Can smoke and soot in diesel engine exhaust be a factor in causing the death of human beings?
Holocaust deniers claim:
The facts are:
In 1998, a man in the United Kingdom committed suicide in a diesel-powered car. His death was not due to carbon monoxide but anoxia (lack of oxygen) because his air passages were blocked with “soot and other material in the emissions.” Thus, it is possible the heavy smoke and soot in diesel engine exhaust was probably a contributing factor to death by asphyxiation or carbon monoxide poisoning.
The facts about how black soot and smoke in diesel exhaust is more than “annoying.”
Diesel engine exhaust contains significant amounts of heavy smoke and soot (particulate matter) under normal operating conditions. It is worse when the engine is deliberately mistuned.
That smoke and soot was present in the gas vans is indicated by man named Lauer, who was a member of Einsatzkommando 4a in Poltava, Ukraine. About the gas vans he testified: “I was there when the van arrived. As the doors were opened, dense smoke emerged, followed by a tangle of crumpled bodies. It was a frightful sight.”
The facts about death by diesel engine exhaust.
In a 2008 study, the case of a truck driver, who was found dead in the cab of his idling truck, was conducted. It was determined that the direct cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning. The death was deemed accidental.
Diesel fumes can also kill in other ways. A doctor named S. Sivaloganathan wrote a case study in 1998 about a man who died in his diesel-powered car. He concluded that the cause of the man’s death was not due to carbon monoxide (which was less than 5 percent) but anoxia (lack of oxygen) because his air passages were blocked with “soot and other material in the emissions.”
The evidence shows that diesel engine exhaust can kill in and of itself. In addition, heavy smoke and soot in the exhaust is yet another factor in the toxicity of diesel engine exhaust especially when combined with carbon monoxide, lack of oxygen, and several other toxic gases.
 Friedrich Berg, “The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth within a Myth” (“Diesels for Mass-Murder?” at http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v05/v05p-15_Berg.html.
 Friedrich Berg, “Diesel Gas Chambers: Ideal for Torture—Absurd for Murder” (“7.7 Diesels in Underground Mining-a Brief History”) at
 H. H. Schrenk and L.B. Berger, “Composition of Diesel Engine Exhaust Gas,” American Journal of Public Health and the Nation’s Health, 31(7), 1941, p. 677. You can find the entire article at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1531320/pdf/amjphnation00722-0019.pdf.
 Einsatzkommando 4a was a sub-unit of Einsatzgruppe C, which was one of four mobile killing units that murdered the Jews in the territories of the ex-Soviet Union by shooting them.
 Eugen Kogon, Hermann Langbein, and Adalbert Rückerl, editors, Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History of the Use of Poison Gas (Yale University Press, 1994), p. 61.
 Sean M. Griffin, M.D.; Michael K. Ward, B.S.; Andrea R. Terrell, Ph.D., and Donna Stewart, M.D., “Diesel Fumes Do Kill: A Case of Fatal Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Directly Attributed to Diesel Fuel Exhaust with a 10-Year Retrospective Case and Literature Review,” Journal of Forensic Sciences, September, 2008, 53(5), pp. 1206-1211.
 S. Sivaloganathan, “Death from diesel fumes,” Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine, 1998, 5, pp. 138-139 at http://www.vho.org/GB/c/FPB/DieselDeath.pdf.