Nothing Really 'New' In Alarmist UK Report On Diesel PM Found In Lungs

Diesel Fuel News, Nov 26, 2001

A University of Leicester (UK) study of children living near a major highway found higher amounts of particles in their lungs compared to another group of children living further from the road, as noted by a BBC News report this month. The report erroneously claimed that the study is the first conclusive evidence of diesel PM lung penetration.

"The fact that a portion of inhaled diesel particles and all other types of particles of similar aerodynamic size are deposited in the lung has been well established for at least 20 years," explains Joe Mauderly, Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute. Mauderly is one of the world's leading scientific investigators on diesel exhaust health effects, with many published papers, and he's immediate past chairman of U.S. EPA's own clean air scientific advisory committee (CASAC) that examined diesel exhaust. "Although this [BBC] notice is written in an excitatory manner, the only thing that might be 'new ' is the population they studied," Mauderly told Diesel Fuel News. "The most obvious, or visible, particles are the black ones, and there are several sources of those. Diesels are one source, and it is frequently assumed by the uninitiated or blatantly biased that any black material came from diesels. There would be other particles in the lung cells as well, but not so easily seen." Other studies found that gasoline exhaust PM accounts for far more ambient PM than diesel exhaust. In any case, particle filters practically eliminate PM from diesel engines.