Have there been class action suits on lead damage to brains? Since the damage was universal, it seems more reasonable for government to sue Associated Octel and co for reckless obfuscation of data and brain poisoning denial, on behalf of communities, rather than have everyone who suffered brain damage be paid individually.
The payment to each individual should be about $10,000, which, with 200 million people affected, at least, just in the USA, would amount to some $2 trillion in damage which was done.
I bet you have never seen the total calculated and had no idea of the extent of the harm that was done and is still being done because those of us poisoned by lead from petrol continue to suffer brain deficits and poorer performance than would otherwise be the case.
$2 trillion makes asbestosis and myeloid leukaemia damage trivial, though those harms were "Oh not I got the short straw" damage rather than diffuse harm in which everyone gets a bit.
Also, asbestosis was an end-of-life problem, reducing average life expectancy of those suffering it by only a couple of years, and there were not many of them. Similarly with myeloid leukaemia, which most people get from sucking benzene in from their cigarettes. Almost nobody got myeloid leukaemia from benzene in gasoline and nobody would do now [maybe some gasoline sniffing, deliberately self-poisoning people are getting it still]. In the USA, I guess that 20 years ago maybe 400 a year were suffering from myeloid leukaemia due to benzene in gasoline and many of those would have been pump jockeys or mechanics using gasoline as a cleaning solvent.
A guy in BP Oil told me they used to use benzene to clean down lab benches, being an excellent solvent!
As you suggest, diesel emission particulates are carcinogenic, with 1 nitro pyrene being one such agent. Diesel fuel itself is not so carcinogenic, and it also depends very much on the fuel itself. Rape seed oil is diesel fuel and I think you could drink it and get no cancer - probably better health. Same for olive oil. I deliberately ingest it and it would burn nicely in a diesel engine if blended with the right other components.
But so is toast carcinogenic and bread crusts - anything you burn, crack, oxidize and polymerize with temperatures up around 150 deg Celsius and higher and especially over 180 deg C when chemical reactions really get cooking.
I haven't seen data, but I bet that coffee is carcinogenic - it's roasted pretty hard.
Here's an experiment to determine correlation if not causation, but correlation is a good start. When somebody is newly diagnosed with pharynx, esophagus, stomach, or colon cancer, check their blood caffeine level.
I predict higher caffeine levels in those diagnosed than average population levels. Since there are so many sources of swallowed carcinogens, a large sample would be needed to find the difference made by carcinogens from roasting coffee.
I expect bacon would be worse for example. So somebody having cup of coffee with their burned bacon, burned toast and fried eggs, wouldn't suffer a lot more harm from the coffee. Bacon contains nitrites which form nitrosamines in the stomach if swallowed with the wrong things, such as inhaled, coughed up and swallowed amines from cutting fluid mists in machining factories [in the pre 1980s days].
Mqurice |
