A novel approach to evaluate the lung cancer risk of airborne particles emitted in a city

Air quality still represents a main threat to human health in cities. Even in developed countries, decades of air pollution control not yet allowed to reduce pollutant concentrations in urban areas adequately. Indeed, high airborne particle concentrations are measured in several European cities; this is a main issue since particles represent a carrier for carcinogenic compounds. Numerous researches measuring the exposure to the different aerosol metrics in urban areas were recently performed, nonetheless, few data on the lung cancer risk in such environments are available. In the present paper a novel approach to evaluate the lung cancer risk related to the airborne particles emitted by the different sources located in a city is proposed and applied to a pilot case-study (i.e. an Italian city). In particular, an existing lung cancer risk model was modified and applied to assess the particle-related lung cancer “emitted” by the different sources of the city using pollutant emission factors provided by accredited emission inventory databases. Therefore, the average toxicity of the particles emitted by the city (i.e. lung cancer slope factor) and the lung cancer risk globally emitted by the city, expressed as new cases of lung cancer, were evaluated. The proposed emission inventory also allowed to identify and localize the main contributors to the overall risk emitted in a city. As an example, for the city under investigation, the research revealed that the main contributor, amongst the sources considered, is the vehicular traffic which is characterized by a lower mass fraction of carcinogenic compounds but a much higher sub-micron particle emission with respect to the other sources.