- The air you breathe may seem safe. But
is it really?
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- More than 220 million Americans breathe
air that is 100 times more toxic than the goal set by Congress 10 years
ago, according to figures calculated by the Environmental Defense Fund.
And for 11 million people, the cancer risk from their neighborhood air
is more than 1,000 times higher than Congress's goal, the group says.
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- EDF scientists based their findings on
estimates of toxic chemicals in local communities' air from the Environmental
Protection Agency Cumulative Exposure Project. The project used data from
1990 to estimate the concentrations of 148 separate chemicals in the air
of every census tract in the continental U.S. (A census tract is a small
area with 4,000 to 5,000 residents. The U.S. includes more than 60,000
census tracts.)
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- With the numbers from the EPA, EDF calculated
the associated health risks for each community.
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- "The numbers show that cars, trucks
and small businesses tend to be responsible for much more of the air's
toxicity than is generally recognized," said EDF attorney David Roe.
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- The estimates are comparable to measurements
taken as recently as 1997, the group says.
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- Of the air cancer risk calculated by
EDF for the U.S. as a whole, 60 percent is from mobile sources and 26 percent
from small business 'area; sources, with the remaining 14 percent from
industrial 'point' sources.
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- The District of Columbia, for example
shows a higher per-capita cancer risk in its air than any of the 50 states
despite having virtually no major industrial facilities, says EDF. Car
and truck traffic and the Ronald Reagan National Airport were its main
sources of air toxics.
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- EDF has published the findings on the
Scorecard web site. Visitors to the site can type in a zip code to retrieve
local information on air pollutants including ozone, particulates and sulfur
dioxide and the associated health risks.
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- EPA has cautioned that CEP results are
based on modeling, rather than direct measurements, and that the modeling
uses data from 10 years ago. However EDF asserts the CEP results are comparable
to recent measured results
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- "The CEP estimates from EPA cast
a lot of light onto what's been a very dark subject, but they aren't the
ultimate word," said Dr. Bill Pease, Scorecard's creator and chief
designer.
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- For more information, contact David Roe,
EDF, (510)658-8008.
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