This week, the World Health Organization (WHO) took a major step by announcing that air pollution is carcinogenic to humans.
WHO also announced they are considering particulate matter, a major component of indoor and outdoor air pollution, as carcinogenic to humans as well.
International Agency for Research on Cancer announced today: outdoor #airpollution is leading environmental cause of #cancer deaths
— WHO (@WHO) October 17, 2013
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a special unit inside WHO tasked with promoting international collaborations on cancer research, reached that conclusion after reviewing more than 1000 scientific papers on the carcinogenicity of air pollutants.
Air pollution and particulate matter will be included in IARC's Monograph, which is an encyclopedia of known carcinogens. Particulate matter will be classified as a Group 1 carcinogen, along with tobacco smoke and asbestos.
In an IARC press release [1], the Deputy Head of the Monographs Programme, Dr. Dana Loomis, said that the group's goal was to "evaluate the air everyone breathes rather than focus on specific air pollutants."
"The results from the reviewed studies point in the same direction: the risk of developing lung cancer is significantly increased in people exposed to air pollution," he said.
This finding elevates the urgency to clean up the air, both outdoors and indoors. But how does one find out the condition of the air in the first place? How healthy is your air?
