Industrial point source emissions and incident breast and lung cancers: two case-control studies.

Exposure to ambient dichloromethane in pregnancy and infancy from industrial sources and childhood cancers in California.

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) and its 1986 amendments (SARA), known collectively as Superfund, is one of the most widely criticized of the federal environmental statutes. The fact that so much has been spent on litigation and so little in cleaning sites far overshadows the apparent benefits of more than 3000 emergency temporary actions taken to remove hazardous materials from some 2700 locations. In spite of the poor reputation generated by the failed cleanup program, a frequently overlooked feature of the 1986 Superfund is sometimes referred to as one of the nation’s most effective environmental statutes. How can this be? The 1986 appended feature has nothing to do with clearing away waste from abandoned sites. It codifies the public’s ‘right-to-know’ about emissions from individual industrial plants nationwide that for the most part are operating within the limits of their EPA-approved permits. The right-to-know is addressed by an annual report called the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). The TRI gives detailed data, in pounds, for annual emissions to air, water and land of 650 named pollutants. The TRI is termed effective because industrial plants already in compliance with EPA rules have voluntarily responded to the annual TRI listing by redoubling their efforts to reduce the volume of emissions reported on the TRI. As shown by Konar and Cohen, large investments in reputational capital are at stake; no major firm wants to be listed as one of the ‘dirty dozen’. Communities in the vicinity of one of the dirty dozen may feel even more strongly about the matter. The term ‘toxics release’ says enough. To them, if it is called toxic, then it should be reduced. But while the TRI may be an effective stimulus for emission reduction, it is not clear that the induced responses are cost beneficial. In some cases, industrial firms allocate large amounts of control capital to reduce TRI emissions that are far less harmful than other pollutants that might otherwise be controlled. This article focuses on the TRI as a pollution control instrument. The research we report addresses two sets of questions: First, what is the history of TRI? Where did the list come from? How has industry responded? Then, what are the determinants of TRI emissions across the 50 states? Is industry response shaped by regulatory action or by public stimulus? The next section of the article addresses the first set of questions. That discussion is followed by a theoretical and empirical section that addresses the second set. Having reported and discussed our empirical findings, a short final section concludes the article.

Are Subsidiaries More Prone to Pollute? New Evidence from the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory

Theory: An increasingly common regulatory tool is one that delegates the duty to provide information to the regulated entities, creating new problems in principalagency models of regulation. Hypotheses: Failure to comply with regulations mandating information provision is as much due to ignorance of reporting requirements as to willful evasion. Methods: A modified detection controlled estimation model for coverage, violation, and detection of facility compliance with the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory, estimated for facilities in Minnesota in 1991. Results: Violation is better understood by those variables associated with the likelihood that the firm is ignorant of TRI reporting requirements, than by those associated with evasion. Firms in violation tend to be small facilities, releasing or transferring small amounts of toxins to the environment.

Chemotherapy

The toxic release inventory: Fact or fiction? A case study of the primary aluminum industry

Zinc-nickel alloy plating bath: U.S. Patent 5,441,628. Aug. 15, 1995 H. Tasaki and E. Nishimura, assignors to Japan Energy Corp., Tokyo

Depression is a highly prevalent chronic condition among the elderly cancer survivors. It is estimated that 5-25% of elderly cancer survivors suffer from depression. Depression co-existing with cancer is associated with many negative health consequences such as high mortality, poor health related quality of life and high healthcare utilization and expenditures. However, depression is treatable with pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy or combination of both. There are no studies that examine the variations in the risk of depression by cancer types and there are few studies that examined the rates of depression treatment among elderly with cancer. In addition, there is lack of evidence on the impact of depression treatment on the economic outcomes of cancer survivors. To fill the knowledge gap, the three related aims of this dissertation were to: (1) examine the variations in the risk of depression by cancer types among elderly with incident breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer; (2) identify the rates of depression treatment and the factors associated with depression treatment among elderly with newly-diagnosed depression and incident breast, colorectal and prostate cancer; (3) analyze the impact of depression treatment on the healthcare expenditures among elderly with newly-diagnosed depression and incident breast, colorectal and prostate cancer. The study used a retrospective cohort study design, using multiple years (2002--2011) of the cancer registry data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program linked with the Medicare claims data, the American community survey census-tract files and the Area Health Resource Files. In the first aim, among elderly with incident breast, colorectal and prostate cancer (N= 53,821), women with colorectal cancer had 28.0% higher risk of newly-diagnosed depression as compared to women with breast cancer; men with colorectal cancer had 104.0% higher risk of newly-diagnosed depression as compared to men with prostate cancer. Elderly diagnosed with cancer at an advanced stage had a 61.0% higher risk of newly-diagnosed depression as compared to those diagnosed with cancer at an early stage. Elderly with higher number of primary care providers visits had a higher newly-diagnosed depression as compared to those with lower number of primary care providers visits. In the second aim, among elderly with newly-diagnosed depression and incident breast, colorectal and prostate cancer (N= 1,673), 45.7% received antidepressants only; 8.8% received psychotherapy only; 18.4% received combined therapy; and 27.1% received no treatment for depression. Elderly cancer survivors who received ongoing cancer treatment were less likely to receive psychotherapy only, or combination

Does a young woman living with a smoker or taking a job working in a smoky bar have a greater chance of developing breast cancer? Some scientists believe that such situations can indeed raise a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer before the age of 50. Because epidemiological and toxicological studies show that women’s breast tissue may be especially sensitive to exposure to carcinogens prior to first pregnancy, these researchers contend that public education should be directed at alerting adolescents and young women to the potential risk. However, not everyone in the international public health community agrees that the evidence to date supports a link between passive smoking and breast cancer, and some say that women are being alarmed unnecessarily. This disagreement has sparked debate that is sometimes heated. The stakes are high because breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in industrialized countries, according to the WHO. It is the leading cancer killer of nonsmoking women, and second only to lung cancer deaths among women who smoke. Among the researchers interviewed for this article who disagree that there is enough evidence to link secondhand smoke (SHS) with breast cancer, the majority call the evidence to date “suggestive but not sufficient,” as the Surgeon General’s 2006 report, The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke, put it. That characterization is based largely on the fact that the research considered when the Surgeon General’s report was being amassed did not clearly link even active smoking to breast cancer. Researchers in this camp do, however, stress that ongoing campaigns to prohibit smoking in public will protect the whole of society against the wide variety of ills proven to be caused by SHS. These include lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, and sudden infant death syndrome, among others. A smaller group contends that the question of whether or not SHS causes breast cancer is a political issue with the potential to compromise the scientific process. “A premature decision about causality could jeopardize the credibility of the entire review process and all of the other, established effects of secondhand smoke,” says Michael Thun, national vice president of epidemiology and surveillance research for the American Cancer Society. Adds Valerie Beral, director of the University of Oxford Cancer Research UK Epidemiology Unit, “To prematurely come to conclusions about the causation when there is a big division in the scientific community . . . is bad science.” Thun debated the subject in a series of public forums held in conjunction with scientific meetings. Taking the opposing view was Kenneth C. Johnson, a research scientist with the Public Health Agency of Canada, who was one of the first scientists to discern a potential link. During the debates, Johnson pointed out there are about the same number of studies linking breast cancer to passive smoking as there were linking lung cancer to SHS in 1986, when the Surgeon General concluded that passive smoking caused lung cancer. Johnson also says that more of the breast cancer studies are statistically significant, and that the estimated risk for breast cancer is higher.

The immune system and inflammation are implicated in the pathogenesis of cancer. Prospective studies linking biomarkers of inflammation with cancer incidence and mortality have been inconclusive. To determine whether there is an independent association of white blood cell (WBC) count with incident cancer in postmenopausal women, a prospective cohort study was performed at 40 US clinical centers involving 143,748 postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79 years who were free of cancer at baseline and were enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative. The main outcome measures were incident invasive breast, colorectal, endometrial, and lung cancer. In multivariate models, there was a graded association of WBC count with incidence of all 4 types of cancer. Compared with the lowest quartile of WBC count (2.50-4.79x10(9) cells/L), women with a WBC count in the upper quartile (6.80-15.00x10(9) cells/L) had a statistically significantly higher risk of invasive breast cancer (hazard ratio [HR], 1.15; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.04-1.26), colorectal cancer (HR, 1.19; 95% CI, 1.00-1.41), endometrial cancer (HR, 1.42; 95% CI, 1.12-1.79), and lung cancer (HR, 1.63; 95% CI, 1.35-1.97). The findings were similar when cancers that occurred during the first 2 years of follow-up were excluded. Statistically significant associations remained for invasive breast cancer and endometrial cancer when the analyses were limited to nonsmokers. The WBC count was also statistically significantly associated with breast cancer, lung cancer, and overall cancer mortality. Postmenopausal women with higher WBC counts have a higher risk of incident invasive breast, colorectal, endometrial, and lung cancer, as well as a higher risk of breast, lung, and overall cancer mortality.

Inequality in Palliative Radiation Therapy: A Population-based Analysis

Stigma May Exacerbate Disproportionately Low Guideline-Concordant Treatment Rates for Patients With Advanced-Stage Lung Cancer in the United States

Environmental exposure and respiratory health: Unraveling the impact of toxic release inventory facilities on COPD prevalence

Toward molecular design for hazard reduction—fundamental relationships between chemical properties and toxicity

The "Cancer Alley" section of Louisiana extends from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, where more than 150 petrochemical plants discharge benzene and sulfur dioxide (SO) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5).The chemicals released by these operations have been linked to increased respiratory health problems for asthma and COPD especially among communities with low income and minority status.The research adopts an exploratory qualitative methodology while drawing data from both EPA's Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) and Louisiana Department of Health records.Research data show that industrial pollution contributes to increasing respiratory health problems while these problems mainly affect minority and impoverished neighborhoods.Current findings demand serious improvements to air quality rules and emission management systems as well as public healthcare interventions.Future studies in Cancer Alley should use present-day health records and detailed neighborhood evaluations to develop better policy-driven environmental justice efforts.