EPA to Investigate Higher Cancer Risk

By Bruce Henderson, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

Mar. 8–The Environmental Protection Agency says it will investigate toxic air pollution in Catawba County after recent estimates showed an increased cancer risk in its southeastern corner.

In Charlotte, heavy traffic causes most of the toxic air pollution that raises risks of cancer and respiratory disease, the EPA estimates showed in late February.

But why is there a higher risk of cancer in a rural slice of southeastern Catawba County? Cancer risks from toxic air are higher there than in some parts of Charlotte, according to the EPA.

Duke Power’s Marshall coal-fired power plant on Lake Norman releases into the air the county’s only large amounts of arsenic and chromium, which in some forms can cause cancer. Those two pollutants raise the cancer risks in southeastern Catawba, EPA data shows.

One in three Americans — 330,000 for every million — will develop cancer at some point in their lives. Toxic air in southeastern Catawba, EPA estimates, slightly raises those risks: about 70 additional cancer cases per 1 million people over a lifetime of exposure.

That’s less than one additional cancer case for the 6,500 people who live in that corner of the county.

But a 1998 study, also by EPA, called the health risks of coal-fired power plants minimal. People who live near those plants, the study said, face an added cancer risk of no more than three cases in 1 million people.

EPA was not able to immediately explain the discrepancy last week. But the agency will look again at Catawba County’s pollution sources, including those smaller than Marshall, a spokesman said.

The power plant released about 2,000 pounds of arsenic and 1,800 pounds of chromium in 1999, the year on which the EPA based its cancer-risk estimates. EPA estimates that those emissions have dropped about 40 percent since then.

Duke says pollution controls called scrubbers, now being installed at the plant for $450 million, will cut those releases by another half.

Bruce Henderson: (704) 358-5051.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

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