Is it because you can 'see' asbestos?
And is cognitive dissonance a helluva drug?
Why Do We Focus on Asbestos, When Diesel Exhaust Kills Far More People?
Boogerman on 17/10/2022 - 08:02
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Here's how the argument goes. Diesel engines emit fine particulates. When the level of fine particulates in the air are high you can see an significant increase in the death rate. Therefore diesel engines kill people.
And it is undoubtedly true in Europe's dense cities. It turned out to be a stupid idea there to implement policies to encourage people to buy diesel powered cars. The harm to health that resulted was substantially greater than the benefit of less CO2 emissions. Diesels simply couldn't be cleaned up. Pretty much all the manufacturers of them either simply exploited all the loopholes in the emissions rules, or outright cheated, with the result that a typical diesel in a stop-start urban environment puts out orders of magnitude more harmful emissions than a petrol vehicle.
But Australia isn't Europe. We have far fewer diesels. And we have far less dense cities. Here the situation that causes fine particulate levels to rise to the point where there are health effects significant enough to be measurable is when there are bushfires on the fringes of our cities, and the wind is blowing the smoke into the city.
Its interesting though that when fine particulate levels are high its the people who were on the verge of death from old age and chronic diseases whose death rate goes up. Their body has reached the point where it can't cope with one more stressor. Fine particulates are the last straw that breaks the camel's back. But they don't put diesel engines on the death certificate, they put down old age and/or severe chronic diseases. If you look at the covid related deaths statistics you find it almost exclusively kills the same group. The elderly and chronically ill. For the same reason. But in that case they write down covid. That's the way death certificates work. If there's something they can test for, and the test comes back positive, then it gets blamed. Otherwise the death certificate just says died of old age.
It's not just an argument, it's a studied phenomenon. And it doesn't just affect you in old age, it can do things like stunting lung development in kids:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/25/living-n…
And giving you heart and lung issues as an adult if you are within 500m of a busy road:
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/health-risks-for…
And increase your risk of dementia:
https://www.med.ubc.ca/news/living-near-major-roads-linked-t…
Basically diesel semi trucks should not be regularly passing through residential areas, and we should be working to get diesel vehicles off urban/suburban roads altogether (I mean… we should be working to get all fossil fuelled vehicles off all roads, really).
Excellent and very well written and educational post, OP. Very thorough investigation and perfect example of how to use sources to back up your data. Thanks for the great read and today I have learned a lot about how dangerous both substances can be. Very informative post indeed. Thanks for pointing this out for us. Only gripe was, it was a little too "wordy" and could do with a TL;DR to help condense the main points.
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Watch out for Di-Hydrogen Monoxide while you're at it - 100% of people who come into contact with it die.
I have also heard that in high enough concentrations, di-hydrogen monoxide is a known asphyxiant.
Just to be clear, are you claiming that vehicle pollution isn't linked to health issues and that anyone who thinks it is is stupid enough to also think water is poisonous?
I mean… you could use google for literally 5 seconds and discover that this is an increasingly well recognised medical/scientific issue, or you could make an assumption that because you are ignorant about it it must be made up because OP hasn't cited the Lancet.
https://www.med.ubc.ca/news/living-near-major-roads-linked-t…
https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/42/3/594
Etc etc.
Follow the money,
There's Billions of dollars in the diesel/hydrocarbon industry to pay for lobbyists
Asbestos lobbyists are pretty much non-existent.Guess where the media goes
Pretty sure the dangers of Asbestos were covered up by big corpos for decades.
But they've all since gone bankrupt - James Hardie is pretty much the last one left ;)
Show us some real scientific information please!
I do agree that asbestos is dangerous, but it seem all blown out of proportion a lot of the time.
who's focussing on asbestos? it was only an 'issue' with Great Wall who used asbestos in their exhaust join gaskets… i dunno about you but i resist the urge to eat exhaust gaskets when I see various vehicles let alone CCP Great Wall!
but seriosly.. diesel particulates is an issue but with it behing limited to commercials and 4x4s and steps being taken like DFP… is it really a pressing issue? except in OP fetid mind of course…
OP fetid mind of course
That’s a bit harsh. Maybe they’ve been brought up in a house licking the lead based paint and it’s affected their learning ability
You forgot to switch accounts.
Angus, is that you?
I noted a couple of years ago that a European medical commission stated that about a half a million EU
residents died each year, from respiratory problems directly caused by diesel exhaust emissions. Hence, no
more new diesel cars in Europe by 2030. Diesel exhaust emissions are highly toxic - much more so than petrol.Big oil.
Actively lobbying in the gov and funding disinformation non-profits, silencing media etc.
This has been going for decades.It's the same reason why au is a dumping ground for old, inefficient, polluting and deprecated engine models (that are banned from other developed countries by gov emission standards)
ps: they also get A$11.6 billion/year of subsidies from Aussie state and federal gov because of how good their lobbying is, while pocketing record profits this year after hiking retail prices (https://theconversation.com/we-pay-billions-to-subsidise-aus…)
A strange question.
"Why Do We Focus on Asbestos, When Diesel Exhaust Kills Far More People?"
Are we focusing on asbestos?
Hardly hear about it these days.
However the media is constantly talking about the transition from combustion engines (diesel/petrol) to electric.
As they improve charging times and distance trucks will be electric the trucking companies want to go electric as once initial hiccups sorted actual maintenance costs should be less. The big kilometres trucks and other industries need to travel in Australia we need the range and quick charging time.
Combustion engines apart from club cars we be replaced by electric eventually.
In the future they will be worrying about the ev batteries and their impact to the environment.
Diesel doesn't just cause deaths, its a mutagenic carcinogen. So it can give your kid's kid cancer.
Same thinking as coal vs nuclear power stations. Burning coal can emit all sorts of nasty particles into the air, and likely the cause of thousands of deaths yearly. Far more than the number ever killed by nuclear.
You realise that no-one is concerned about a nuclear power plant operating normally, right?
Nuclear has two main issues: no-one wants to have the waste near them, and there is a very low risk of a very, very bad outcome in the event of a failure/natural disaster/war.
You're right about coal, but anyone who would be concerned about nuclear would be even more concerned to see coal completely removed from the energy cycle, surely?
The move to EVs, particularly for tradies and last mile deliveries will really help with emissions. IMO there is a strong case for making diesel users contribute to health costs or at least removing the tax breaks for buying them and transferring them to EV trade vehicles.
Asbestos hasn’t been ignored. Material has been removed from market, clear guidelines for management, disposal and monitoring.
Is it because you can 'see' asbestos?
It is because "asbestos" is in the past, we moved away from it, no longer of financial benefit as before.
On the other hand, "diesel" is in the present bringing gazillions of revenue for present governments and even far more with GST on new vehicles.
Elementary my dear ;-)
Same thing as why do we focus on straws, when industrial waste kills more. Politics and marketing.
Pretty sure the straw ban was only implemented a few years ago, whereas environmental laws and the EPA were established long long ago. Any surprise new laws are promoted to increase awareness.
Because we have to choose between those two issues like life is some sort of RPG? What's the link between banning single use plastic and industrial waste exactly?
It’s like anything Woke
Edit: people gotta being outraged by small things & stop hating and blaming small people, and work together against the the big greedy players?
You want people to unite while throwing around stupid Sky News/Trump-esque catch phrases like 'woke' in relation to a scientifically recognised health risk?
Was referring to previous comments abouts straws and abortions and what’s more important, but people fight each other these small unimportant things, not related to topic as much sorry
Got some stats?
Facebook doesn’t count
Diesel isn't even mentioned once in the entire study……………….
2013 lol
As a matter of convenience, few workspaces will not admit to diesel being as toxic and contaminating as it is. Plus the lack of awareness and strange culture of "hard work is dirty work, be proud" and "a little bit of soot won't hurt you"
Also the evidence is less obvious being that diesel exhausts particulates are airborne, very small, very sticky, very very long lasting, easily transferred, resistant to soaps and detergents, stay in the human body for a long time and almost odorless and almost invisible. Where as asbestos dust is a lot more visible and easy to detect.
The scientific equipment to test for and find these tiny particles most workplaces will never have.
In regards to this, I pay particular attention to research done by firefighter's scientific departments attempting to reduce unusually high cancer rates in their industry, they tested for and noticed diesel exhaust from the trucks was leaching into the firestations and then into their bodies and 3rd order affect onto their families clothing and food at home via the family washing marching and cooking pots.
Meh. I have hard lab data from… checks notes… VW and it says diesel engine emissions are fine.
Because people live with Asbestos…….
My father was in the engine room in WW2 on HMAS Australia where every pipe was wrapped in asbestos. He said you could see the fibres in the air. Did he contract asbestosis. No. Was he lucky? He lived to be 89.
My diesels are both fitted with DPFs', one active and one passive. Both are cleaner than the equivalent sized petrol motors. Diesels are also about 20% more efficient too.
These are facts.
I thought EGR and DPF fixed all that?
Because unlike asbestos we actually need diesel. We are far away from diesel free ships, trucks, mines. etc. What we should be de-incentivising is lifestyle utes and mum tanks.
Yes the danger of asbestos is overblown. It's probably a mental thing because you don't know when you're being subjected to asbestos particles, but you can smell diesel. Also asbestos can only require one exposure to take you down, not repeated and prolonged exposure. You are far more likely to die in a car accident than in a plane crash, but people generally are more scared of flying. We don't always balance risk with the correct weighting due to various factors. Seems like a pretty simple concept.
Diesel engines emit lots of particulate matter made of carbon particles that are smaller than 2.5 micrograms in diameter. The reason why these are bad for us is because they are small enough to cross the pulmonary barrier between our lungs and our bloodstream.
Once these particles enter the bloodstream they travel to the heart and lodge in the heart muscle where they cause heart disease:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4740122/
Not to mention the larger PM that lodges in lung tissue and causes lung cancer.
Same difference with direct injection petrol engines.
Except for Toyota’s DI engines which have both port and in-cylinder injectors. The port injectors are used instead of DI in low load conditions where DI would produce high PM. Agree on DI engines from other automakers which lack port injection.
Methane killed the dinasours
What timeframe are we talking here? Been a truck driver for 20 years, never removed asbestos without a mask and wouldnt want to. Not sure what youre getting at
Why spend any time on diesel fumes when EVERY THREE MONTHS SOMEONE IS TORN TO PIECES BY CROCODILES!!!!
Asbestos being turned to dust you can breath in from brake pads and clutches for decades all over the world, combines your conspiracy of deaths from cars and aspestos. 😂
I was reading some literature a while back, which speculated that the air in suburban Australia was likely made up of 1% asbestos fibre, due to what you just mentioned (during the years it was still in use for vehicle consumables)
WhatAboutism.
Why do we focus on Asbestos when there are shark attacks?
Why do we focus on shark attacks when there are exhaust fumes?
Why do we focus on suicides when there are shark attacks?
POINTLESS. They are all issues in their own right.
We do both. Emissions standards are tightening for diesel vehicles. Heard of DPFs? Euro 6? Volkswagen's scandal?
We're also concerned about asbestos.
We can do more than one thing at a time.
Not in Australia…
yawn.
before we get to asbestos, diesel, carbon monoxide, emissions….lets sort out alcohol and tobacco first?
but I guess greenie crusaders love a rollie and a sav
Before we get to alcohol and tobacco, let's sort of the potato chips shortage first?
Human's worst environmental crime inventions: Bulldozer and chainsaw!
Worst preventable poisoning of the atmosphere: Lead in the fuel. And still we have piston aircraft still showering us with lead!
Around 60,000 nuclear explosions for war mongering.
Half burnt carbon, especially wood and engines with cold or missing catalytic converters = carbon monoxide, no odor but lethal! Diesel traps much in it as soot, DPF mitigates much of it. How come motorbikes have no catalytic converter?
Careless dumping either land or sea. Eventually finding clean water becomes a huge challenge.
Nitro's oxide is not toxic on its own but might bind with other airborne particles causing lung irritation. Urea in between 2 catalytic converters is a good mitigation. (Ad Blue)
Carbon Dioxide is a trace gas, less than 0.1% of our atmosphere yet it is the most essential building block of all our flora. However its increase from 3 to mostly 4ppm has also trapped more moisture in the air and hence given us a passive greenhouse effect.
Asbestos is hardly more dangerous than bamboo dust. Fatality rate is likely less than all snake deaths.
Alcohol is another arranged mix of mostly hydrocarbons, proof that carbon needs management.
Still reaching for a fag?60,000 nuclear explosions? Only 2056 have been recorded: https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nucleartesttally
Some members of the NOx family of chemicals are toxic to humans and don't need to bind to particles to cause damage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_dioxide
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is not 4ppm, but over 400ppm.
How many people are exposed to bamboo dust? People used to mine asbestos with no protective equipment. Ignorant home renovations still expose people to asbestos today through cutting and grinding asbestos materials. And what do snake bite deaths have to do with asbestos?
The last statement about alcohol is bizarre. Alcohol is mostly hydrocarbons, therefore it needs management? What?
Correct with Nox and ppm, but generally carbon monoxide is the poison that kills without warning.
There was a youtube made by a Japanese that counted all above and underground nuclear explosions. There is no way to verify if he was fake or real.
I have been to Witnoon in WA and some have never left and never had an issue.
Now we lock up people with a viral scare, wonder what they come up with next?
everything kills you these days, life even kills.
Because with absestos it's a nice money making scam + replacement of asbestos exists which again makes money for jamie hardie…….plus fines can be issued and fines make money….plus landfills charge you a bomb to dispose asbestos which makes them bucket loads of money….
just remember when you tip at a landfill they drive over it most of the time you see staff members walking around without PPE.
It's a overhyped scam.
Toxic chemicals and waste are usually incredibly expensive to dispose of FYI.
Uh, no. If you see anyone dumping asbestos in random places, you need to report it ASAP to the police and council.
Edit: also, how is it a money making scam if James Hardie is getting sued left right and centre?
Here's some more cognitive dissonance for yourselves, conservatives - do you go to weekend religious service to virtue signal to……….yourselves??
Ah… if only SlavOz could have chimed in.
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Would that be an Air Fryer? It would explain a lot…