It's rather amazing to hear that a pending study on the health effects of diesel fuel exhaust in certain enviroments, conducted by two respected government agencies, has been pending for 20 years because private industry hates even the idea of such a study, and even now its publication has been further delayed by mining companies and others who fear its conclusions, and would like to control them.
Amazing, because it is so clearly a false story, made up of whole cloth. Against the assertions made in the article, we have only to juxtapose what we know from experience and common sense, to wit:
Any fool knows that companies, especially mining companies, set safety as their number one priority and never, ever let the making of a profit stand in the way of their workers' well-being.
It's a longstanding tradition in our country that business interests actively welcome government regulations and standards.
As the Republican Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Workforce has suggested in this article, the Republican party is only interested in assuring that the report meets the "highest standards" of science. We can take his word for that, because we are all aware that Congressmen generally, and especially Republican ones, are highly trained in science and competent to correct "errors" that less competent scientists might make. They've already told us, for example, that climate change is a hoax; they've warned us away from the dangers of stem-cell research; and kept us from being led down the garden path by those who claim human history goes back more than 4,000 years.
If all that weren't convincing enough proof that Mr. Morris's article is irresponsible misinformation (maybe the poor fellow was duped), we can just turn to the evidence of our own senses. We've been breathing diesel fumes for years, and not just in mines. We're still alive, so it's obvious that diesel exhaust could not possibly have a deleterious effect on anything or anyone. Diesel exhaust is not harmful; quite the contrary, it's refreshing and makes us feel happy. Why else do people go out of their way to get trapped behind a bus in traffic? Or, take my own experience: One of the things I recall with greatest joy from my younger years is my experience at Fort Knox being trained as a "tank platoon leader," sitting atop a tank belching diesel fumes for hours on end, making my eyes stream tears, irritating my nasal passages....
Well, that certainly brings me to my senses! Let's get serious for a minute. We really can turn to our common sense on this, and we probably don't need no stinkin' report to tell us that diesel cannot conceivably be all that different from other fossil fuels, like wood, refined gasoline, and coal, all of which are known to have deleterious effects on various aspects of human health. So we know ahead of time what the report will say, and so do the mining companies and Republican politicians who seek to suppress it.

