This is a tongue-in-check come-on title based on uPtoWnNY's thread.

Let me say right up front that i'm a smoker. If i'd have been born 20-30 years later, I probably wouldn't be.
If this practice is as dangerous to the innocent bystander as it is claimed, don't you think it would've been made illegal by now?
But we all know that when they are folks that make megabucks off of something, somehow the reasoning becomes schizophrenic.

The reason for the post is to find out if those that are against smoking for purely health reasons (second hand smoke) are as vociferous in their health concerns regarding this...

California Air Full of Cancer-Causing Pollutants
Southland residents exposed to a cancer risk about twice the national average.
By Marla Cone, Times Staff Writer

March 21, 2006, 9:11 PM PST

Despite two decades of cleaning up carcinogenic fumes from cars and
factories, Californians are breathing some of the most toxic air in the
nation, with residents of Los Angeles and Orange counties exposed to a
cancer risk about twice the national average.

A nationwide, county-by-county snapshot of the cancer threat posed by air
pollution provides a troubling portrait of California, revealing that many
potent chemicals still pose an excessive risk.

New York tops the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's list, followed
closely by California, while residents of the rural West, in Wyoming,
South Dakota and Montana, have the least chance of contracting cancer from
breathing the air.

One in every 15,000 Californians — or 66 per million — is at risk of
contracting cancer from breathing the air over his or her lifetime,
according to the EPA's National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment, which was
released in February and based on emissions of 177 chemicals in 1999, the
most recent data available.

In the Los Angeles area, the cancer threat is much higher, 93 per million
in Los Angeles County — or one person in every 10,700 — and 79 per million
in Orange County. The national average is 41.5 per million: one in every
24,000 Americans. Riverside and San Bernardino counties are near the U.S.
average.

Although a tiny fraction of all cancers in the United States are caused by
chemicals, an array of air pollutants has been shown to cause lung cancer
or leukemia in both human and animal studies. Some have been classified as
known human carcinogens for 20 years or longer.

The biggest contributors, by far, are cars, trucks and other mobile
sources that burn gasoline or diesel fuel.

"One of the most significant environmental exposures" to cancer-causing
chemicals for Californians comes from breathing them, said Melanie Marty,
chief of air toxicology and epidemiology at the California Office of
Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. "People should understand that
mobile sources have very large impacts on health. It's not just asthma and
heart disease. It's cancer too."

A Times review of the national assessment as well as other, more
up-to-date federal and state databases shows that the levels of most
carcinogenic chemicals have declined substantially in California in recent
years. Nevertheless, for at least 10 chemicals, Californians are still
exposed to higher cancer risks than the levels considered acceptable under
government guidelines.

"The key thing here is recognizing that we still have a huge problem,"
said Janice Nolen, the American Lung Assn.'s national policy director.
"While we are headed in the right direction, we have to figure out what
more we can do. Clearly having so much benzene [and other chemicals] in
L.A. that you have a 93-in-a-million risk factor for cancer is not
acceptable."

California officials say the danger is far worse. They have calculated a
cancer risk that is about 15 times higher for the Los Angeles region
because they included diesel exhaust, which was excluded from the EPA's
numbers, and ranked other chemicals as more potent than the EPA did.

When exhaust from diesel engines — which scientists consider the biggest
cancer threat — is included, one in every 714 residents of the Los Angeles
Basin (1,400 per million) could contract cancer from air pollution, the
South Coast Air Quality Management District says.

Two ingredients of gasoline — benzene and butadiene — topped the EPA's
list of the most dangerous airborne carcinogens. Emitted mostly from car
tailpipes, they are responsible for 35% of the cancer risk posed by air
pollutants, the EPA data show. Both have been linked to leukemia in human
and animal studies.

Others with high risks include naphthalene and acetaldehyde, also mostly
from vehicles, and chromium, from industries.

The goal of the national assessment is to help identify which sources and
areas of the country still need to be targeted by air pollution controls.

"These numbers are definitely estimates. They are not etched in stone. But
they are the best way, and the only way, to look at risk and inform the
agencies about which chemicals are important and should be reduced," Marty
said.

In the EPA assessment, only New Yorkers faced a bit more danger than
Californians, with a risk of 68 cancers per million. Oregon ranked third,
largely because of motor vehicle exhaust and smoke from forest fires and
fireplaces. Washington, D.C., was fourth, with New Jersey fifth.

Joseph Landolph, a USC expert on chemical carcinogenesis who serves on
state and EPA scientific advisory panels, said he was surprised that
California remained so high on the list despite decades of regulation.

In 1983, the Legislature enacted a landmark law regulating toxic air
contaminants, and since then, state and local air quality officials have
set the nation's most stringent controls on vehicles, fuels and
industries.

The risks from benzene and butadiene were much worse before the state Air
Resources Board ordered gasoline to be reformulated 10 years ago and
tightened auto emission standards. Last year, about 13,000 tons of benzene
was released into California's air, about 40% less than in 2001, and
butadiene declined 60% to 3,000 tons, according to the air board's Almanac
of Emissions and Air Quality.

John Froines, a UCLA School of Public Health professor who chairs
California's scientific review panel on toxic air contaminants, cautioned
that benzene and butadiene remain dangerous, saying scientists recently
discovered that they are even stronger carcinogens than previously
thought.

"Clearly, benzene and butadiene are candidates for additional controls,"
Froines said. "An analysis needs to be done on the sources of the two and
then consideration given to control strategies. Butadiene is a very potent
carcinogen and should be given more attention than it has."

In Los Angeles County, benzene is responsible for a risk of 24 cancers per
million people and butadiene for 10 cancers per million, according to the
EPA data. Federal and state guidelines generally consider one cancer per
million as an acceptable risk for each air pollutant.

"It's going to be pretty hard to get these compounds below one in a
million, because of the sheer volume of people and cars in the South Coast
and any urban area," Marty said. "It's a laudable target but hard to
reach."

Today's cars are already about 99% cleaner than cars of the 1970s. Many
experts say advanced auto technologies such as fuel cells and hydrogen
internal combustion engines are the only solution. Under Air Resources
Board rules, 50,000 such cars must be offered for sale in California by
2017, but it may be decades before large numbers are on the roads.

"We've come a great distance in reducing ... emissions from our
automobiles over the past 30 years," said Charles Territo, an Alliance of
Automobile Manufacturers spokesman. "We'll continue to work on improving
catalysts, and we're working on a number of advanced technologies that
will reduce the amount of gasoline that our products use."

In California, industries are now minor sources of most carcinogens;
several industrial chemicals high on the EPA list have been phased out.

In 1999, Sacramento County had California's highest cancer risk — and
among the nation's highest — from air pollution, with 135 cancers per
million residents, according to the EPA assessment. But the risk has
dropped by two-thirds since one company — Aerojet, a space and defense
contractor in Rancho Cordova — stopped emitting hydrazine by switching
from liquid rocket fuel to solid.

Some California neighborhoods, however, are still "hot spots" for
carcinogenic fumes from industries. For example, although
tetrachloroethylene has been virtually eliminated as a de-greaser in the
aerospace industry, dry cleaners still emit it. Also, some metal-plating
plants release chromium.

Yet overall, vehicles, particularly those powered by diesel fuel, pose the
most danger. About 70% of the Los Angeles Basin's airborne cancer risk
comes from diesel exhaust, 20% from chemicals emitted mostly by cars and
10% from industry emissions, the AQMD said in a 2000 report.

In studies of railroad workers, truck drivers and mechanics in various
places, diesel exhaust — at concentrations similar to those the general
population breathes in major U.S. cities — has been linked to lung cancer.

Levels will drop, however, because EPA rules require refiners to start
producing ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel this summer and equip 2007-model
diesel trucks with devices that cut toxic gases and soot.

Diesel exhaust was excluded from the national cancer risks because EPA
scientists decided they could not calculate the numbers without more data
on its potency and what levels cause cancer.

Scientists with the California Environmental Protection Agency disagree,
saying there is ample evidence of diesel's high carcinogenic potency.
Also, California ranks benzene and other compounds as more powerful than
the U.S. EPA does. The federal agency calls formaldehyde, emitted by
mobile sources, a weak carcinogen, while the state ranks it among the top
five threats.

As a result, state officials believe that many more Californians are in
danger than the EPA says, even when excluding diesel. About 406 in every
million people in the Los Angeles Basin could get cancer from air
contaminants excluding diesel — four times the EPA's estimate — and 1,400
per million including diesel, the AQMD reports.

While scientists debate how many cancers to blame on air pollution, one
fact remains clear: Most cancers are caused by other factors. One in three
Americans, or 330,000 in a million, will contract a form of the disease,
and all 177 air pollutants are believed responsible for less than 1%.

Nevertheless, unlike risks such as cigarette smoking and diet, breathing
is not voluntary, so targeting toxic air must remain a priority, public
health officials say.

"Even with all the population growth in California, we have made big
progress," Marty said. "If we had done nothing, the cancer risk would be
so much worse now. But on the other hand, we have a long way to go. We're
going to have to grab the bull by the horns now with mobile sources."

Copyright © 2006, The Los Angeles Times

http://ktla.trb.com/news/...tla-news-1

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You can't go on
Thinkin' nothing's wrong
Who's gonna drive you home...tonight?


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

i don't own a car. never did, never will. i've been lucky to live in areas where cars aren't needed, and believe me, when you don't have a car, you find ways of getting around...alternatives DO exist, and the more people who USE those alternatives, the better the resources will become.

i'm actually thinking of bucking down and getting my driver's license, though. i've been seeing these "zip cars" or whatever they're called - the shared rental cars that are popping up all over - and i'm thinking they could be a good idea for those rare times when a car really would come in handy.

but generally speaking, i've found that as a big city dweller, it's totally possible for me to exist without a car.

Anx said:

You and my brother.

Anx said:

You're making me homesick for the days when I could exist without one.

However, this "big city" has the political deck stacked against that type of lifestyle.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

If only I lived in San Andreas

Women who drive huge car-carriers turn me the hell on.

Illustrator said:

Your picture didn't make it.
(not on my computer anyway)


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

I would say I am against when a little tiny woman buys a gigantic suv, and doesn't spend any time learning to drive it properly