On March 11, 2011, the United States Environmental Protection Agency released its fourth version of the National Air Toxics Assessment ("NATA"). NATA is an analytical tool relied upon by federal, state and local governments to evaluate the risks posed by exposure to airborne hazardous pollutants. The current version of NATA contains 2005 emissions data submitted primarily by the states for 178 pollutants and is used as a prioritization tool to identify geographic areas, pollutants and emission sources that should be considered by regulators when evaluating the health risks posed by airborne hazardous pollutants.
According to NATA, between 1990 and 2005, air toxic emissions were reduced by approximately 42 percent from industrial and mobile sources. However, despite this reduction, the assessment concludes that persons residing in the U.S. (approximately 285 million people) continue to face an increased cancer risk of greater than 10 in one million while approximately 13.8 million people face an increased cancer risk from airborne emissions greater than 100 in a million. The key pollutants that contributed most to the overall cancer risks were formaldehyde and benzene while acrolein contributed the most to the non-cancer risks. Moreover, according to the fact sheet that accompanied this assessment, although NATA did not evaluate the potential cancer risk from diesel particulate matter emissions, U.S. EPA has concluded that diesel exhaust is among the substances that may pose the greatest risk to the U.S. population. Please click here to review the assessment.