Air Pollution: Announced to be Cancerous
Just yesterday morning the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced the classification of outdoor air pollution as a Group 1 human carcinogen. A specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, the IARC is the leading authority on the carcinogenicity of environmental chemicals. After a thorough review of what has amounted to decades of air pollution research and epidemiology, the IARC has officially concluded that there is “sufficient evidence that exposure to outdoor air pollution causes lung cancer.” The group also noted a relationship between air pollution and an increased risk of bladder cancer. For a long time, air pollution as been known to increase the risk of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, however, its association with cancer is something that has taken longer for scientists to demonstrate. The most recent science, however, indicates that in 2010 there were over 220,000 lung...