One of the hurdles we face in reducing pollution stems from our different indivi
ID: 465142 • Letter: O
Question
One of the hurdles we face in reducing pollution stems from our different individual risk profiles. Some of us are very risk-averse, some risk-neutral, and others risk-seeking. Further complicating things is the fact that our willingness to accept risk changes with age.
The EPA has a goal to reduce the risk from hazardous air pollutants to a 1 in 1 million increased chance of cancer over a person's lifetime (p. 452 of the text). In the U.S. this would mean that out of our current population of about 325 million people, 325 might be diagnosed with cancer from exposure to these substances when the goal is met (it has not been fully met yet).
Do you think that this is a reasonable standard? How do you suppose that the standard was created?
Explanation / Answer
The CAA Amendments of 1970 needed EPA to identify and list all air pollutants (not already identified as criteria pollutants) that “may reasonably be anticipated to cause in rise in mortality or a rise in serious irreversible or incapacitating reversible illness.” For each pollutant identified, EPA was to then promulgate national emission standards for hazardous air pollutants at limits that would ensure the protection of public health with “ a sufficient margin of safety” and to avoid any considerable and adverse environmental impacts .During the 1980s, EPA started developing risk assessment methods necessary to establish the scientific basis for regulating HAPs Despite improvements in risk assessment methods obtained through this work, the chemical-by-chemical regulatory approach based solely on risk proved tough. Legal, scientific, and policy arguments followed over the risk assessment ways and assumptions, how much health risk data are required to justify regulation, analyses of the costs to industry and advantages to human health and the environment, and decisions about “how safe is safe” . In the next 20 years , EPA identified only eight pollutants as HAPs and regulated sources of seven of them
To expedite control of HAPs without explicit consideration of their inherent toxicity and potential risk, Congress gave a list of 189 compounds to be controlled by EPA as HAPs . The EPA was given the responsibility to review and amend the list of regulated HAPs periodically as directed by new scientific information. But, since passage of the CAA Amendments of 1990, one compound has been omitted from the list , the scope of chemicals covered by glycol ethers was reduced, and no compound has been increased in the list
Due to problems in assessing residual risk, completion of the residual risk analysis and promulgation of additional emission controls mandated in the CAA are still some years off. The agency investigating the residual risk that is likely to remain after obtaining of the MACT and GACT standards. EPA reported to Congress on its progress in determining residual risk for cancer and non-cancer health impacts. The report explains how EPA wishes to calculate risk, what standard it will apply (the 1 in 1 million as applied in the 1989 benzene NESHAP), and progress in furthering the understanding of the health effects of HAPs (EPA 1999b). The 1990 CAA Amendments also called for many of the special studies related to assessing risk resulting from exposure to HAPs, comprising studies on emissions from electric utility-steam generating units and publicly owned treatment works
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