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1 January 2020 Adverse Human Health Impacts in the Anthropocene
Richard Olawoyin
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Abstract

This commentary presents a summarized discussion of key findings and relevant ideas from previously published study, index analysis, and human health risk model application for evaluating ambient air-heavy metal contamination in Chemical Valley Sarnia (CVS). The CVS study provides previously unavailable data in the CVS area which evaluates the adverse effects on air quality due to nearby anthropogenic activities. The study provided an assessment of environmental pollutants, finding that carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic substances are present in trace quantities. The main findings of the study suggest that chronic exposure of humans to several contaminants identified in the area studied may lead to carcinogenic health effects, including cancer (such as nephroblastomatosis) as well as non-carcinogenic health effects, such as damage to the tracheobronchial tree. Children were found to have a significantly higher risk, that is, a higher hazard index: a value used to measure non-carcinogenic health risk from heavy metals identified in air samples collected during the research period from 2014 to 2017. This study quantified the influence of environmental contaminants, relative to human exposures and the consequence of developing nephroblastomatosis in the human population.

© The Author(s) 2018 This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Richard Olawoyin "Adverse Human Health Impacts in the Anthropocene," Environmental Health Insights 12(1), (1 January 2020). https://doi.org/10.1177/1178630218812791
Received: 9 October 2018; Accepted: 11 October 2018; Published: 1 January 2020
KEYWORDS
air pollution
Anthropocene
child
heavy metals
particulate matter
Wilms tumor
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