LOS ANGELES - A new study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found that the air in New York and California is among the dirtiest in terms of pollutants and carcinogenic (cancer causing) substances. The report says that consequently New Yorkers and Californians are at a higher risk of developing cancer than people residing elsewhere in the country.
The risk of developing cancer in New York was pegged at 68 residents per million, while it was 66 residents per million in California. This is a significant increase as compared to a national average of 41.5 per million.
The report, which was based on the release of 177 toxic chemicals in 1999, was released in February. The data from 1999 is the most recent one available with the agency. The report said that residents who live in rural countryside in Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana breathed the cleanest air. In the most polluted air stakes, Oregon, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey were placed third, fourth and fifth respectively.
The report found that exhaust from motor vehicles was the main culprit in spewing toxic pollutants into the air, but people in Oregon had to battle smoke from forest fires and fireplaces as well. Among the toxins taken into consideration by the EPA were volatile chemicals like benzene, which alone is implicated in causing cancers like leukemia or blood cancer.
Heavy metals, such as lead, byproducts of combustion like acrolein and solvents like perchloroethylene and methylene chloride were also taken into consideration before making the assessment. The National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) basically measures the quality of air and the health risks if the pollution levels remain at the 1999 levels. It also estimates the overall health risk including cancer risk caused by breathing the air.
Reacting to the report, Melanie Marty, who is the chief of air toxicology and epidemiology with the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment said, "People should understand that mobile sources have very large impacts on health. It's not just asthma and heart disease. It's cancer too." Janice Nolen, the national policy director of American Lung Association told the Times that consideration has to be given to what was shaping up as a huge problem, "While we are headed in the right direction, we have to figure out what more we can do. Clearly, having so much benzene [and other chemicals] in L.A. that you have a 93-in-a-million risk factor for cancer is not acceptable," she added.
For more details, visit http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/nata1999/nsata99.html
