EPA’s Experience with Assessment of Site- Specific Environmental Problems: A Review of IEMD’s Geographic Study of Philadelphia

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Levels and Mutagenic Activities of Organic Extracts from Airborne Particles in Santiago de Chile

“…PAHs in the atmosphere are known to be predominantly associ ated with particulate matter. The risk to human health from PAHs is due to their multi-source and presence in multi-pollutant mixtures which might contain not only a great variety of hydrocarbons but also derivatives such as the nitroarenes [4], Epidemiological evidence, though inconclusive, points to urban air pollution as a possible contributory agent in respiratory cancers [5,6] as well as in other diseases such as bronchitis and emphysema.…”

Global chemical pollution

“…To accomplish this, locally high concentrations of pollutants are decreased, not by destroying the chemicals or decreasing production, but rather by moving them to another environmental medium. water for the Philadelphia metropolitan area, EPA found that volatilization of organic compounds from the sewage treatment plant accounted for almost half the air cancer risks to the population (47).…”

The Regulation of Toxic Air Pollutants A Critical Review

“…Completed last year, this study is undergoing final EPA review. 6 Preliminary results suggest that for Philadelphia the threat of excess cancers from drinking water is 86 percent (attributable largely to chloroform from chlorination). For cancer risks from the TAPs studied (the remaining 14 percent), point sources and area sources contributed approximately equal percentages of the total excess cancer risk in the area.…”

“…They believe that lack of wide-scale TAP controls does not constitute a major national public health problem. EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, for example, 6 can assert that most TAPs with serious chronic health effects are either attached to particles or exist as volatile organic vapors. These two sources are controlled through the criteria pollutant programs, which means that additional TAP controls may not be necessary.…”