Short-Term Exposure To Diesel Fumes Causes Changes In Gene Expression

BarbaraHudson writes: The Vancouver Sun is reporting on experiments using human volunteers showing that just two hours of exposure to diesel exhaust fumes led to biological changes; some genes were switched on while others turned off. The air quality during the diesel fume exposures is said to be comparable to a Beijing highway or shipping ports in British Columbia. The next step is for researchers to study how changes in gene expression from air pollution affect the human body over the long term, since the study shows genes may be vulnerable to pollution without producing any obvious or immediate symptoms of ill health."

Comments

Re:No control experiment

[BarbaraHudson]

They had the subjects randomly exposed for 2 hours of filtered air or two hours of air contaminated by diesel fumes. Changes only happened when the subjects were exposed to diesel fumes. So basically, they controlled for everything except the fumes.