Researchers for the first time have established that long-term exposure to fine particles of air pollution from coal-fired power plants, factories and diesel trucks can greatly increase an individual's risk of dying from lung cancer.
A study published in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association concludes that people living in heavily polluted metropolitan areas are 16 percent more at risk of dying of lung cancer than people in less polluted areas. The study's authors said exposure to the tiny particles of industrial emissions and sulfate pollutants is comparable to inhaling second-hand smoke from a cigarette.
The microscopic airborne particles are a big problem in the Pittsburgh area, which both produces its own particle pollution and receives a significant amount carried by prevailing southwesterly winds from coal-burning power plants in the Ohio River Valley.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency statistics for the year 2000, the latest available data, the region's average annual concentration of fine particulates was 20 micrograms per cubic meter -- well over the federal health-based standard of 15 micrograms, and a federally acknowledged "hotspot" for such pollution.
Of the 12 monitoring sites in Allegheny County, eight -- in Liberty, North Braddock, Harrison, Leetsdale, Springdale, Hazelwood, Stowe and Lawrenceville -- exceed the annual particulate standard.
The latest findings come as the Bush administration is considering proposals for scaling back tough government legal action against dozen of aging coal-fired power plants and refineries that violated the law by expanding without installing state of the art anti-pollution equipment. Power plants built before 1980 generate about half the nation's electricity but nearly all of the utility industry's unhealthy sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and soot.
Previous research by Harvard University and the American Cancer Society strongly linked these fine particles to high mortality rates from cardiopulmonary diseases such as heart attacks, strokes and asthma, but until now scientists lacked sufficient statistical evidence to directly link them to elevated lung cancer death rates.
By gathering air pollution data and the personal health records of 500,000 Americans living in 100 cities over a 16-year period, scientists amassed the "statistical fire power" to finally make that connection, according to Brigham Young University epidemiologist Arden Pope, a chief author of the study.
Allen Dearry, a scientist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which partly funded the study, called it "the best epidemiologic evidence that we have so far that that type of exposure is associated with lung cancer death."
Environmental groups seized on the study's findings as more evidence that federal air pollution standards should be strengthened.
"This significant link between fine soot and lung cancer makes it absolutely clear that dirty power plants have to be cleaned up, and that rollbacks and regulatory delays have a real cost in human lives," said Michael Fiorentino, director of the Clean Air Council office in Harrisburg.
John Hanger, executive director of Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, said the new study was "one more smoking gun" in a growing body of evidence that underscores the need to aggressively regulate emissions from power plants.
"It is very important for older power plants to at least clean up to modern standards," Hanger said. "It would be very irresponsible for the Bush administration to let those older plants continue to evade the standards set for newer power plants." Industry officials contend that the link between power plant emissions and serious public health problems and premature deaths is not all that clear, and that there are limits to how much they can spend on anti-pollution measures and remain competitive.
The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee will begin hearings tomorrow on the president's environmental policies, including testimony from EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman and a senior EPA regulatory enforcement officer who resigned last week to protest what he described as administration efforts to undermine tough enforcement of the Clean Air Act.
An EPA spokesman said that the agency was withholding comment on the new cancer study pending a thorough review.
Staff writer Don Hopey contributed to this report.
