German car giant Volkswagen tried to conceal the results of a diesel emissions test on monkeys because they showed a more damaging health impact than expected, a German news report has said.
Bild daily reported that the exhaust fumes tests on 10 monkeys – that have sparked fresh public outrage following VW’s emissions-cheating scandal – ‘were never supposed to come to light’ because the results were ‘too devastating’.
VW Chief Executive Matthias Mueller said the German car maker would have to take the consequences for the tests and that such experimentation on animals was ‘wrong … unethical and repulsive’, Spiegel Online reported.
VW is eager to ensure that the latest allegations do no further tarnish its reputation
The new scandal follows VW’s admission in 2015 that it had manipulated 11 million diesel cars worldwide
Volkswagen’s supervisory board has called for an immediate inquiry into who ordered scientific tests in America in which monkeys were also exposed to toxic diesel fumes
It has also been claimed that German scientists gassed volunteers with toxic diesel fumes in tests funded by car manufacturers including VW, Mercedes and BMW
VW has suspended its chief lobbyist Thomas Steg, who admitted to knowing in advance about the monkey experiment in New Mexico in 2014. He has conceded that ‘what happened should never have happened, I regret it very much’.
‘We want to completely rule out animal experiments for the future,’ he said.
The human and animal tests were commissioned by an organisation funded by VW, Daimler and BMW, the European Research Group on Environment and Health in the Transport Sector (EUGT), which has since been disbanded.
Figures released in November showed that a third of Volkswagen cars fitted with software to cheat emissions tests remain unfixed, more than two years after the scandal broke
Environmental groups such as Greenpeace have claimed that ‘time and again’ Volkswagen has dodged its responsibilities
Daimler said in a statement Wednesday that it was suspending an employee who had sat on the EUGT board with ‘immediate effect’.
Business daily Handelsblatt reported that the man who was suspended was the firm’s head of environmental protection Udo Hartmann.
‘We will fully investigate the facts and make sure such things do not happen again,’ the Mercedes-Benz maker said, insisting it did not have influence on the study’s design.
‘We are appalled by the nature and implementation of the studies… We condemn the experiments in the strongest terms.’
The U.S. study using monkeys in an Albuquerque is said by VW to have taken place in 2015 with the intention of showing that diesel exhaust fumes from a VW Beetle were cleaner than those from an older Ford pickup.
‘This was not what the results showed at all, however,’ reported Bild, citing internal study papers, despite the fact that the VW model had been fitted with a so-called defeat device that reduced emissions while testing.
The Bild report said that after four hours of exposure, blood was taken from the animals and a special endoscope was inserted into their windpipes and bronchia through their noses or mouths.
It said some of the monkeys that had inhaled VW fumes showed a higher degree of inflammation than other animals.
The new scandal follows VW’s admission in 2015 that it had manipulated 11 million diesel cars worldwide, equipping them with cheating software to make them seem less polluting in the lab than they were on the road.
In his first public comments on the test, Mr Mueller said: ‘The methods used by EUGT in the United States were wrong, they were unethical and repulsive. I am sorry that Volkswagen was involved in the matter as one of the sponsors of EUGT.’
Last month former VW executive Oliver Schmidt received a seven-year jail senence in the U.S. and a $400,000 fine after admitting he assisted the firm in dodging clean-air laws.
Earlier this week it was alleged that German scientists had gassed volunteers with toxic diesel fumes in tests funded by car manufacturers including VW, Mercedes and BMW.
Experiments on the effects of inhaling nitrogen oxides were said to have been carried out on some 25 healthy young people in varying doses over a period of hours at an institute belonging to Aachen University in Germany.