pollution (Page 28)

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association says long-term exposure to the air pollution in some of America?s biggest cities significantly raises the risk of dying from lung cancer and is as dangerous as living with a smoker. The danger comes from combustion-related fine particulate matter, which is soot emitted by cars and trucks, coal-fired power plants and factories. This risk can be found in many big cities and even some smaller ones, according to the researchers from Brigham Young University and New York University.
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Old computers are being dumped in Asia where they are releasing toxic materials into the environment. The report ?Exporting Harm: The Hi-Tech Trashing Of Asia? describes a group of villages in China where computers from America are picked apart with the remains littered along rivers and fields. ?I?ve seen a lot of dirty operations in Third World countries, but what was shocking was seeing all this post-consumer waste,? says Jim Puckett of the Seattle-based Basel Action Network, one of the authors of the report.
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Traces of the airplane engine degreaser TCE, that has contaminated the groundwater around a Utah air base since 1987, have been found in fruit grown nearby. TCE causes cancer in laboratory rats, but has not been linked to cancer in humans.

Utah State University researchers found trichloroethylene in about 90 percent of fruit grown in the yards of nine nearby homes. Scientists at Hill Air Force Base say there is no immediate health risk but will continue investigating, says Steve Hicken, an environmental engineer at the base.
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Pollution from cars and trucks kills more people than traffic crashes. Researchers, in a study in the journal Science, say cutting greenhouse gases in four cities they studied — Sao Paulo, Brazil; Mexico City; Santiago, Chile; and New York City — could save 64,000 lives over the next 20 years.
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