Diesel fumes are a "definite" cause of lung cancer, allegedly.
According to a report published this month:
The World Health Organisation recently reclassified the dangers of diesel exhaust fumes, upgrading the risk from probably carcinogenic to a definite cause of cancer.
The research into diesel exhaust fumes was conducted by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). It concluded that diesel exhausts were definitely a cause of lung cancer, and may also cause tumours in the bladder.
IARC said the evidence was overwhelming and that the Working Group’s conclusion was unanimous. It is reckoned that people working in at-risk industries have about a 40 per cent increased risk of developing lung cancer.
Full story: WHO report on diesel fumes puts sharp focus on need for effective monitoring (Environmental Expert)
Well, the think tank Policy Exchange has now published the results of their own investigation into air quality and yesterday I received this interesting memo from someone who has been following the debate:
Whilst the [Policy Exchange] report doesn’t directly compare [fine particle] PM2.5 deaths to passive smoking deaths, it does give some useful figures: “Each year, around 29,000 deaths are attributable to manmade fine particulate air pollution in the UK, at a cost to the economy of £15 billion a year.”
In 2005 during the debates on the proposed smoking ban, the Labour Government cited figures from a British Medical Journal study on deaths from passive smoke, which concluded: “Across the United Kingdom as a whole, passive smoking at work is likely to be responsible for the deaths of more than two employed people per working day (617 deaths per year), including 54 deaths in the hospitality industry each year. Each year passive smoking at home might account for another 2700 deaths in persons aged 20-64 years and 8000 deaths among people aged ≥ 65.”
Adding the BMJ figures together and comparing PM2.5 to passive smoke deaths we get the following: 29,000 deaths per year attributable to PM2.5 vs 11,317 deaths per year attributable to passive smoke (including 54 in the hospitality industry).
Frankly, I didn't believe the figure of 11,000 deaths attributed to secondhand smoke and I'm equally sceptical about the suggestion that diesel exhaust fumes are responsible for a 29,000 deaths a year.
It does raise an interesting question though about the excessive nature of the smoking ban when the alleged risk of working in a smoky bar is so small in relation to being exposed to diesel fumes. (With proper air filtration, of course, there is no need for any bar to be excessively smoky.)
Then again, if diesel fumes and secondhand smoke are so bad for our health one might have expected the average age of the population to fall in the second half of the last century, given that people's exposure to exhaust fumes and ETS was probably at its peak in the middle of the 20th century.
Instead the baby boom generation has lived longer on average than any generation in history and the average age continues to rise.
Of course other factors are responsible for our increased longevity including a decline in real (as opposed to relative) poverty, improved housing and better nutrition (although some might argue with that), but I am still waiting for hard evidence that even long-term exposure to moderate levels of carcinogens is a serious threat to our health.