The Cause Of Air Pollution And Cancer

Superior Essays
Anybody who has ever visited the larger cities in the world has probably seen the brown cloud of smog that hangs over many of them. Everybody hears how cars and factories send air pollution into the atmosphere and no one wants to do anything about it. That is air pollution and just about everybody understands that it is present, but many people do not think they need to be afraid of it. Most people are used to air pollution and just ignore it hoping that it will not hurt them or their children. However, some people say that we should all be afraid of it because it is a lot more dangerous than the experts have led people to believe. In recent years the talk has been about carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases that are being put into the atmosphere …show more content…
Rebecca Kessler, of Scientific American, says that as long ago as the 1940s some scientists thought that air pollution might be one of the causes of cancer, but they did not really prove it until recently. They did figure out that smoking causes lung cancer and that air pollution is responsible for heart disease related deaths, but they could not connect air pollution to cancer for a long time. In 2010 though the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organization (WHO) agency that is responsible for doing research on cancer and coming up with ways to cure it, claimed that research showed that 223,000 lung cancer deaths were due to air pollution. That number equals 15% of all lung cancer deaths worldwide. Kessler says that the IARC also linked air pollution to bladder cancer (Kessler). This makes air pollution that much more …show more content…
Also, people do not know if there is formaldehyde in the air that they breathe. The reason they do not know is that if such things are proven to cause cancer, then people do not want them in the air or in their homes. That is bad for business. Kessler says, “Industry groups such as the American Chemistry Council successfully advocated for a review of the report by the National Academies in an effort to get the chemicals delisted and avoid further regulation” (Kessler). When a company uses chemicals that cause cancer, organizations like the IARC and the CDC want them to have rules about polluting, but the companies want to be able to do whatever they want even if it causes cancer in the people who breathe their pollution. Air pollution is everywhere and all people are affected by it. Big companies that are responsible for putting cancer-causing substances into the atmosphere need to stop so that people will stop getting cancer so much. No one makes them do this though because they have so much money and power that they get to do whatever they want. In the meantime, they kill millions with their cancer causing poison that people have no choice but to

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