Re: Re: Diesel exhaust

[Guest guest]

You are probably right, . One contaminant source at a time is difficult enough to regulate. The balance of risk perception vs. actual risk and cost to society is very political and almost requires pubic health "Psy-Ops".

Still seems bass-ackwards to me. The cost to society of a few thousand people dying of cancer is very low compared to the societal costs resulting from many tens or hundreds of thousands of people disabled with environmentally triggered (and perhaps induced) respiratory and CV health effects for their entire lifetime. Makes me wonder who is fooling who out there in Public Health Land. Looks like economic policy "trumps" public health policy.

Steve Temes

Re: Diesel exhaust

Steve, to answer your question about cancer 'trump'-ing all other issues of illness:

This appears to be a public health-type response to a potentially large problem, the statements make clear that it's not the risk factor, but the cost factor due to the immense size of the impacted exposed population. Therefor, they look at it a bit differently than you or I might.

If the exposed group is in the billions, which is is, then the 1 in million risk becomes thousands at risk of cancer. The cost and perception is important.

My advice to all: do NOT thwart this by changing the focus from one disease to another. Simple respiratory issues do not get the reaction that cancer does. If one were to 'vote' on it, the public will overwhelmingly approve regulation to prevent the 1 in milllion cancer, but they would never approve regulation on some vague, hard to understand illness like 'respiratory' issues.

This is a good thing. Once it maintains a steady momentum, then it will be time to latch on other issues.

Let's see if this get's any moveement here in the U.S., trucks, school buses, etc.

(PS< this is not too different than the 1996/1997 hemosiderosis/stachybotrys response out of Cleveland; they made decisions from a "public health" point of view. Caution over fact. It worked, even when they retracted and corrected the errors, the horse was out, the bell had been rung.)