Dutch have run human, animal diesel tests ‘for years’: report

AMSTERDAM: The Dutch have been performing tests “for years” on humans and animals to study the effects of diesel fumes, scientists told Dutch media on Tuesday, amid an outcry in Germany over similar experiments.

On one occasion in 2006, volunteers were exposed to diluted emissions from a diesel engine for a maximum of two hours, the Dutch daily NRC said.

These are similar to the emissions breathed in every day in a busy town or close to motorways, Flemming Casse, a toxicologist at the Dutch National Institute for Public Health (RIVM), told the paper.

And he dismissed the outcry which has erupted around similar revelations in Germany and the United States as “a storm in a teacup”.

According to the New York Times, US researchers in 2014 locked 10 monkeys into airtight chambers and made them breathe in diesel exhaust from a VW Beetle while the animals were watching TV cartoons.

ALSO READ: German carmakers under fire for diesel tests on humans, monkeys

Separately, it emerged that a research group funded by VW, Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler and BMW had ordered a study in Germany measuring the effects of inhaling nitrogen dioxide on 25 human volunteers.

“I myself have carried out tests for the RIVM. Sometimes with mice, sometimes with rats, and yes occasionally with people,” toxicology professor Paul Borm told NOS, the Dutch public broadcaster.

There was no immediate reply from the RIVM contacted by AFP several times for a response to the media reports.

But Casse told the NRC that such tests were done under strict conditions and each experiment must be approved by a medical ethics committee.

“Participants must not become ill because of our research,” he added.

The new scandal follows VW’s admission in 2015 that it had manipulated 11 million diesel cars worldwide, equipping them with cheating software to make them seem less polluting than they were.