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Living near a US toxic waste site could shave a year off your life, study finds
First-of-its-kind study shows stark effects for people living near contaminated Superfund sites in urgent need of cleanup
www.theguardian.com
First-of-its-kind study shows stark effects for people living near contaminated sites in urgent need of cleanup
Superfund sites are scattered across America: they’re places like landfills and manufacturing plants so contaminated with hazardous waste that the federal government has designated them a national priority to clean up. And according to a new, large-scale study, living near one can shave months – and in some cases, more than a year – off how long you live.
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After Hurricane Harvey made landfall in south-east Texas in 2017, the University of Houston’s Hanadi Rifai began research along the 50-mile-long Houston Ship Channel, the petrochemical industry’s main artery. Rifai and her colleagues noticed how neighborhoods adjacent to hazardous waste sites, such as where the San Jacinto River meets the channel, seemed to have a lower life expectancy. “That got us interested in a more comprehensive [national] study,” Rifai said.
In a first-of-its-kind study out Tuesday in Nature Communications, Rifai and a team of researchers found that living in a zip code in close proximity to a Superfund site may decrease average life expectancy by 0.2 years. It could be up to a year in socioeconomically challenged communities, says Rifai, who is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the study’s lead author.
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