Regional Contribution to Lifetime Cancer Risk from Air Emissions

Units: Number of cancers in one million people exposed in the L.A. Basin over 70 years of exposure due to toxic air emissions by a facility

Because Toxicity of Total Releases is unitless measure, we calculated the facility Regional Contribution to Lifetime Cancer Risk to provide a more concrete measure of health-related impacts. Air releases were only considered because inhalation rates could be determined by age and sex to calculate the number of cancers in one million people (Exposure Factors Handbook, US EPA). Results for this variable are screening-level estimates and suggest that a particular facility may contribute approximately some number of cancers in a million to the overall lifetime risk in the Los Angeles Basin. This estimate does not constitute a risk assessment and should not be used to draw conclusions about individual risk.

More information on this variable and how it was used to calculate the Cal EcoMaps Environmental Impact Score can be found in our report.

Sources: EPA: Cancer Risk Calculations, TRI.NET, Office of Environmental Health Hazards Assessment (OEHHA) , EPA: Exposure Factors Handbook (2011) , American Geophysical Union, US Census Bureau