Study: Switch From HFO to Diesel Not Enough to Save Our Lungs

Measures taken so far to reduce exhaust fumes from ship engines by replacing heavy fuel oil (HFO) with diesel fuel (marine gas oil, MGO), were shown to be insufficient to reduce acute adverse health effects on humans, German researchers claim, recommending the installation of filtration devices as a viable solution to stem the emission of harmful particles. 

In a large-scale cooperative project, researchers of Helmholtz Zentrum München, Technische Universität München (TUM) and the University of Rostock have demonstrated for the first time exactly what effect these particle emissions have on the cells in the lung and how the various fuels differ from each other.

Until now, little has been known about how ship emission particles affect the metabolism of human lung cells and which chemical and physical properties are responsible for certain reactions of these cells.

To elucidate these open questions, the research team led by Prof. Dr. Ralf Zimmermann, researcher and speaker of the international consortium Helmholtz Virtual Institute of Complex Molecular Systems in Environmental Health (HICE), launched a large-scale measurement study with a marine diesel engine used for this special purpose.

”As fuel we used heavy fuel oil or normal diesel fuel,” said Dr. Sebastian Öder, first author of the study.  ”In a mobile lab, we directly exposed lung cells to the respective exhaust fumes in diluted form.”

The experiment has shown that both fuels triggered significant cellular stress responses.

While the heavy oil emission particles mainly led to responses eliciting inflammatory processes, the cells reacted to diesel emission particles with a very strong and broad response.

”Surprisingly, there was a stronger cellular response upon exposure to the ‘clean’ diesel fuel, which was shown to emit somewhat more soot but a significantly lower content of known toxic compounds than heavy fuel oil,” Öder said.

Overall, the researchers found that diesel exhaust fumes impaired important cellular metabolic pathways, such as energy metabolism, protein synthesis, chromatin modifications and cellular transport processes.

They discovered changes both in gene expression as well as in the concentrations of important proteins and metabolites.

In further studies, the scientists want to clarify in more detail the role of diesel exhaust soot.