I operated heavy equipment for years—and years before the damned EPA was even a spurt in Nixon’s statist pants.
Particulate exhaust never harmed me, and by nature is not airborne long. Diesels are much more efficient than gasoline engines and thereby less polluting, but tyranny cares nothing for inconvenient facts.
My dad and uncle should have been dead from fried lungs if diesel was so dangerous from decades of running tractors and just about any piece of construction equipment out there.