Diesel and Your Heart
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 07.29.07
Not only is diesel bad for the environment, it can also pose a serious risk to your cardiovascular health. When combined with cholesterol, the particles from diesel exhaust can cause arteries to harden and lead to more frequent heart attacks, according to a new study by a team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Though the existence of a direct link between diesel and cardiovascular disease is still unclear, scientists have known for a while that diesel particles — like low density lipoprotein (LDL), the bad form of cholesterol — can prompt the release of free radicals into blood vessels. Free radicals are a type of oxygen molecule that can harm human tissues. In the study, Andre Nel and his colleagues discovered that the combination of diesel particles and LDL cholesterol was especially effective at triggering genes known to harm tissue and prompt artery hardening, or atherosclerosis, in samples of human vascular tissue.
They then tested this in mice genetically engineered to have higher levels of cholesterol. After exposing them to one of three different environments — one with filtered air, the other with fine diesel particles and the last with both fine and intermediate-sized particles — they examined the animals' lungs and found that the diesel mice had the same level of damage and gene activation patterns as did the human tissue samples.
"This the first study to go so far into the biology behind the effect air pollutants have on the cardiovascular system. Most people figured there was something going on, but this gives us substantial evidence," said Stanlon Glantz, a toxicologist from the University of California, San Francisco. All the more reason to drop those diesel-guzzling cars.
Via ::ScienceNOW: Diesel: The Engine Behind Atherosclerosis? (news website)
See also: ::Ask TreeHugger: Are Exposures to Diesel Exhaust Related to My Heart Problems?, ::Converting Diesel Engines to Run on Vegetable Oil
Image courtesy of swinginstan via flickr
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Lets hope the investigators had the sense to also run their tests using the diesel emissions that will be characteristics of the newest engines that meet the upgraded EPA standards for engines sold in 2008.
@JL
Yeah, because the new standards improve the millions of diesel vehicles that are currently on the roads and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. And the new regulations are mostly for sulfur and NOx emissions, not particulates.
Have they done this with regular gas exhaust? If not I would have to say the jury is out on whether or not we should reduce diesel. Also how does this compare with bio-diesel at b5/20/40/60/100 levels. There are a lot more questions to be answered before I would make decisions base on this information. It is worth noting though. It should not be ignored.
This is dumb, because what type of diesel are they incorporating. Most european countries now have bio diesel or something like that which is made from like plants or something lol. Anyways it is really good and environmentally friendly, and i'd still choose a diesel engine over a fuel one any day, it waste's way less petrol, i wonder why they didn't do this test on normal fuels, im sure they real healthy.
My 2c
Plug in cars only pass the burden of power generation to the plant that is supplying your grid. So if you like in an area fed by a coal burring plant you will in fact be more harmful with a plug in car.
So if you like in an area fed by a coal burring plant you will in fact be more harmful with a plug in car.
Then an average diesel vehicle? No.
mr. anonymous, no, moving the power generation from thousands of inefficient gas-burning cars to a few electric plants (even if they are coal!) is much better for the environment believe it or not. Even better is home-grown solar of course, but the lesser-of-two-evils between conventional internal combustion engines and conventional electric plants is always the power plant.
but the lesser-of-two-evils between conventional internal combustion engines and conventional electric plants is always the power plant.
Not always, no. For example, mile for mile, a Prius running off of only electric (like a plug-in) puts out 12 times the NOx as one running off of gasoline. Coal plants also put out things like mercury in very large amounts compared to gasoline or diesel.
There's trade-offs.
And even an old power plant can be retrofitted to "scrub" out the mercury and other chemicals. Won't ever happen for all of the existing internal-combustion vechicles on the road. Plus, all that night-time electricity currently wasted goes instead to charge your electric car. The pollution would have been emitted (hopefully scrubbed out) either way. Coal plants take days to wind down and back up, so they always run at the same capacity at night as they do during the day when the peak loads exist.
Proof on the 12x the NOx please.
Proof on the 12x the NOx please.
Take a look at NOx emissions for electricity production and compare that to the SULEV NOx emission limits that a gasser Prius has to meet.
I'm not going to run all the numbers here.
And even an old power plant can be retrofitted to "scrub" out the mercury and other chemicals. Won't ever happen for all of the existing internal-combustion vechicles on the road.
Whether something can be done is different from whether it will be done.
this is some os the best information that i have goten yet for my reaseach project and it dives me nutson how much i have found on this site.
Actually, biodiesel is also made from recycled animal fats, so there's no direct impact on agriculture as ethanol production.
On the other hand, even with ethanol production, if there really was well-oriented subsidies, or, better, no subsidies at all in a really free market, local ethanol would be cheaper, as well as local food. That way, each country would have fair priced food. I.E. If the US was paying more for its popcorn, maybe their government wouldl start looking toward reducing their dependance on oil, individual transportation or just gas-guzzling monstruous SUV.