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Public health and petroleum
(and other related issues)
Report on a plastics additive of great toxicity: deca-BDE
RESEARCH INDICATES THAT DIESEL CAUSES ASTHMA -- NEW LINK BETWEEN ASTHMA
AND DIESEL FUMES
Independent (London), Apr. 11, 2004
Major new scientific findings suggest that air pollution from vehicles can cause
asthma in previously healthy people as well as triggering attacks in people with
the disease.
Until now, scientists had believed traffic fumes simply worsened everyday life
for asthmatics. But research on both sides of the Atlantic now suggests that
tiny "particulates" from exhausts can sidestep the body's natural
defences and set off asthma.
Diesel, which is being heavily promoted by ministers as a "green" fuel
that can help combat global warming, is most to blame.
"These microscopic particles are a major threat to human health," said
Professor Stephen Holgate, one of the Government's most senior advisers on air
pollution, who is opening a major conference on asthma backed by The Independent
on Sunday on 28 April.
"There is a strong suspicion that particulates in air pollution are playing
a much greater role in the causation of asthma than has previously been realised,"
said Professor Holgate, who chairs the official Expert Panel on Air Quality
Standards.
"The latest scientific evidence suggests that particulates are now the most
important type of air pollutant that threatens human health."
The new findings raised serious questions about the safety of diesel cars, said
Professor Holgate. He was talking ahead of a new effort to push asthma to the
top of the Government's agenda later this month, when some of Britain's top
asthma experts and campaigners will meet at London's Royal Society of Medicine
for a conference on the disease.
The event is being co-sponsored by the IoS as part of its ongoing asthma
campaign, which began two years ago when scientific evidence of a definite link
between pollution and asthma emerged.
The campaign raised the profile of asthma in the UK dramatically and caused
ministers and the European Commission to reappraise official policies on ozone
pollution. Now the conference will focus on the
latest research and try to set new scientific priorities - one of the most
significant gaps in the Government's strategy.
A global survey confirmed the UK's status at the top of the world's asthma
league table, last month with GPs seeing 20,000 new cases each week. Yet the
burden of investigating and reversing this phenomenon is
shouldered almost entirely by charities such as the National Asthma Campaign (NAC),
which can only afford u2m a year on research, and the pharmaceutical companies,
whose main interest is to sell drugs, not
cures.
Professor Martyn Partridge, the NAC's chief scientist, described government
research spending on respiratory illnesses as "lamentable". Ministers,
he said, had failed to fund any - admittedly expensive - projects to stop people
getting asthma.
In the light of his latest findings, Professor Holgate, who has published 400
papers on asthma and allergies and sits on the Royal Commission on Environmental
Pollution, called for greater efforts to design much more effective
"particulate traps" to be fitted to diesel exhausts.
The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, has led a government push to increase the use of
diesel cars in Britain by introducing lower taxes for the fuel and for the cars
that use it. As a result, sales of diesel cars have leapt by a third in recent
years. This is presented as a "green"
policy because diesel engines emit much less carbon dioxide - the main cause of
global warming - than petrol-powered engines. But they also emit far more of the
particulates.
Professor Holgate's warnings were backed by a leading US expert due to speak at
the conference, Dr Rob McConnell, who said ministers should "think
twice" about their support for diesel. "It helps reduce CO2, but I
think there's increasing literature that suggests diesel
exhaust particles have some serious respiratory effects."
The findings will increase pressure on ministers and car-makers to tackle
traffic pollution as part of efforts to combat an asthma epidemic which affects
5.2 million Britons, giving the UK the world's highest incidence of the disease.
Pioneering research in 2002 by a team at the University of Southern California
led by Dr McConnell suggested that ozone in the atmosphere, created by the
interaction of sunlight on car exhausts, caused asthma in children who regularly
played open-air sports.
Now both Dr McConnell and Professor Holgate believe a major research effort is
needed into the damage being caused by particulates. Britain and the EU lag far
behind the US in investigating their impact on human health, said Professor
Holgate, who is based at Southampton
General Hospital.
He will tell the conference that air pollution is emerging as a key area for
asthma research. Studies have made it more clear that microscopic particles are
a trigger for asthma attacks, and could work beside pollen to set off severe
attacks by inflaming the lungs, hesaid.
But the latest findings also show particulates are so small that they can sneak
through the lungs' natural defences and damage the body's cells, causing asthma
and other respiratory illnesses in susceptible people. The same mechanism, he
said, was now being linked to heart
attacks and coronary thrombosis.
Professor Holgate stressed that other environmental and genetic factors played a
greater role in causing asthma, such as poor diet during pregnancy and a lack of
exposure to allergens during infancy. Unhealthy eating increased the risks that
particulates would damage the vulnerable, he said, because their bodies' natural
defences would
be far weaker.
* * *
2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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MERCURY POLLUTION FROM AUTOMOBILES AT RECORD
LEVELS
PUBLIC HEALTH AT STAKE UNLESS AUTO INDUSTRY/LAWMAKERS TAKE ACTION TODAY
Note: 0.7 grams of mercury is enough to contaminate one 20 acre lake. 18,000 lbs
is enough to contaminate 11,688,312 20 acre lakes - if you can find them. And
that is only ~15% of all mercury emissions from us (US).
Environmental Defense, 07 April 2004 Detroit - A record 18,000 pounds of mercury
pollution was released into the U.S. environment last year when scrap vehicles
were recycled. An estimated 259,000 pounds of mercury have been released into
the environment over the past 30 years. Most troubling, according to the
analysis, is that approximately an equal amount could be released over the next
two decades if action is not taken soon to recover the mercury in vehicles
before they are scraped.
"Automobile companies and lawmakers have ignored this serious public
health threat for too long, and time is running short," said Karen Thomas
of Environmental Defense. "Failing to adopt cost-effective programs to
reduce mercury pollution in our lakes and waterways is unnecessary and
irresponsible."
Domestic automakers have used more than 200 million, one-gram mercury switches
in vehicles since the early 1970's. In January 2001, the Ecology Center and
Environmental Defense released reports documenting that the processing of scrap
automobiles at steel manufacturing facilities was the 4th largest source of
mercury emissions into the environment. The reports called on auto manufacturers
to take immediate steps to eliminate mercury use in new vehicles, and to remove,
collect and replace mercury switches in vehicles already on the road. Since the
2001 reports, automakers completed an accelerated phase-out of mercury switches
in new vehicles, but have done little to encourage the recovery of mercury from
the millions of vehicles still on the road.
"In the three years since the reports, less than one percent of the mercury
in vehicles has been recovered nationally, resulting in the release of an
estimated 54,000 pounds of mercury into the environment," stated Jeff
Gearhart of the Ecology Center.
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