Today is not diesel's day. Not only is the stuff expensive, it's bad for you, too. The Motor Authority reports that Dutch scientists have discovered that diesel fumes stress the brain. The boffins have (apparently) known for some time that teeny-tiny particles of diesel soot can go up your nose and lodge in your brain. (I will go on the record saying I did not know that.) Though our scientists friends were aware of the itty-bitty petrochemical chunks getting crammed in our noggins, no one had figured out whether it was bad or meh (you know it ain't good). So they stuck ten volunteers in a room filled with diesel fumes and monitored their crania. After 30 minutes, the volunteers' brains displayed signs of "stress." What does that mean? “It is conceivable that the long-term effects of exposure to traffic nanoparticles may interfere with normal brain function and information processing.” Yeah, so says… hang on, what were we talking about?
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sounds like a pretty stressful situation–no wonder their brains registered stress!
situation 1: you can smell the diesel. you now think “i’m in a room with diesel fumes.” reaction = stress.
situation 2: you don’t know what it is, but you smell *something*. you now think “what the hell is that and why have i been locked in here? how long has it been? 5 minutes? 6 minutes?” reaction = stress.
situation 3: you are locked in a room and you can’t smell anything, but you are told their are diesel gases in the air. you think “this has to be bad for me.” reaction = stress.
situation 4: you are locked in a room and you can’t smell anything and no one has told you anything. you think “what the hell is going on here? why am i locked in here? where are the scientists? how long has it been? 5 minutes? 10 minutes?” reaction = stress.
bad experiment.
Mama hated diesel so bad
I guess I knew it was something to do with Dad
The first time I seen her cry
Was after one of them things went by
Mama hated diesel so bad
Sorry, this has been running through my head all morning.
Most things that smell bad are. It takes a study?
Great to know this – so now we need to ban all the highway trucks and move the cargo they carry to electric trains like they have in Europe…
Ain’t happening…
Funny how there is this double standard… We can have millions of heavy trucks belching huge quantities of diesel smoke but the idea of having a few diesel cars that are much more efficient than their gasoline cousins is terrible!!!
Now of course they are only more efficient if you buy an import diesel b/c the domestic diesels just seem to gain us about 2 mpg and alot of torque when we could (if they’d bring them here) buy more European and Japanese vehicles which show sizeable increases in fuel mileage.
For example I could (in theory if they sold them here) buy VWs Eurovan replacement with a gas engine and see maybe 20 mpg. The diesel version gets 31 mpg! Yep, I’d like to have a nice family van with alot of room getting 30 mpg+ even if it was a little slow in drag races.
You know gasoline vehicles make particulate pollution just like diesels but the particles are much, much smaller and thus I would suspect they travel much deeper into the lungs than diesel…
Hey folks, I’d still like to see short range electric vehicles for city use – 75 mile range so we could move the pollution and consumption out to the distance drivers and away from the city a little more…
NICKNICK:
The amount of diesel in the room simulated a typical urban environment.
They didn’t hook an F350’s tailpipe to the vent and floor it.
Or did they…
I attended junior high in a small town outside Atlanta where the summer temperatures would commonly reach into the mid-90s. The school bus parking lot usually contained upward of 15 large Blue Bird buses all idling for an hour out on the sweltering black-topped lot. I still get queezy to this day whenever I smell diesel exhaust. Snorkeling on a submarine didn’t help much, either.
What did they use as a control, the pristine woodlands of canada? Regular exhaust makes me sick enough, i’ve never noticed that diesel made me feel particularly worse. Depending on how much oxygen the diesel (or any fumes, really) are displacing, you’d probably have the same results.
I’m not saying diesel doesn’t stink, i’m just saying that *any* exhaust isn’t pleasant to breathe in for any amount of time.
Some people have actually had to change cars from Diesel headaches!
http://www.scif.com/safety/safetymeeting/Article.asp?ArticleID=35
Anyway, forgetting headaches – here’s a better reason not to drive Diesel: It sucks. Yeah, I said it. Turbo it all you want, it will never be as satisfying or as responsive as a naturally-aspirated gasoline engine.
I read a report today “claiming” that carbon monoxide is bad for the human body as well.
And yesterday…I heard that smoking is bad.
Can you believe this…
/sarcasm.
Yet another study designed to boogey diesel use and keep all the wonderful oil burners out of the US.
Yeah, that’s what I think. These studies get money and come up with the politically correct results.
GS650G… OK, but… why would the Dutch want to keep diesels out of the US?
Was this in Amsterdam? Are we sure it was diesel fumes?
Diesel engines are highly overrated by their internet supporters, this isn’t the first study finding the effects of diesel emissions and smog is quite harmful, much more so than gasoline.
Diesel is fine in what we use heavy trucks for, but they do not make good engines for mainstream cars in our country. Not that we’ll ever embrace them anyways considering all of diesels real world drawbacks in an automobile.
If the Euros all had such screwed up brains because of Diesel exhaust, how come they were smart enough to not join our invasion of Iraq? ;)
Busbodger says:
Funny how there is this double standard… We can have millions of heavy trucks belching huge quantities of diesel smoke but the idea of having a few diesel cars that are much more efficient than their gasoline cousins is terrible!!!
That is so true. California is to blame for that bizarro situation.
Tell you what, bring me over one of those TDI TT Convertibles, or an Alfa Spider with the JTDM engine and I’ll happily be your Diesel brains study lab rat.
–chuck
http://chuck.goolsbee.org
No wonder I get road rage in my Jetta TDI!
But they should study the “calming” effects of Christian music and road rage. I can’t curse at the guy in the pick-up when I’m praising Jesus!
“You A-hole! God Bless!”
And to think I get yelled at for wasting taxpayer money to go test drive Aston Martins……
Diesel fumes as opposed to what? I doubt that gasoline exhaust gases are much better.
# Jonny Lieberman :
March 11th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
GS650G… OK, but… why would the Dutch want to keep diesels out of the US?
I think they want them out of Europe too.
Man do I want to see the legal forms you have to fill out to participate in this study…
Did they test with the expensive particulate filter that is required on all current diesel pickups?
I paid a bunch for the combination catalyst-muffler-particulate filter hanging under my truck and I periodically burn some extra fuel whenever it goes into the automatic filter clean cycle. The fancy venturi built into my tailpipe is there to reduce the exhaust temperature so as to prevent burning the hair off pedestrians legs when the cleaning cycle is running.
I feel like Diesel proponents are the Mac users of the automotive world. We have our own technology with a different set of strengths and weakness.
Top Gear did an interesting comparison of the Diesel and Gas BMWs recently:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7maXP3ShXs&feature=related
The one point that they made (it is not on the clip) is that while it was slightly slower than the gas version, it set a record for lowest fuel consumption on the track.
As the owner of a 2006 Jeep Liberty CRD I’m a big diesel fan. I get 23-25mpg out of a 4200lb SUV. The buckets of low end torque let me scoot around town, over 55-60 it gets a bit anemic.
The 2007 emissions regulations for Diesel drastically reduce the amount of pollution. So much than even the CA Air Resources Board has come out in favor of the new post 07 diesels.
As some one who operates a 2007 Class 8 (International RoadStar) on a daily basis it is like night and day on the pollution versus an older tractor.
Europe (for the time being) has less stringent regulations on diesel emissions.
Current regs mean emissions are a non-issue (at least for new vehicles).
Unfortunately, as long as the fuel price disparity is as big as it is now, it’s going to be an extremely hard sell, even for a current diesel owner and enthusiast like myself. (I was waiting for the VW Jetta TDI Sportwagen, but my dad has kinda turned me on to the idea of getting a Passat 2.0T longroof instead. Lord knows the price will be about the same, if not lower as the initial “market adjustment” pandemic hits the TDIs…unless the price difference means they’ll actually debut with cash on the hood…Argh, now my head hurts!)
GS650G :
March 11th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Yet another study designed to boogey diesel use and keep all the wonderful oil burners out of the US.
The study was Dutch, not American, and, of course, in Europe, diesel automotives are common.
Damn, now I’ll have to give up huffing diesel exhaust as well as smoking, red meat,….
@ NICKNICK:
Read the paper here (PDF link at bottom).
Situations 3 and 4 (placebo effect) are taken care of by using a double-blind methodology. They put control subjects in the same “exposure chamber” and tell them the same thing as the others, but don’t expose them to the fumes. (In this experiment, I think they told them all they were being fumed.)
Then the difference between the two groups is due only to diesel, not to trapped-in-a-room anxiety.
Starting on page 8 of the PDF, they admit the issue you described in situation 1 (and 2 is the same) and give several reasons why it’s not likely an issue.
Mostly, it smelled like diesel for both groups.
Also, the difference in brain activity happened before the subjects complained about the smell.
Scientists are not so stupid as to not consider this stuff.
I think they want them out of Europe too.
Meh…
I’ll share my diesel particulate affected Dutch knowledge with you;
Diesel powered cars are taxed (even) heavier in the Netherlands than gasoline cars but at the same time diesel fuel is still considerably cheaper than gasoline (Euro 95 1.44 Euro/liter; diesel 1.22 Euro/liter –> ecotaxes going on for decades). This means effectively, because diesel cars get higher mileage and the fuel per liter costs less, that the more you drive per year (with the same car) the more cost effective diesel is, the break even point is considered at approximately 20-25k kilometers (about 12.5-16k miles) driven per year.
This means that in The Netherlands the percentage of diesel cars is about 30% of the total Dutch market car market. This is a relatively small percentage compared to other Euro countries, most are around 50, and Austria is at higher than 80% (because, without extra taxes on diesel it doesn’t make sense at all to buy gasoline powered cars, except for enthousiasts).
However, diesel cars sold in the Netherlands are usually company cars and obviously they cover a lot of distance (a lot a lot). Therefore the total distance covered with diesels compared to petrol is not quite clear compared to other countries.
Mostly all taxes on cars in the Netherlands are just for tax revenue and to even further compensate for income differences, and those on diesel are no different.
Not as satisfying to drive? beg to differ..I regularly rent diesels when in Germany, and the last one I drove (2007 Audi A4 Avant with 2.0 TDi) was extremely satisfying…and the added benefit of the increased fuel economy was icing on the proverbial cake. Given that we Amis don’t drive (legally) at over 100mph, I don’t see how the diesel wouldn’t suit our driving needs. Pulling away from a stoplight, the extra torque in diesels makes for punchy launches, and given the typical gridlock that is our normal commute, top speed doesn’t play a real role in our driving dynamic. However, given our short-sighted views on diesels in general (slow, smelly, pick one…) and the 50 cent per gallon difference in cost between regular and diesel, it’ll be a long, long time (if ever) before diesels become mainstream here in America.
Unfortunately this is so true. The gas engine is best and with new technology coming out it’ll just get better.
Anyone who says diesel engine cars are not appropriate for our country is being foolish. Likely, they have not ever driven a modern diesel like the BMW 530. It is the height of foolishness to dismiss something without knowledge.
Even if you somehow come away from experience with a good diesel like the 530, what makes you think that next year they won’t make an even better one? Do you have some magic crystal ball that tells you that gas cars are always going to be better? If so, sell it on eBay because it’s wrong.
The smooth power and acceleration of the 530 was superior to the gas version and got much better mileage. In city driving, I would much prefer the diesel. I am have bought 3 BMW’s. I would strongly prefer the diesel.
Those of you arguing from ignorance need to learn a lesson. Those of you who simply don’t like diesels should realize that there are many who do, and more who would if they were a bit enlightened. Yes, there are always going to be a lot of people who don’t like them, maybe even a majority, but SO WHAT? That doesn’t mean you can’t sell millions of them.
If you favor a diesel, get one. For the other 99% of us, its a no brainer, they suck. Epic fail.
No one wants to drive a car that performs, smells, and drives like a Mack truck.
fallout,
If “No one wants to drive…”, then who are you talking to? Does “no one” mean 1% or less where you come from?
If that’s the best argument you can make, perhaps you should stay on the porch.
Preforms like a Mack truck? Hmm, maybe you are more familar with the F-250 series of diesel trucks. Loud, smokey, and loud… At least the ones around here. Not picking on Ford – they others are the same. Lots of heavy right feet in those trucks around here.
A proper sport sedan turbo diesel is nearly just as fast as their gasoline powered cousins. Nearly means no difference in day to day use. The only difference is on the track where they are a second or so slower.
Smells like a Mack truck? A modern diesel sedan -not the F-250 – smells like – nothing really. They certainly don’t smell any worse than a modern gasoline car that is slightly over rich during accerlation… Those gas cars smell like gun powder or lacquer thinner or I don’t know what.
Drives like a Mack truck? Again I think the F-250 must be on your mind b/c a diesel has tons of torque and REALLY nice to drive in traffic. Light throttle, lower rpms, etc. More power to me than their gasoline cousins b/c they don’t have to be revved to the moon for power (thinking of my Honda four cylinder here – and I like it too).
The worst of the breed is certainly all of the things you describe (Olds diesel, hot rod diesel pickups with the fuel turned up for power, smokey dump trucks, tractors at the tractor pulls) but the best of the breed (even average examples of the breed) are far from that today.
The only problem I see with diesels is that $3.89 per gallon price that I saw today. For my needs though (occasional use only vehicles of the large variety) diesel still would be my choice vehicle for out of town traffic. Small cars for commuting, large van for family trips.
Imagine a big VW Eurovan turbo diesel camper van getting 30-31 miles per gallon instead of the more typical minivan average of 18-20 mpg for their gasoline cousins. That would nice. A little more expensive in the short term but less fuel burned and for me and my family’s priorities – that is important.
This is like arguing with Hawaiians over the popularity and advantages of Spam…..
I suppose “no one” eats Spam either? Are you a Yogi Bera fan by any chance?
As penitence for your hyperbole, thou must travel to Austin, Minnesota. Once there, thou must throw oneself on the steps of the Spam Museum, and beg forgiveness from the Makers at Hormel. Do not return until thou hast fully grokked the wonder that is Spam.
Follow-up: As of today, diesel is selling for nearly 20% more per gallon (national average) than regular unleaded gasoline here in the US. On top of the extra cost of the diesel in the first place, and now rampant depreciation of these same models in the face of expensive diesel.
See Ed Neidermeyers recent piece on the slow death of diesel in the face of these new realities.
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/diesel-soars-resale-plummets/
A big problem is the smell.I live in close proximity to the driveway next door , and in warm weather when my neighbor starts up his diesel truck I have to run and close all the windows or have my house filled w/ those lovely diesel fumes which seem to linger on for awhile.He warms his engine for 5-15 mins each time. At least I know when to do the emergency” run and shut” as the noise from the quite loud engine gives him away every time. Maybe less fuel consumption and less greenhouse gas, but stinky all the same!!!