The Air We Breathe Causes Cancer

The air we breathe is laced with cancer-causing substances and should now be classified as carcinogenic to humans, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) is now declaring. It really does matter where you live and where a person treats their cancer. One does not want to be anywhere near a city like this when battling their cancer.

The WHO classified outdoor air pollution as a leading cause of cancer in humans. “The air we breathe has become polluted with a mixture of cancer-causing substances,” said Kurt Straif of the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). “We now know that outdoor air pollution is not only a major risk to health in general, but also a leading environmental cause of cancer deaths.”

“We now know that outdoor air pollution is not only a major risk to health in general, but also a leading environmental cause of cancer deaths.” Although the composition of air pollution and levels of exposure can vary dramatically between locations, the agency said its conclusions applied to all regions of the globe.

Air pollution was already known to increase the risk of respiratory and heart diseases. The most recent data, from 2010, showed that 223,000 lung cancer deaths worldwide were the result of air pollution, the agency said. Cancer is rising alarmingly around the world and yet not any of the money that governments have thrown into the war on cancer is stopping the accelerating cancer epidemic. One of the reasons why is that air pollution is getting worse and negative health effects are accumulative.

A President’s Cancer Panel issued a landmark report suggesting that public health officials have “grossly underestimated” the extent of environmentally-induced cancer among the 1.5 million Americans diagnosed with the disease annually. A significant number of annual cancer deaths in the U.S. are caused by environmental pollutants and occupational exposures; lower-income workers and communities are disproportionately affected by these exposures (American Cancer Society, Facts and Figures, 2006). Oncologists and medical officials tend to make light of the threat from environmental hazards as do all people who live in big cities that are heavily polluted.

It is estimated that 180,000 people suffering from Air Pollution shall be admitted to hospitals, this is an increase of 62% in the last 20 years. Around 6,000,000 visits to the doctors in 2008 are associated to the exposure of Air Pollution.

Millions of people living in nearly 600 neighborhoods acrossthe country are breathing concentrations of toxic air pollutantsthat put them at a much greater risk of contracting cancer.Environmental Protection Agency