WHO warns India about diesel-cancer link

 

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has inadvertently contributed to the debate about diesel cars in India by confirming that diesel engine exhaust fumes can cause cancer.
Environmental groups are demanding that India take note of this new evidence and draw up a roadmap for clean diesel.

One of the ways to do this would be to impose "effectively high additional taxes on diesel cars to fully neutralise the incentives that diesel cars get from the low-taxed diesel fuel", the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), which has been campaigning for clean air in Indian cities, has pointed out.

"The rapid increase in the use of underpriced and undertaxed toxic diesel in cars without corrective action on the quality of diesel and restraints on its overall use virtually amounts to state-sponsored homicide," the group said on Thursday. "Public health costs must figure in diesel's balance sheet. Cancer cannot be traded for profit."
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a wing of the WHO, recently said diesel engine exhaust fumes can cause lung cancer in humans.
It removed diesel exhaust from its Group 2A list of "probable carcinogens" to the Group 1 list of substances that have definite links to cancer - thus changing its status to "carcinogen".
The diesel exhaust is now in the same class of deadly carcinogens as asbestos, arsenic and tobacco, among others.
Claims made by the Indian auto industry about modern diesel engines being clean are just half-truths.
"They hide the fact that health concerns have driven governments in Europe, the US, Japan and other countries to shift to clean diesel," said Anumita Roychowdhury, head of CSE's air pollution unit.
Diesel is considered relatively cleaner when advanced emissions control systems are used with diesel fuel having sulphur content of 10 ppm. In India, the sulphur level in diesel is as high as 350 ppm. Only a few cities have 50 ppm sulphur diesel.
The WHO findings should act as a wakeup call for India, which is in the grip of rapid dieselisation.

The diesel exhaust is now in the same class of deadly carcinogens as asbestos, arsenic and tobacco.