Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Staff Paper on Air Toxics. Initial Report.

摘要

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) recent national study, the Cumulative Exposure Project (CEP), alerted the nation to the possible risk of cancer faced by Americans over a lifetime of breathing toxic air pollutants in outdoor air. This risk is in addition to other risks, for instance, lifestyle choices such as smoking. The CEP's conclusions resulted from computer modeling to estimate air toxics emissions and, therefore, potential exposure, for each state. The CEP predictions for Minnesota parallel their predictions for other states with similar population centers. The CEP marked the first time that the EPA had attempted comprehensive modeling to predict ambient concentrations at a census-tract level for each of the 48 contiguous states. The study used 1990 emissions data and a computer model to calculate air toxics concentrations. Few actual measurements of these pollutants are available nationally. This staff paper is intended to encourage further dialog and research on air toxics, and provides the first comprehensive analysis of the air toxics data collected from Minnesota's monitoring system. This analysis points to the need to re-examine MPCA resources and how they may be directed to air toxics issues, and to the need to influence national efforts to most effectively reduce public health risks associated with air toxics.