What Have VW and Other Auto Makers and Government Officials Done To Our Health?
October, 2015
In 1971, I edited an EPA Report titled “Our Urban Environment and Our Most Endangered People”.
See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/1970-PolutionControlEfforts.php
To this day more than 40 years later we read about VW selling vehicles designed to emit many times more pollutants on the streets than on the EPA test dynamometers. The many health effects of automotive emissions have long been known. See http://www3.epa.gov/airquality/nitrogenoxides/health.html
I recall a 1970s research presentation funded by the oil industry that argued the EPA air quality standards could be exceeded ten fold without adverse health effects. At the break I asked Dr. “Money” (that is the name I give him): How could this be? He told me that his scientific study was very rigorous. He used only the most carefully selected, healthiest and fittest monkeys that money could buy. That these adult monkeys in their prime were exposed to tightly controlled levels of nitrogen oxides under stringent laboratory conditions. When I asked about the bacteria that were used to determine the subsequent health effects, he said they did not do so (so as to not confound the scientific study). Yet that was a common way to determine the reduction in resistance to respiratory infections due to inhalation of NOx. No dose, no response, no problem.
To no avail, I pointed out that people living in urban areas were of all ages, all degrees of health and fitness, and exposed to a wide variety of pollutants and bacteria.
When will we ever learn? Two types of ignorance: 1. To not know, and 2. To know and to not act.
Lou
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