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It’s hot on the top floor of my little house. I sleep with the skylight windows open. When the wind is in the right direction, I can hear the platform announcements of the train station at the bottom of the road. Every week, I clean the thick layer of back diesel particulates from the plaster under the windows. Those are the compounds that didn’t quite make it into my lungs.
The bigger particles I inhaled are coughed away. The smaller ones get stuck in the alveolar sacs, causing inflammation and triggering my asthma. The rest of the airborne chemicals; the forty or so toxins, including benzene, arsenic, anthracene, naphthalene, and formaldehyde find their way into my tissues. That’s okay, I’ve only lived here for ten years. I’m sure that wouldn’t be long enough for the degenerative cellular effects to make me seriously ill, other than all the respiratory diseases associated with chronic exposure.
I mean, The World Health Organisation only have diesel fumes classed as carcinogenic and mutagenic to humans (2010) while the International Agency for Research on Cancer class it as a Group 1 Carcinogen (2013) based on multiple conclusive studies (Attfield 2012; Silverman 2012; Hemmingsen 2011; Sevastyanoval 2008, to name a few).
I always have a nice cup of tea first thing in the morning. Freshwater from the tap, laced with chlorites…