Mercury rule lets hazardous air pollutants off the hook O n March 15, the U.S. EPA issued the long-awaited and controversial rule establishing trading as the mechanism for reducing mercury emissions from coal-fired plants. Although the debate over the rule focused on how best to control mercury releases, critics say that an opportunity to also regulate several other hazardous air pollutants (HA...

This paper reports on a project to provide Web-based access to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) extensive model-based summaries of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs). As part of EPA’s Cumulative Exposure Project, long-term cumulative concentrations of 148 HAPs for the 60,803 census tracts in the 48 contiguous states have been modeled for 1990. The model results include estimates an...

The incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common primary liver cancer, is increasing in the US and tripled during the past two decades. The reasons for such phenomenon remain poorly understood. Texas is among continental states with the highest incidence of liver cancer with an annual increment of 5.7%. Established risk factors for HCC include Hepatitis B and C (HBV, HCV) viral ...

Human and animal toxicology has had a profound impact on our historical and current understanding of air pollution health effects. Early animal toxicological studies of air pollution had distinctively military or workplace themes. With the discovery that ambient air pollution episodes led to excess illness and death, there became an emergence of toxicological studies that focused on industrial ...

Major conclusions and recommendations of the National Commission on Air Quality on issues of health in the Clean Air Act are presented. The issues revolve mainly about the standard setting processes for ubiquitous pollutants, controlled through ambient air quality standards (Section 109), and for hazardous pollutants controlled through emission standards (Section 112). The conceptual difficulti...

Projecting a hazardous air pollutant (HAP) emission inventory to future years can provide valuable information for air quality management activities such as prediction of program successes and helping to assess future priorities. We have projected the 1999 National Emission Inventory for HAPs to numerous future years up to 2020 using the following tools and data: the Emissions Modeling System f...

BACKGROUND Childhood cancer has been linked to a variety of environmental factors, including agricultural activities, industrial pollutants and population mixing, but etiologic studies have often been inconclusive or inconsistent when considering specific cancer types. More specific exposure assessments are needed. It would be helpful to optimize future studies to incorporate knowledge of high-...