You’ve chosen to work and sleep amid poisonous gases and deadly airborne particles. Now choose practices that will preserve your health and ensure the safety of your cab air.

When it comes to the potential hazards of diesel exhaust, Randy Dunn, an owner-operator for Universal Am-Can, is unconcerned.

“Sometimes I have gotten out of the bunk with a headache from an exhaust leak, but the old timers say that’s about all it will do to you,” he says. “It won’t kill you.”

The old-timers are wrong. Though it takes a concentrated dose of carbon monoxide to kill you, prolonged exposure to small amounts can cause much more than headaches. Burning eyes, dizziness, labored breathing, chest pains, nausea, stiff joints, sleep disorders, and visual and mental impairment are among the symptoms attributed to poisoning from CO or certain other components of diesel exhaust.

Dunn, because he has always run older trucks, faces an above-average risk. Though it’s rare for deadly CO to leak into a truck cab, it can happen, especially as equipment ages. Furthermore, engines produced before October 2002 did not have to meet emissions standards as strict as today’s.

Experts differ on the degree of risk the average trucker faces by working around diesel exhaust. Much of this difference is due to insufficient or inconclusive testing of air quality at truck stops, say University of Minnesota air quality specialists. A Health Effects Institute study quoted on DieselNet.com notes that “information on ambient exposure [to diesel exhaust] is sparse.” Bill Fay, president of the National Association of Truck Stop Operators, says he would like to know if any studies point to such a problem. “The health of our employees and customers is a real concern to us,” Fay says.