Holocaust-deniers often claim that it is impossible to obtain lethal exhaust from a diesel engine, unless it is run in highly abnormal conditions. This is not true, as the following graph shows. It is a plot of exhaust composition of a diesel engine, taken from the paper "The Significance of Diesel-Exhaust-Gas Analysis", by J.C. Holtz and M.A. Elliot, Transactions of the ASME, Vol. 63, 1941, p. 97-105. The authors specify the normal fuel-air ratio for one of the engines ("Engine B") as 0.058 and below. As the graph shows, lethal exhaust was produced at ratios well within this normal range; for instance, at a ratio of 0.050, the exhaust contained 5.8 percent oxygen, and 11 percent carbon dioxide. At a ratio of 0.055, the exhaust contained 3.8 percent oxygen, and 12 percent carbon dioxide. This is, clearly, a lethal concentration. As a matter of fact, less than 8 percent of oxygen is a lethal concentration. The air in the gas chambers was even more lethal than these numbers indicate, since the exhaust contains other toxic gases, such as NO2 (nitrogen dioxide) which causes sever irritation of the airways and makes breathing difficult, as well as soot, which blocks the airways. It should also be noted that the authors had no difficulty in running the engine under conditions which resulted in an exhaust containing even less oxygen, and more than 6 percent carbon monoxide (which is very quickly lethal even in the presence of oxygen). There was no problem involved in running the engines in ratios greater than that of the "normal range", since the "normal range" is maintained mainly because it yields relatively cleaner exhaust, and due to considerations of efficiency. However, if one wants to achieve exhaust which is more toxic, he would certainly consider running the engine in higher concentrations.
		Last modified: April 3, 2001 Technical/administrative contact: webmaster@holocaust-history.org Opinions in personal pages are not necessarily shared by THHP as a whole.