Cuddly Mice
The Grim Reaper
No. 20 in a never-ending series. Winter 1997
The grim reaper has no intention of making cheap political capital out of the disaster that befell our royal family in August. But let me just say in passing, that in the three months since Di and Doddi died, driven by a drunk driver (try saying that quickly after a bottle of wine at 121mph) a further three to four thousand people have been killed by cars and their effluent.
About 900 have been slaughtered in car crashes, about 2500 from illnesses caused by PM10s (minute particles in diesel exhaust), and about 700 from asthma attacks which may have been exacerbated by air pollution.
I am a contented man. There's always a huge demand for my labours. And now it seems I will be busier than ever: more people than ever before are dying from car pollution. We've learned to live with NO, NO2, CO and ozone. We can cope with the tight breathing, runny noses, itchy eyes, asthma and heart disease.
A bit of benzene doesn't scare us British, even if it does cause a little leukaemia. PM10s only kill ten thousand people a year, but that's small price to pay to keep the diesel car market buoyant. Cars give pleasure to millions and if a few people regretfully die we would all agree, that is a fair price to pay for the freedom to shop at Tescos and Ikea and to be able to drive our children safely to school.
But just when we thought we knew it all, the Japanese have discovered something new and rather nasty. Well, it's actually very nasty indeed. In fact it's the most carcinogenic chemical ever analysed and it comes out of diesel exhaust pipes. It's called 3-nitro-benanthrone and produced the highest score ever recorded in a standard test of the cancer-causing potential of toxic chemicals. Friendly scientists have already tested it on furry cuddly white mice with big round loving eyes and found that it causes considerable chromosomal aberrations in their blood cells
(I think that means it kills them). The researchers concluded that the compound
as they delicately called it, is responsible for the continuing increase in lung cancer in Japanese cities.
Well, that's all right then, so long as it stays in Japan, except, haven't we got exactly the same diesel motors, the same diesel fuel and the same increase in cancers in cities?
I am confident that our wonderful new government will take whatever measures are necessary to remove this threat from our cities and that they will not be swayed in their judgement by any donations they may have received from the motor industry.
Mine's a Nissan, what's yours? Peep Peep!
The Grim Reaper
