Damage to Human Health from Environmental Chemicals that Cause Cancer

Abstract

The objective of this chapter is to demonstrate the quantitative feasibility of the framework introduced in Chapters 3 to 5, evidenced by the example of environmental chemicals causing cancer in humans. The damage to human health will be assessed by the modelling of an impact pathway starting with the fate or exposure analysis following an emission, the effect analysis following an exposure of human beings, and an analysis of the resulting diseases due to tumours. The causal relationship between emissions to air or water and damage to human health will be presented in terms of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) per kg substance emission. Further, the index for manageability will be assessed following the proposal in Section 4.5. Both, the resulting index for the magnitude of damage and the index for manageability will be derived in dependence of the cultural perspective applied, i.e., they look differently for the individualists, egalitarians, or hierarchists perspective.