Automakers tested exhaust fumes on people
Exposed to toxic exhaust fumes in cancer test
BERLIN • German carmakers were engulfed in a new scandal Monday after it emerged they had tested the effect of exhaust fumes on human subjects.
A research group set up by Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler, the maker of Mercedes, deliberately exposed human test subjects to toxic exhaust chemicals for hours at a time between 2012 and 2015, in an attempt to prove they were not carcinogenic.
Details of the human testing were exposed days after it emerged that the firms had carried out tests on monkeys.
The revelations sent shock waves through the German establishment. Barbara Hendricks, the environment minister, described the experiments as “abominable.”
A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: “These tests on monkeys and humans cannot be justified ethically in any way. The outrage felt by many people is completely understandable.”
In the human testing, 19 men and six women were exposed to different concentrations of nitrogen oxides from a 40-litre bottle, not a diesel engine, for several hours at a time.
They were then checked in hospital for harmful effects.
Nitrogen oxides are toxic chemicals found in diesel exhaust fumes, and the carmakers reportedly wanted to counter a World Health Organization decision to classify them as carcinogenic.
The results of the tests, which were carried out at Aachen University, in western Germany, have not been released, but one of the scientists involved said Monday they were of “limited value” as the findings would not apply to the general population and nitrogen oxides are not the only harmful chemicals in diesel exhausts.
The testing was carried out by the European Research Group for Environment and Health in the Transport Sector (EUGT), a research group set up and funded by the three carmakers that was shut down in 2017.
The same group was responsible for a 2014 test in the United States in which 10 monkeys were exposed to diesel fumes.
VW apologized for the tests on monkeys. It said: “Animal testing contradicts our own ethical standards.”
Volkswagen chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch said the tests must be “investigated completely and without reservation,” the dpa news agency reported.
BMW said that it “did not participate in the mentioned study” on animals “and distances itself from this study.”
“We expressly distance ourselves from the studies and the EUGT,” Daimler said. “We are appalled by the extent of the studies and their implementation.”