Interesting article on BBC news
"Two cars road tested - how clean are they?"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34427291
They pitched a vw against a Ford Focus to see what the NOx differences were compared to the lab results.
The government has now also stated that if VW cars are found to have a higher CO2 emissions following any software or ecu updates they will not have to pay any additional road tax.
There are lots of interesting theories coming out of this thread, one I've picked up is people talking about air quality and respiratory problems. The world health organisation likes to cite huge numbers of deaths as a result of diesels but finding the actual medical data on this is impossible. The U.K. Already has high air pollutants from plants and agriculture which can easily account for people's respiratory problems. You will never see someone in hospital with respiratory problems due to diesel fumes, because of the way these things are categorised. Basically if you have ever smoked then all respiratory diseases will be blamed on your smoking, if you came from a family of smokers, worked in smoky environments like pubs or bars, it's still smoke that will be blamed.
Everything else is asthma (more or less) it's very difficult to say that any one person has a lung disease from vehicle emissions.
People who used to kill them self with the exhaust pipe through the window would die of carbon monoxide poisoning, try this these days and you'll get a bit of a head ache and a cough because their isn't the nasty gasses anyone that cause immediate serious harm. Petrol or diesel.
In the 80s SAAB used to pride themselves on having such clean cars the exhaust had less pollutants than what was detected at the engine air intake.
Back to the VAG situation the more information that comes out the more it suggests that the so called defeat device (or software) is specifically to circumvent the California emissions standards and though other cars all over the world may have this software, it doesn't seem to have been used for Euro 5 or euro 6 standards. Essentially most European cars will get a software update to remove the rouge software and the rest of the car's performance will be completely unaffected.