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After Legal Fight, NCI Researchers Publish Study Linking Diesel Exhaust, Cancer
ananyo writes "A landmark study involving U.S. miners that links cancer rates to diesel fume exposure has been published after a seventeen-year legal battle with an industry group. A February 27 Slashdot story had reported that lawyers for the mining industry had sent threatening letters to scientific journals advising them against publishing the study. Initiated in 1998, after the first of many legal delays, the study analyzed exposures in detail for more than 12,000 workers while controlling for smoking and other risk factors. In the end, the scientists found that miners faced a threefold risk of lethal lung cancer, and underground workers who were heavily exposed to diesel fumes faced a fivefold risk. The two concluding papers from the study are available in full."
I always wondered why many states require passenger cars to pass through strict emissions tests, however it is perfectly OK to have trains, dump trucks, buses, and large vehicles spew columns of dark black diesel exhaust into the sky....
oh yeah...FIRST!
Sue the lawyers and Industrie group frorn endangering , and having knowledge of potetial dangerous effects...and delaying that for decades...how many more victims were added because of their frivolous behaviour
Famous last words:"but...."
The American legal system again. Where lawsuits let people die while feeding corps and trolls. Way to go "America"...
How could those lawyers live with themselves? What rationalizing did they have to twist their minds with to keep the pretense of humanity?
I find it sad that this is the state of scientific community. I wonder how many scientific studies are left unpublished because it's in someone's best interest to prevent their publication? I know there are methods to detect publication bias through various means, such as funnel plotting, and would imagine medical technology is a field where the practice of selective publication is fairly common. For an interesting read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias#Effect_on_meta-analysis
This might be a dumb question, but whatever happened to the freedom of speech? I thought this was exactly the kind of thing that it was designed to protect, especially if it is true. I am deeply confused.
You could say that perhaps the industries with perhaps the greatest in-depth knowledge of these engines have taken the greatest precautions against long term exposure of staff.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Seriously, was there anyone out there in their right mind who thought inhaling diesel fumes (any *any* sort of petrochemical fumes, for that matter) WASN'T bad for you? Okay the cancer thing may be a new twist, but was there really anyone out there arguing for *more* diesel fumes for their workers?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It is partly for this reason that I've switched from Diesel back to gasoline for car power - I am not convinced that the Diesel industry has cracked all its problems with emissions.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I hope this won't be used to fuel the hysteria against diesel.
For some reason, tree-huggers driving huge waste-emitting SUVs (so they can drive to the forest to hug those trees) seem to think diesel is the Devil's fume.
A properly tuned modern diesel engine is sort of six of one, half a dozen of the other vs. gasoline. Some emissions are better, some worse. The Euro Standards have done a lot to reduce them.
And if you're riding a bicycle, you might have some standing. But please don't preach about diesel sitting in your gasoline-guzzler.
p.s. Since diesel engines are built (and have to be built) tougher (to withstand higher pressures), they last longer. Which in itself is a great savings for the environment. The throwaway society (get a new car before you're done with the "old" one's payments) is not something I'm really into.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
It would certainly be interesting to see; but I'm not sure that the outcome would be so rosy. The plant stuff would probably have fewer interesting inorganic components; but the ultrafine soot particles commonly produced by diesel engines, as well as any cool partially combusted hydrocarbon structures(some innocuous, some surprisingly nasty for the elements involved), would presumably still be unpleasant...
"Somebody Else's Problem" .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else's_Problem
I'll keep driving my 1990 diesel truck and continue to rack up the mileage. 343,500 miles and still going. No my truck does not spew black smoke either. Thats more of a thing of the newer direct injection diesel engines. It will only smoke a little if i stomp it to the floor from say 20mph. The way i drive that happens just about never. But seriously any air pollutant can cause cancer. Whats new?
Would you like something to drink with that strawman?
I'm assuming that a diesel engine running on vegetable oil, as originally intended, would not have such harmful fumes, right? Swap to bio-diesel and you're good?
Dear Sir or Madam,
It has been brought to our attention that you have an insightful idea that you wish to openly publish. At our firm "Dickweed, Asshole and Soulless" we value honesty and the truth but not as much as we value a large legal battle regarding your slanderous and libelous post. I don't feel the need to elucidate on what exactly we could charge you with but I would like to remind you that our clients are very powerful companies. Furthermore my colleague Chet Percy Soulless, Esquire takes a very personal pleasure in heading up cases against individuals such as yourself. On his desk is a ledger full of haikus devoted to this very topic mixed with poems of a rabbits dying breath as his white knuckled hands deny any more oxygen to its lungs -- this tome's title being "Satiated Bloodlust" golden embossed on what appears to be human skin. But I digress.
Letters similar to this one have been sent to Slashdot and various other users who have already agreed not to post such dangerous and unfounded ideas such as yours. So remember that, before you hit submit on the above post, you will be hearing from our firm if you do.
Ambiguously threateningly yours,
Alfred A. Asshole, Barred Attorney
My work here is dung.
Truck standards have already changed. It's not absurdly difficult to do, though it's expensive.
Eventually, turbines hybrids can make for very efficient trucking in the way diesel-electric locomotives make for efficient railroading. They are already in use in hybrid buses and as datacenter power backups.
Capstone (for example) make some interesting turbine power units.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I did RTFA, will not RTF studies most likely, but I am curious as to what parts of the diesel exhaust they decided were dangerous. The article implies also that they haven't examined current diesel exhaust towards the end, what with the mentions of things that have been done like DPFs and low-sulfur diesel.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The data's study show that 1 in 6 in the control group had a familial incidence of cancer whereas the study group's ratio was 1 in 4. Moreover, the study asks about the number of cigar and pipe smokers but ignores cigarette smokers.
Not clear to me how you can draw much of a conclusion with those confounding factors.
There are valid concerns about contamination of the long-ago plant deposits, a.k.a. petroleum, mostly by sulphur, a very abundant element. Fresh plant-derived oils aren't contaminated that way. Otherwise, just think about it. All of our diesel is plant derived. Every bit of it. There were plants that died off tens of millions of years ago, and now we burn what's left. You think that just because you're using fresh plants will make much difference except for contamination with what has been leached from the rocks?
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Actually, going back to an agrarian lifestyle is a solution proposed by many extreme Green Peace activists. I say that relatively speaking because honestly, Green Peace activists are already extreme to begin with. No, I'm talking about the minority fringe wacko nut balls. Never mind that an agrarian lifestyle actually increases poverty and population.
This is what happens when a fringe wacko group takes the concept of Simple Living one step too far. It's a lifestyle shared by many Hippies and religious folk alike.
Life is not for the lazy.
Petroleum IS plant-sourced; primarily algae.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Oil is organic. There's nothing inorganic about it. Where do you think it comes from?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
It's not the fuel that is dirty. The thermodynamic cycle in both engine types is the same. The maximum efficiency of that cycle is a function of compression ratio. To get gas engines more efficient you can increase the compression ratio but then you run into premature ignition, incomplete combustion, and particulate emissions. Diesel fuel and engines rely on compression for ignition and hence require high compression ratios. I think the fuel is more likely to produce particulates, but gas can as well under similar conditions.
Came here to say this. This is the equivalent of people saying they don't want chemicals in their food. Utter and complete idiocy.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
I breathe in a shit-ton of diesel exhaust in my commute, and in offroad rallies (along with lots of fine dirt...I hope the mud that comes out of my nose the next day contains most of it).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
After losing their anti-science suppression fight, they are now breezily dismissing these findings as irrelevant, as Tier 3 and 4 engines are so much cleaner now, due to regulations they also bitterly fought against.
Honda, Nissan, Toyota, BMW and a Chinese company whose name escapes me all beg to differ. Just like the USA, we have plenty of car makers; it is just that, owing to the serial incompetence of British managements, they are not British owned. And, as anyone who has ever had to drive a God forbid, British Leyland vehicle will tell you, this is a Good Thing.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Organic material that has been enjoying the company of whatever rocks and minerals have been sitting next to it for a zillion years, possibly leaching interesting inorganics(sulfur is the star name, because it shows up in fair quantity and sulfur oxides are pretty visibly noxious; but all kinds of inorganics show up in smaller quantities: calcium, copper, lead, vanadium, sodium, etc.) Oil is mostly organic; but sometimes the exceptions count.
Quantities depend on where the crude the diesel was distilled from originated, how exacting the refining process was, what the additives were(and, depending on the plant and where it was grown, may well not be zero in the biodiesel either); but they definitely do show up, and in quantities significant enough to be of engineering concern for fuel users, particularly of very expensive or very delicate engines.
You'll see references to sulfur and trace metal limits and testing methods in various standards for fuels: ASTM D3605 is one testing method, MIL-F-16884 one standard that sets requirements for trace metal content.
There's even a pricey textbook!
I'm not an expert on emissions, I'm genuinely curious: Towmotors have been running on LP for decades so they can run indoors at places like big box home improvement stores. Why wouldn't underground mining equipment also run on LP or natural gas? Is it just as harmful? If so, why are companies using it inside retail stores?
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
No. My point was that there's no damn difference. You seem to be thinking I said something else.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I wish I bookmarked/copied/saved an article I came across a few years ago. It was a study/research paper that split emissions as follows:
personal automobiles - 10% diesel transport trucks, diesel trains - 90%
Not talking about CO2 emissions, but about other harmful gases. I applaud that we don't have smelly car exhausts, but not looking to regulate diesel trucks/trains is just like putting a band aid on a gushing wound.
So you are stating that you think the researchers and peer reviewers at the NCI would not vet such an elementary statistical mistake?
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Actually what gets to me is the "making everyone ELSE also go back to an agrarian lifestyle" solution proposed by may Green Peace extremeists.
In reality they are just one bunch of many who all shout "do what I say to save the world"
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I was agreeing with you. My "idiocy" remark was about the parent comment.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Why is smoking always used as THE cancer example? It seems like a large percentage of people believe that if everyone stopped smoking there would be no more cancer. I have always maintained that vehicle exhaust is also a major factor, and without even needing studies of this kind: every ingredient in cigarette smoke that is carcinogenic is also present in both petrol and diesel exhaust fumes. A car engine, at high revolutions, puts out about as much CO and CO2 per second as a smoker does in a month. Diesel fumed are filled with myriad other nasty things (don't even get me started on older engines with faulty catalytic converters). We are banning smoking in bars and in parks even in some cases, and any article or discussion about cancer inevitably contains the words '...like smoking'. When someone complains about me smoking in the street in the centre of a busy metropolis surrounded by thousands of vehicle belching out fumes I am forced to supress a strong urge to hit them.
Yes smoking is bad and causes cancer, but can we at least cycle through complaining about, demonising and restricting the activities of some of the other millions of things that cause cancer? That is, if our concern really is about cancer. The next person to cough at me in the street gets their head shoved in front of the exhaust pipe of a bus.
Apologies. The "All New Slashdot 2.0" makes nesting look ambiguous past a few levels.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Why haven't I ever seen a study done on this? Oh, probably because there's a whole market (and political party) around guilting certain consumers into buying these products.
The short answer is that you've not paid much attention. Maybe your prejudices cause you to avoid environmentalist media and thus contribute to you now knowing what they're actually all about? Besides, it seems like you're referring to Democrats (or Greens, if you're outside USA) but the "buy a new car - now environmentally friendly!" is consumerism and benefits car manufacturers... thus your finger might be pointing too far left.
Anyways, the recycling-vs-new is pretty well-researched topic. What's the carbon footprint of ... a new car? is what I first came up when googling (first try of keywords: "a new car environment", it was 4th result or so) but you can find plenty of more, if you're actually interested. And as you can see, that link is to a very mainstream site, so it's not like "the green journalists" would somehow be keeping this stuff off the news.
I'll end with two pieces of trivia:
1) Buying a cloth bag is more environmentally friendly than buying a plastic one only if you intend to use it well more than 100 times.
2) Talking about carbon footprint of having pets is pretty much the easiest way to create ****storms among the environmentalists.
Yes, because exposure to Methyl Esters (BioDiesel) is soooooooo much better than exposure to petroleum-based Methyl Esters.
Yeah, except I neither said nor meant BioDiesel - I'm talking about plain old vegetable oil. With some fairly minor modifications, diesel engines can be started on traditional fuel and switched over to vegetable oil, (NOT BioDiesel), when they're hot. If you ever encounter exhaust that smells like French fries, you'll know what I'm talking about.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Okay, You made me do some research.
Fatty Methyl Esters, that Biodiesel is made of, isn't considered a hazard per MSDS. Worst component is that it's a 1 for fire. Protection is rubber gloves. Looking up the MSDS for diesel reveals that it's considered a lot more hazardous, and IS a cancer concern if it contacts skin too much. SVO can theoretically be perfectly edible, of course.
Burning it in a diesel engine can raise questions, but of the sources I found, most mentioned that measured emissions for SVO and bio-diesel are essentially identical, and much cleaner than diesel. This site did mention in the conclusion that a properly modified SVO engine was cleaner yet than biodiesel on various 'non-regulated' compounds, including cancer-causing ones. Except for NOx, at least. What level of NOx it takes to be more dangerous than those other compounds, it didn't say.
In the end, I think you'd end up using biodiesel a lot anyways - for warming up the engines down south, and in the extreme north during wintertime w/additives just to get the stuff to flow so it can be pumped to the engine.
I don't read AC A human right
Funny I have never heard of anyone proposing such a thing. Perhaps try watching something other than Fox and find out what actually happens in the real world. (this will include things outside the US)
and then mention honey. its like saying 'abortion' in the middle of mass.
reminds me of the story of Sturmey Archer, the legendary bicycle manufacturers.
Think about that for a minute.
Miners....in an enclosed space.
There was no control. (or rather, no case study in the absence of diesel equipment to further suggest that it is actually diesel)
The study does not address particulate matter that could contribute, be linked to, or cause, said cancer. (or even interact with the diesel fumes to cause said cancer)
Diesel exhaust: Carbon, CO2, NOx..and when properly catalyzed.....nearly all harmful emissions are taken care of.
This study is simply a ploy to scare the public away from diesel use and used as a trump card for electrical technologies. So I've gotta call bullsh*t on this entire article.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Thank you, Sir...your post mirrors my sentiments. This article is bunk and non-scientific. The only evidence is anecdotal at best.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.