Dieselgate was already bad enough for the reputation of the car industry. The widescale cheating of already pretty lax emissions testing caused a lot of extra air pollution and a bad taste in many customers’ mouths.
It turns out that it might also be partially responsible for live animal testing.
Germany’s three major carmakers — Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler — together funded a body called the “European Research Group on Environment and Health in the Transport Sector”. Understandably they prefer to call it by its German initials “EUGT”. EUGT came into being in 2007, in preparation for the push for diesel technology into the USA.
EUGT’s job was to promote diesel and lobby politicians. It funded research into the environmental friendliness of diesel, and counter-research into claims diesel caused urban pollution. Diesel is, after all, a lower carbon fuel than petrol; the obsession with reducing carbon dioxide levels to combat climate change gave diesel a foot in the door with politicians.
When the World Health Organization decided in 2012 to classify diesel exhaust emissions as a carcinogen (something that can cause cancer), EUGT sprang into action.
According to a lawsuit published by the New York Times, EUGT commissioned a rebuttal. It hired New Mexico’s Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute to prove that modern diesel was much cleaner. The study pitted a diesel pickup from the late 90s against a contemporary diesel Volkswagen Beetle.
The lawsuit suggests that Volkswagen itself played a major role in 2014 experiment. It’s claimed that VW installed rollers and emissions equipment to extract the vehicle’s exhaust fumes.
And where did the exhaust go? Not into analytical machines, but straight to the lungs of ten monkeys.
Yes, LRRI sealed ten macaque monkeys into airtight chambers through which it fed diesel exhaust fumes. To keep the monkeys happy for the four hour ordeal, the laboratory set up a television showing cartoons.
In a twist of sheer irony, the LRRI never published its study, as the results were unclear. This may be due to the fact that the Beetle used had the famous “defeat device” fitted.
There’s no evidence that the carmakers themselves were aware of the animal testing. All three have distanced themselves from it in response to the Times’ story. BMW stated that it does not experiment on animals, VW commented that animal testing is against its own ethical standards and Daimler added that such an experiment would be abhorrent.
EUGT itself dissolved last year.
