They All Got Mysterious Brain Diseases. They’re Fighting to Learn Why. (Published 2024)
Doctors in Canada have identified dozens of patients with similar, unexplained symptoms — a scientific puzzle that has now become a political maelstrom.
NFR Horrifying dementia cluster in Canada
- Thread starter Zak
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Non-fishing related
Fourbtgait
Life of the Party
Very good, indepth article. I recall reading a couple years ago a short article bringing it to light.
"It seems that the best interests of those affected have not been at the forefront of the actions taken,”...same as it always is, economics before victimsThey All Got Mysterious Brain Diseases. They’re Fighting to Learn Why. (Published 2024)
Doctors in Canada have identified dozens of patients with similar, unexplained symptoms — a scientific puzzle that has now become a political maelstrom.www.nytimes.com
lots of articles available about the rising increase in male cancer in the US. Strip away the deaths from smoking and alcohol, the majority environmental. While managing the build out a high tech campus on a EPA/CAL-EPA Superfund site in Mountain View, CA, we performed extensive 24/7 air monitoring, the capture reports identifying over a 150 carcinogenic air borne chemicals, considered 'typical urban stew' by the reporting scientists. The one they identified as the most harmful? Diesel exhaust.
"Studies have shown that long-term exposure to diesel exhaust increases the risk of lung cancer in workers. The exhaust contains small particles that can reach the alveolar region of the lungs, and chemicals that are mutagenic and carcinogenic, such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and nitroarenes. Some studies have found that exposure to diesel exhaust is more carcinogenic than 20 years of passive smoking"
Flymph
Life of the Party
@SurfnFish, always appreciate your insights on topics like this. Please keep them coming. More reason to push for EVs!
cedarslug
Steelhead
New Brunswick is practically run and "owned" by an incredibly wealthy and powerful family, the Irvings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Irving and relevant "Censorship" section about their past attempts to squash news about their use of glyphosate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Irving#Censorship
Irvings are involved with food, agriculture, paper products, oil, and local media. I would not be surprised if they were involved with this.
Irvings are involved with food, agriculture, paper products, oil, and local media. I would not be surprised if they were involved with this.
If they are the salmon are not local fish. Believe me I have looked for them. And it used to be so good. Appears that is the current status quo for anadromous fisheries pretty much everywhere.
Are those small particles the "PM 2.5" I've heard tell about?
yes- as explained by the environmental engineering firm, diesel particulates at 2.5 are the perfect size to lodge in the respiratory system. Whereas the diesel particles are small enough to be easily inhaled, they are conversely hard to exhale due to a jagged and pointy shape that allows them to embed into lung tissue.
We were deluged with info on air quality during the fact gathering process on the site (former Siemens chip factory whose underground TCE solvent storage tanks had leaked into the ground soil, hence the Superfund designation)and the clearest takeaway was how critical location was if living in an urban environment.
Cities like Seattle, Portland and SF are consistently 'washed' with maritime air, whereas the landlocked cities are obviously not. Those same maritime airs, however, are why dispersed urban air mix can be found far inland from the originating cities.
15 million diesel trucks are operating on our roads here in the US, and the electrification of those trucks would have a highly positive impact on our air quality.
Thanks for that clear explanation!
This statement is meaningless unless the exposure to diesel exhaust is quantified.
Flymph
Life of the Party
It seems that the risk of cancer is not the only potential aliment that can occur as presented in the following article. Also worth noting is the combined possibilities of inhalation.
www.jabfm.org
The Toxicity of Diesel Exhaust: Implications for Primary Care
Diesel fuel and the products of its combustion represent one of the toxins most commonly encountered by people living in both urban and rural areas of the world. As nations become more heavily populated, there will be increasing reliance on diesel fuel to power mass transportation and commercial...
Thanks for posting that comprehensive NYTimes article. As a Canadian, I recall when this situation was first reported in the news, but I haven't seen many news articles lately, and those only had very brief details.They All Got Mysterious Brain Diseases. They’re Fighting to Learn Why. (Published 2024)
Doctors in Canada have identified dozens of patients with similar, unexplained symptoms — a scientific puzzle that has now become a political maelstrom.
Possible environmental associations with these patients need to be investigated. How many millions of chemicals has Homo sapiens released into the environment, and how many of those have been well-studied for adverse health effects?
wanderingrichard
Life of the Party
As WW mentioned, "exposure" means quantifying a substance; stating both concentration and duration.
To make it fishing related, we wouldn't say something like "fishing a Clouser catches more fish than 20 years of fishing a Wooly Bugger ." We'd need to state the Clouser's colour and how many years fished, and also the Wooly Bugger's colour. Bad example, but you get what I mean.
P.S. SurfnFish, would have a link to your quote? I'd be interested in reading the article. Thanks!
NY Times article, behind a paywall, the NIH article more comprehensive. Here's the article preface of NYT:
Diesel fumes cause lung cancer, the World Health Organization declared Tuesday, and experts said they were more carcinogenic than secondhand cigarette smoke.
The W.H.O. decision, the first to elevate diesel to the “known carcinogen” level, may eventually affect some American workers who are heavily exposed to exhaust. It is particularly relevant to poor countries, where trucks, generators, and farm and factory machinery routinely belch clouds of sooty smoke and fill the air with sulfurous particulates.
The United States and other wealthy nations have less of a problem because they require modern diesel engines to burn much cleaner than they did even a decade ago. Most industries, like mining, already have limits on the amount of diesel fumes to which workers may be exposed.
The medical director of the American Cancer Society praised the ruling by the W.H.O.’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, saying his group “has for a long time had concerns about diesel.”
The cancer society is likely to come to the same conclusion the next time its scientific committee meets, said the director, Dr. Otis W. Brawley.
Dr. Silverman, chief of environmental epidemiology for the National Cancer Institute, said her study of 50 years of exposure to diesel fumes by 12,000 miners showed that nonsmoking miners who were heavily exposed to diesel fumes for years had seven times the normal lung cancer risk of nonsmokers
The W.H.O. decision was announced Tuesday in Lyon, France, after a weeklong scientific meeting. It also said diesel exhaust was a possible cause of bladder cancer. Diesel exhaust now shares the W.H.O.’s Group 1 carcinogen status with smoking, asbestos, ultraviolet radiation, alcohol and other elements that pose cancer risks.
Dr. Silverman said her research indicated that occupational diesel exposure was a far greater lung cancer risk than passive cigarette smoking, but a much smaller risk than smoking two packs a day.
Diesel Exhaust Causes Lung Cancer – Now What? - PMC
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
wanderingrichard
Life of the Party
Trying hard to not post a ranting anti comment.
Want to "clean up" diesel? Start by banning the practice of "glider trucks" , which is a trucking company buying new vehicles without engines and transmissions, the installing ones from older trucks to avoid certain taxes fees and regulations.
Pull the "National Security" exemption from all diesel burning military vehicles and ships. This allows USG to ignore all emissions regs. This includes Gas Turbine power units foumd in M1 series tanks, helicopters , turbo prop aircraft and ships. I worked in that industry for over 48 years. Yes, it's a thing.
There are hundreds of thousands of old, tired, sorely need serviced/ overhauled diesel engines out in the wild. Excavators, oil field pumps, drag lines, mega dump trucks etc. The area in Canada mentioned in the article is home to a lot of items like that. Give the operators a financial incentive to invest in newer cleaner power options, don't ram it down their throat ala excessive reactionary regulations.
Catch more flies with honey instead of vinegar.
Want to "clean up" diesel? Start by banning the practice of "glider trucks" , which is a trucking company buying new vehicles without engines and transmissions, the installing ones from older trucks to avoid certain taxes fees and regulations.
Pull the "National Security" exemption from all diesel burning military vehicles and ships. This allows USG to ignore all emissions regs. This includes Gas Turbine power units foumd in M1 series tanks, helicopters , turbo prop aircraft and ships. I worked in that industry for over 48 years. Yes, it's a thing.
There are hundreds of thousands of old, tired, sorely need serviced/ overhauled diesel engines out in the wild. Excavators, oil field pumps, drag lines, mega dump trucks etc. The area in Canada mentioned in the article is home to a lot of items like that. Give the operators a financial incentive to invest in newer cleaner power options, don't ram it down their throat ala excessive reactionary regulations.
Catch more flies with honey instead of vinegar.
Fourbtgait
Life of the Party
Add in getting rid of people modifying diesel pickups to roll coal or just for quest of more power