Nanny0gg, what I was trying to say is that people don't necessarily understand the ramifications of the extreme viewpoints that they hold. By saying or implying that a pregnant woman who smokes somehow deserves to have health issues with their child, some of the posters on here do not realise that by wishing that on the mother, they ARE, wittingly or not, wishing that on the child.
And LDNmummy, I would not simply post a link to a BBC article about a research paper without reading the research paper itself. I should warn you that the following is a long [and most likely, boring] post, but I truly feel it is necessary to debunk this myth that cigarette smoke is more harmful to you than car exhaust fumes. It isn't - it's just that car exhaust, boiler fumes, industrial (manufacturing, construction and even recycling plant) fumes are simply considered more acceptable/necessary. It is MUCH harder to denigrate a majority (to which most people, even the criticisers, belong) than a minority as it would require a complete turn-around in the comfort with which those people live their lives in ignorance.
The fine particulates referred to in the BBC article are said to be dangerous because they are more easily absorbed and settle into the lungs. Most things that give off visible particulate matter such as smoke (cigarettes, car exhausts, log fires, boilers etc) will, more often than not, also produce fine particulate matter.
What the actual research article by Dr Giovanni and his team fails to address are:
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why 3 cigarettes were used to 1 diesel engine (what is the equivalence? there may be one, but the article doesn't state that)
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why it ignores the fact that different samples of the diesel fuel can produce wildly varying fine particulate readings
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why the precise atmospheric mixture in the garage before the engine was started varies even with no visible variables introduced
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whether the fact that the doors were left open for four hours afterwards reliably meant that all fine particulates produced by the diesel engine had successfully dispersed (even with the graph used, this is VERY hard to establish, hence why those who take samples of fine particulates should always use a wide margin of error) - it simply says that the garage had "adequate air exchange",
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the previous use of the car/diesel engine (which get less effective the more/longer they are used) - the article just states that "a turbo diesel common rail 2.0 liters Ford Mondeo, year 2002, that complied with the Euro3 gas exhaust standards" was used (so, if it is brand new, we can consider that it is sure to be more effective than one that's been used for 2 years)
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how the diesel engine used compares to other diesel engines by different car manufacturers
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the fact that the diesel engine was in a car which would have a cooling fan circulating the air (as compared to the lack of circulation when the cigarettes were burning), thereby having a scrubbing effect on the fine particulates
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the fact that the diesel engine/car was idling, not moving (if the car was actually running/moving, more fine particulate matter would have been produced)
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the fact that they state as a concluding factor that the experiment was carried out in a room "with a volume similar to that encountered in many offices and homes" (but fail to mention the fact that in such rooms, we have WAY more ventilation than was provided for in the experiment)
etc,
I would suggest that you read the original paper: Particulate matter from tobacco versus diesel car exhaust: an educational perspective by Dr Giovanni [et al] (you should be able to get it on here if you have an Athens password; if not, it is freely available at this link). Just for those reasons I listed above, you cannot (or rather, should not) take it at face value that cigarette smoke gives off more fine particulate matter than diesel fumes.
I can say this with reliability though - a running car (be that diesel or petrol) will ALWAYS produce more fine particulates than a burning cigarette in isolation. It is a shame that the test(s) did not involve a person sitting in the same room - that may have proven a bit more conclusive on the harmful effects on the human body. The only reference made to the article regarding human testing is a previous experiment by a different team (Salvi S et al) using [again, an idling] older less effective diesel engine (but no cigarette smoke comparison), the exhaust of which they DILUTED with 90% air (were you to run the same experiment and dilute cigarette smoke with 90% air, it is highly doubtful that they would have observed the same level of "marked systemic and pulmonary inflammatory response" as they did with the diesel car).
Regardless of Dr Giovanni's article, diesel fumes produce the same carcinogenic matter (such as benzene, arsenic, cadmium) plus carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbons as can be found in cigarettes, but in higher quantities. Petrol fumes are considered even worse (though they are also more likely to produce larger particulates which are harder for the lungs to absorb).
The BBC article ignores the fact that the vast majority of people who drive in the UK use petrol-fueled cars which, taken overall, are more dangerous to us than diesel-fueled cars, environmentally and health-wise (although the pollution from diesel engines is of particular concern as the small particulates or ultra fine particles which tend to be emitted by diesel engines, can be inhaled further down into the lungs than the larger particles).
Petrol and diesel fumes simply cannot be compared like for like against cigarette smoke/fumes as both the former are always much more dangerous to you short-term and long-term than the latter. A smoker on 20 a day that lives in a city like London will be subjected to much more fine particulate matter, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and carcinogens simply from the traffic exhaust fumes they ingest on a daily basis.
So, LDNmummy, if you are going to shrug off the effects of traffic exhaust, boilers, waste incinerators, industrial processes (manufacturing, construction etc) on your health as compared to smoking, be that active or passive smoking, then at least educate yourself about it.