Abstract
Breathing is as spontaneous as your heartbeat, but if you live in a polluted environment, every breath could be harmful to your health. Pollution in any form or from any source may cause a significant risk to human life. Environmental laws related to air, land, and water are used to regulate the release of hazardous and toxic chemicals throughout the globe. The US Environmental Protection Agency started developing the toxic release inventory (TRI) after the Bhopal accident at the Union Carbide plant in India. This study examines the reduction in emission levels and associated health risks due to the release of contaminants in the US using TRI data. The health risk is calculated using the Risk- Screening Environmental Indicator (RSEI) introduced by USEPA. The RSEI score value determines the dose of exposure of toxic chemicals to the human population. The risk values are presented for cancer as well as for non-cancer health effects. The trend in risk over time is compared qualitatively to the deaths and death rates due to air pollution. This study shows that the health risk associated with industrial pollution is constantly declining over time in the US. One of the reasons for the reduction of the pollutant levels and associated risk is the introduction of pollution prevention programs by the USEPA involving source reduction, energy recovery, and waste reduction. The pollution prevention activities undertaken by the USEPA to minimize the risk are mentioned in this study. A correlation analysis was conducted to identify the significant relationship between the different types of RSEI scores and deaths from ambient air pollution due to particulate matter for the data from 2007 to 2017. The results indicate that deaths from outdoor particulate matter pollution are significantly correlated with RSEI Scores associated with modeled media than the total RSEI scores. The implementation of pollution prevention activities can be one of the most possible reasons as it has a direct impact on controlling the releases from industries. Thus, it can be said that the health and well-being of the entire US population have benefitted from the reduction of industrial pollutant levels as evidenced by environmental risk and death rates.
Highlights
Breathing dirty air is bad for human health and negatively affecting the heart, lungs, and brain
The contribution of major common pollutants (carbon monoxide (CO), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), ammonia (NH3), direct particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) ) from different sources in toxic release inventory (TRI) is given in Figure 2(a) for 2017 [32]
The overall correlation analysis shows that deaths from outdoor particulate matter pollution are significantly correlated with Risk- Screening Environmental Indicator (RSEI) Non-Cancer score and RSEI Cancer score for Modeled Media, and moderately correlated with RSEI Non-Cancer score
Summary
Breathing dirty air is bad for human health and negatively affecting the heart, lungs, and brain. Recognition of this fact has caused many nations to take legislative action and adopt policies to clean up the air. Many developing countries along with the developed countries face high levels of air pollution from a combination of man-made and natural sources. The awareness of the health effects due to high exposure levels of pollutants is increasing all around the world [1]. Air quality monitoring activities have increased to quantify pollutant levels [2]. The major sources of pollution in the US are (i) natural sources (includes lightning, volcanos, wildfires, and forests), (ii) area sources (includes agriculture, livestock, and cities), (iii) stationary sources
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