According to a report released yesterday by the EPA, two million Americans face increased cancer risks from exposure to toxic air pollution. The statistics here are just bizarre, says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. They re making gross estimates based on gross estimates and so on until they turn out this absurdly precise number and all these figures about specific threats.
For example, the report claims that mobile emissions account for about 30 percent of the overall cancer risk...The majority of that risk comes from benzene, a carcinogen that is released into the air by burning coal and oil.
The cancer that benzene is known to cause is acute myelogenous leukemia, which requires long-term exposure to high amounts usually found in an occupational setting, explains Dr. Ross. The number of people who die from AML each year is about 9,000 across the nation as a whole, and they re saying it accounts for over 15 percent of environmental cancer risk. Their numbers are completely off.
For more information, see ACSH s publication on cancer clusters.