EPA Blocks Warnings on Cancer-Causing Chemical: Report (politico.com)

The Trump administration is suppressing an Environmental Protection Agency report that warns that most Americans inhale enough formaldehyde vapor in the course of daily life to put them at risk of developing leukemia and other ailments, a current and a former agency official told POLITICO. The news outlet adds: The warnings are contained in a draft health assessment EPA scientists completed just before Donald Trump became president, according to the officials. They said top advisers to departing Administrator Scott Pruitt are delaying its release as part of a campaign to undermine the agency's independent research into the health risks of toxic chemicals.

Andrew Wheeler, the No. 2 official at EPA who will be the agency's new acting chief as of Monday, also has a history with the chemical. He was staff director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2004, when his boss, then-Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), sought to delay an earlier iteration of the formaldehyde assessment. Formaldehyde is one of the most commonly used chemicals in the country. Americans are exposed to it through wood composites in cabinets and furniture, as well as air pollution from major refineries.

Comments

Re:I have

[dgatwood]

Point taken; but still, it's not one of the more common cancers.

Actually, according to cancer.org, it is the tenth most common kind of cancer:

• breast cancer
• lung and bronchus cancer
• prostate cancer
• colorectal cancer
• melanoma of the skin
• bladder cancer
• non-Hodgkin lymphoma
• kidney and renal pelvis cancer
• endometrial cancer
• leukemia

Although this is actually something of a lie, as the source they got their numbers from intentionally excludes non-melanoma skin cancers (presumably because the case fatality rate for carcinoma is two orders of magnitude lower). Really, that means it is #11. Either way, it ranks ahead of pancreatic cancer, thyroid cancer, liver cancer, all forms of brain cancer, bone cancer, etc.

And by fatality count, it rises to #7. Also note that if we could get everyone to stop smoking, it would move up another notch, both in fatalities and incidence.

And that top ten list doesn't have that wide a probability spread, either. Breast cancer and lung cancer are each only about 4x as common as leukemia. It is not a rare cancer by any means.

Leukemia is frequently more genetic risk than environmental even when it does occur.

That's also not true. Most forms of Leukemia have no familial link. There is an increased prevalence in first-degree relatives and twins of people with leukemia, but this is likely because those people lived in the same house, drank the same water, breathed the same air, went to schools in the same classrooms, etc. When you see only a first-degree link and no broader familial link, this strongly suggests that environmental factors are the predominant cause, not genetics.