for your head

Posted Mar 11th 2008 7:29PM by Jeremy Korzeniewski
Filed under: Diesel, Green Daily

I don't know about you, but the idea of diesel particulates (soot) lodging themselves on my brain doesn't sit well with me. While scientists and researchers have known for some time that diesel soot clings to our grey matter, just recently Dutch scientists were able to convince 10 people to sit in a room filled with diesel exhaust so that they could monitor their brain waves. Not surprisingly, their brains showed signs of "stress" just thirty minutes into this operation. We're not going to argue with these results... in fact we thought it was just common knowledge that breathing exhaust fumes, whether from either gas or diesel burning cars, was a bad idea. Ah well, at least we now have scientific data on the topic.

[Source: Drive.com.au]

Tags: diesel, diesel fuel, diesel fumes, diesel-fuel, diesel-fumes, DieselFuel, DieselFumes, particulates, soot

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Reader Comments

(Page 1)

1. Oh those crazy Dutch!

Posted at 8:11PM on Mar 11th 2008 by Trev

2. That very much looks like a picture of an Indian Truck: the art work, and the lock! LOL.

But God that is a scary idea to sit in a room full of noxious diesel fumes! Now we know that they can cause stress as well!

http://zapworld.com/

Posted at 9:18PM on Mar 11th 2008 by Niralisherni

3. This study just uses diesel engine exhaust as the source of its PM. That's not representative of ambient conditions - there are a lot of sources of "soot", and of ultrafine PM for that matter. Until gasoline PM, CNG PM, SOA, etc., are specifically exonerated in similar studies, the data are incomplete in my opinion.

Furthermore, according to the article itself ( http://www.particleandfibretoxicology.com/content/pdf/1743-8977-5-4.pdf , page 5), the test subjects were exposed to 300 μg/m3. This is representative of ambient levels? In the U.S., the NAAQS levels for PM2.5 are 35 μg/m3 max 24-hour average; 15 μg/m3 max annual daily average. That seems awfully high.

I don't think there's been much doubt that diesel exhaust isn't innocuous. Enough already, we get it! Something is already being done about it - virtually all diesel vehicles (HD and LD) are now OEM-equipped with diesel particulate filters, which virtually eliminate diesel PM across the entire particle size range. What about other sources?

We need to start looking at the health effects of other sources of ambient ultrafine PM (gas engines?), if that's really a health concern.

Posted at 1:23PM on Mar 12th 2008 by wxman

4. I have contacted the authors (press@biomedcentral.com) about this study as it first appeared yesterday via the EurekAlert! RSS feed and wrote the following:

"Regarding http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/bc-dei030708.php,

I'm amazed that you are allowed to publish articles like this without the single caveat that more and more diesels (in particular passenger vehicles, i.e. Mercedes, BMW, etc.) are required to have particulate filters, and some even with exhaust NOx neutralization systems.

Not to diminish the importance of your research where traffic patterns in large cities expose people to untreated diesel exhaust...but there is so much work going on to clean up diesel, that your article - taken in a vacuum - almost sounds like fear-mongering."

Posted at 9:01PM on Mar 12th 2008 by Chris Adams

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