By Christopher Reilly

Lindsey Tanner, a medical writer with the Associated Press, released a report highlighting the results of a new medical study that has found long-term exposure to air pollution "significantly raises the risk of dying from lung cancer."

The study involved 500,000 adults who enrolled in a 1982 American Cancer Society survey on cancer prevention and have been monitored ever since. The research took into account other facts that would contribute to lung cancer such as "cigarettes, diet, weight and occupation."

The research, released last Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found conclusive evidence that living in cities with high air pollution greatly increases the risk of dying from lung cancer.

The researchers concluded that living in a large city puts individuals in the same situation as "nonsmokers who live with smokers and are exposed long-term to secondhand cigarette smoke," the AP report stated. By using this comparison, people living in large cities are 16 to 24
percent more likely to die from lung cancer.

The study found the main causes of this dangerous air pollution in major cities are "coal-burning power plants in the Midwest and East, and diesel trucks and buses in the West."

It will be interesting to see how this study affects the Bush Administration's current stance on the environment. At the end of last year, the President frequently argued that Clean Air Act rules danger energy output and does not protect the environment, according to the Baltimore Sun. Europe, citing problems with rising water levels and other environmental dangers due to pollution, has laid down plans for massively increasing wind power. USA Today wrote in early February
that European Union countries "produced more than four times as much energy through wind as the USA, and experts predict that within 10 years at least 10 percent of Europe's electrical energy needs will be supplied by giant wind turbines hooked up to main power grids."

Ralph Nader, citizens' rights activist, has sharply blamed the fossil fuel industry for the dangers of air pollution and other pollutant side effects, such as "increased sickness and premature deaths, depleted family budgets, acid rain destruction of lakes, forests, and crops, oil spill contamination, polluted rivers and loss of aquatic species and the long-term peril of climate change . . . not to mention a dependency on external energy supplies."

Mr. Nader has frequently stated that one important way to reduce air pollution is by pushing "for an increase in auto fuel-efficiency standards."

However, Mr. Nader has complained that both Democrats and Republicans remain curtailed to powerful energy lobbyists. For example, citing the Clinton/Gore Administration, Mr. Nader pointed out that their Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) is only a "$1.5
billion subsidy program for the Big Three Auto companies that has done nothing to improve fuel efficiency but has served as a convenient smokescreen behind which the industry has been able to fend off new regulatory requirements for more efficient cars."

According to Ralph Nader, the best way to reduce the dangers of air pollution and other environmental problems due to fossil fuels is to create a "robust federal research and development program in sustainable renewable energy sources, so that the energy-independence promises of wind, solar, and other forms of renewable energy are finally realized."

Mr. Nader also calls for increasing automobile fuel efficiency standards to at least "45 miles per gallon for cars and 35 miles per gallon for light trucks, to be phased in over five years."

Not only that, but Mr. Nader also proposes "establishing a well-funded employee transition assistance fund and job-retraining program for displaced coal-miners' easily affordable with the savings from greater energy efficiency."

Hopefully this new research, already mentioned in Yahoo News and the Washington Post, will enter the radar screen of the Bush Administration. They will then have to decide whether to follow Mr. Nader's suggestions, or devise some of their own; however, as long as the end result is reducing air pollution and thus reducing lung cancer in the United States, the American people will be served.

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