Breast cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancers, bladder cancer, Hodgkin's Disease and all cancers combined mortality rates for the adult population of New York State far exceed the United States average (from, "Atlas of Cancer Mortality in the United States" 1950-94, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute).
New York State has large numbers of in-state major source smoke stacks, emitting human carcinogens, including: benzene, formaldehyde, benzo(a)pyrene, dioxins, furans, PCBs and hexachlorobenzene. Added to these cancer causing emissions are releases from smoke stacks to the North in Ontario (second worst source of air pollution in North America) and to the West, in the Great Lakes Basin and the Ohio River Valley.
Mobile sources of the above listed air pollutants further contaminate the air of New York State. Exhaust from the combustion of gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel in the engines of transportation will constitute a large fraction of air supply contamination in those areas of concentrated traffic, such as interstate highways, city streets, trucking depots and airports.
Based upon an analysis of large numbers of children's cancer records from the time period 1954-1998, the Cancer Research Campaign, a UK health advocacy organization, has concluded that rates of incidence have risen steadily for certain common cancers, including: brain cancers and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Such is also the case for cancers of reproductive organs. These increases do not appear to be the result of expanded screening, but rather are indicative of actual increased levels of disease.
Childhood cancer rates have also risen in the United States. Due to the similarities of exposure sources: cigarette smoke and environmental pollutants of heavily industrialized economies, it is reasonable to suspect that the US numbers also represent real increases.
By viewing cancer from a population perspective greater clarity can be attained. The genetic damage, which leads to decontrol of cell division, is not confined to somatic tissue. When such lesions occur in germ tissue, the damage is heritable. As successive generations are exposed to carcinogens, the amount of inherited damage predisposing the individual to cancer increases. It takes a shorter amount of time for the more highly predisposed person to experience the quantity of exposure sufficient to bring about decontrol. This is due to the cumulative and conserved nature of the initiation stage of carcinogenesis. Put another way, cancer incidence rises among children as cancer persists in human populations at significant levels.
All of New York's residents need to become knowledgeable on the connections between air pollution and elevated rates of lung cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, and breast cancer. A public thus aware will demand reductions in emissions throughout the northeastern US and Canada. To accomplish this education, the following steps are required:
Make cancer records with name and address excepting zip code blanked out available to all New York residents upon request.
Publish zip code level maps portraying anatomical site cancer rates and sources of air pollution for New York State.
Develop an inventory of carcinogenic air emissions to make available an accounting of pollutant release totals for any 50-mile radius circle in New York State.
Strengthen the ability of the New York State Department of Health's Cancer Surveillance Program to carry out citizen requested epidemiological studies.
Make complete cancer records available to medical schools and cancer activists for the purpose of conducting joint epidemiological studies directed at location/verification of cancer clusters.
Provide public funding for a speakers' bureau, which would offer presentations on basic cancer biology.
Direct the New York State Department of Health to develop educational materials, in cooperation with community cancer activists, which would inform the public on the wide array of non-industrial sources of carcinogen exposure existing in the modern economy: gasoline and diesel exhaust, open waste burning and volatilization from the agricultural application of pesticides.
For Further Information: Donald L. Hassig, Cancer Action NY, canceraction@hotmail.com, www.canceractionny.org
