Termyn8or
Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
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I won't argue that point right now. It is indeed like apples and horses (oranges just didn't cut it for that statement).
OK let's just take this straight down to pure logic. For any type of comparison to be made, the relative exposure levels must be considered. Some of this is not so pretty for nonsmokers, but here goes anyway.
If you smoke a cigarette you inhale the smoke from approximately on gram of tobacco, give or take. That results in a certain concentration of particulate matter and other intoxicants*. This can be determined scientifically but varies from one smoker to the next. And then they make the case that second hand smoke is actually worse, which is totally ridiculous, especially if the smoker is imbibing in an unfiltered cigarette. But that's not the point right now.
Now compare that to a truck driving down the street. First of all your lips are not on the tailpipe, so you only get a small portion of it. That does not mean it is less poisonous, it just means it is less poisonous to you at the time. And really, if the matter of personal preference comes up, I think I would rather breathe the cigarette smoke than the deisel exhaust. But that does not indicate which is more poisonous, if all other factors were equal. But what would be equal ? You obviously do not smoke deisel engines, they just drive down the road.
By the same token, that anything can be a carcinogen, what if you ate about five pounds of sugar every day ? Or how about salt ? In fact that brings up a discussion I had with the olman after his stroke. He was about to make something to eat and was watching the sodium content in the ingredients, saying "I can't eat this". Hold on a minute. Sure that can of stewed tomatoes has twice as much salt as you are supposed to have, but did you intend to eat it all by yourself ? Actually sometimes he did, and he is about as dead as they get now. But that is not the point. The point is perspective.
The level of exposure does matter alot. We are right now breathing the toxic fumes emitted by Japan when they took over our industry, and the Chinese fumes will soon follow. But just how much are we getting of it ?
We live in a sea of poison actually. The pickling plant across the bridge causes our cars to rust faster around here. What do you think it is doing to our lungs ? So now we don't just have the simple level of exposure which could be expressed in PPM or whatever, now we have the duration of the exposure. You get ciarette smoke when you smoke, but you can't control when a big truck comes down the street.
Like I said, my car has a pre-catalytic exhaust leak, I can smell it. It passes emissions, but i know it isn't quite right. Is that harmng me ? But wait now, we are talking about a quite small amount of exposure here, as opposed to when I went to "Night of Fire" with a pit pass and let the rocket powered trucks blow their exhaust all over me, smelling like a cookout that went really badly. One shot of that was probably like smoking a whole pack of cigarettes.
So deisel fuel is probably not as bad as cigarette smoke when the venue and space involved is considered. But get some in it's pure form and I'd bet alot of people would be laying on the ground gagging.
T
*intoxicants in this sense is to be taken in context, and does actually match the definition of the word
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RE: Diesel fumes more carcinogenic than smoking - 
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