I Can Smell That Diesel From Here.

You might find this interesting. A "landmark study" on diesel exhaust and whether or not it relates to lung cancer in deep mine miners that was started about twenty years ago, is still being held up by a judge who allowed the mining industry and a house Congressional committee to hold it up and keep the Health and Human Services Department from releasing the findings. See, they use diesel engines to operate much of the machinery and vehicles used in mines. Now think about that. If you're a miner and you work in these mines five or six days a week with these vehicles running 24/7 in most cases, what do you think the chances are that it's going to adversely affect your health? Uh huh. that's what the mining industry thinks and if that's what the report says, then suddenly they're going to start losing lawsuits left and right. So you can see why they want to look the report over before it goes public. And I do see the importance of diesel engines in all of our transportation industry as well, but don't we still have the right to read this report? The House committee, chaired by a Republican, has been lobbied by ??? guess who? So they want to take a peek at the report too. I see two questions here. First, what will they do, require that the scientists who did the work change the report and say that what they found to be true, is no longer true? Second, since when has it been up to congress or an industry to decide what health related scientific research report should or should not be made public? If that's true, then what other health reports are being kept secret from the public and for what reasons? I don't know about you, but we taxpayers are paying for this and any other reports not being released and if we're paying for them and they point out a serious problem to our health, why are we not allowed to know it? Is that really the job of congress? To keep secrets from us that if released could help save our lives? And even if they do have that right, shouldn't they be stripped of that right? And what about the mining industry? Who gave them the right to stop this report from being released? Some judge in New Orleans, that's who. Do you think this has a bad smell to it? So do I. I think it smells as bad as a diesel engine that's upwind and I can't for the life of me figure out why a federal judge would think the mining industry should be allowed to do this. Maybe the Circuit Court, which is hearing the appeal of it, will be able to figure out that the people's rights are being trampled on. This has been going on for twenty years. I think it's time to see the report.