Fossil fuels - the new 'asbestos'

The taskforce’s apparent opportunistic call “for more research under Australian conditions” to reduce health cost impacts does not appear genuine when it seemed to influence the Federal Government to set a goal of only 350 million litres of biofuel for all of Australia over the next few years. This biofuel token output target, being less than 1 per cent of fossil fuel sold in Australia, will have no discernable health benefit in the capital cities which are already heavily polluted with toxic fossil fuel emissions. At present, if all of Sydney’s petrol-powered vehicles switched to E10, then over 600 million litres of ethanol would be needed annually for Sydney alone. The taskforce was clearly out of its depth in evaluating the health benefits of replacing fossil fuels.

Unlimited and free access to clean air is a fundamental human necessity and right. The lung is a critical boundary between the environment and the human body. An average person takes about 10 million breaths a year and inhales about 16 cubic metres of air every 24 hours. The internal surface area of the airways in the five lobes of the human lung is about equivalent to that of a tennis court. Hence, toxic substances in air can easily reach the lung and produce harmful effects locally and in other organs.

Adverse effects of exhaust pollutants now include increased infant mortality (New Scientist July 3, 2004); chronic deficits in lung development of children aged 10-18 years (New England Journal of Medicine, September 9, 2004); acute heart attacks (New England Journal of Medicine, October 20, 2004); and an association between ovarian cancer and exposure to diesel exhaust fumes (International Journal of Cancer, August 20, 2004).

A compound found in diesel exhaust fumes may be the most carcinogenic agent ever analysed, say Japanese researchers (New Scientist, October, 1997). They warn that heavily loaded diesel engines are a major source of the chemical and that it could be partly responsible for the large number of lung cancers in cities, in tandem with tobacco smoking.

Alarmed by such documented findings, the World Health Organisation recently reported (pdf file 461KB) its serious concern about the health effects of vehicle pollutants and of the cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which can coat fine exhaust particles or exist as vapours. Diesel exhaust is around 40 times more carcinogenic than cigarette smoke on a weight/volume basis (Gong and Waring, 1998). Up to a fifth of lung cancer deaths are attributed to exposure to fine particles of vehicle exhausts.

A UK study (J Epidemiol Community Health 1997; 51:151-159) looked at 24,458 children dying of leukaemia and cancer in the UK over a 25-year period. It found that these children were 35 per cent more likely than chance to have lived within 4km of a major motorway.

The relationship between air pollution, death and disease has led to the recent conclusion that combustion of diesel and petrol is among the most toxic sources of emissions today (USA Clean Air Task Force Report, Feb 2005).

Very fine particles adsorb toxic gases and liquids onto their surfaces. On a weight basis, a billion ultra-fine particles are about equivalent to one coarse particle 10 micrometres in diameter, but have one thousand times the surface area. The fine particles are mainly soluble and penetrate deep into the lungs, indicating that the invisible exhaust may be the most dangerous of all.

The National Environment Protection Council (NEPC) reported recently that "Ozone, PM10 and PM2.5 are the pollutants of concern, having peak concentrations at or above the NEPM standards and no consistent downward trend".

It is significant that the main problem the NEPC identified is fine particles of PM2.5. The Council stated: “The 2001 peak PM2.5 levels are above the advisory reporting standards at the four jurisdictions (NSW, Victoria, Queensland and WA) that provided data.”
 
In the USA, fine particle pollution kills 21,000 people each year. Diesel exhaust poses a cancer risk that is 7.5 times higher than the combined risk from all other air toxins while the risk of lung cancer for people living in urban areas is three times that for those living in rural areas (CATF Report, Feb 2005).

Twice as many people died in Sydney in 2000 from air pollution than from road accidents (Australian Bureau of Regional Economics Report, September, 2003). The cost of health impacts from vehicle pollution in Sydney alone is between $2 billion and $3 billion annually. Children are more susceptible than adults (except the elderly) to the adverse effects of air pollution (CATF Report, February, 2005). Yet, perhaps because these effects are less visible and dramatic than road accidents, very little seems to be done to address this deplorable situation.

The major political parties at federal and state levels, the oil companies and car manufacturers have known that while "leaded" petrol is a health hazard, “unleaded” petrol has even greater toxic properties. The decision was made, it seems, to cut lead so it did not poison the "catalytic converter" and knowingly introduce substances that would increase cancer rates.