The EPA’s data on cancer risk from air pollution has gone dark

For over two decades the EPA published cancer risk estimates alongside its air toxics data, letting communities near polluters like ethylene oxide-emitting sterilization plants understand their exposure. This year's update, delayed a year and covering only 2021 data, omits those risk calculations entirely, leaving only raw emissions figures that require specialized expertise to interpret.

The change follows the shutdown of the EJScreen environmental justice mapping tool and edits to pollutant webpages that removed cancer-risk language while emphasizing industrial usefulness. A former EPA staffer who ran EJScreen before being suspended along with 170 colleagues says the raw data alone "means nothing to anybody."

An EPA spokesperson would not explain why the cancer data was dropped or whether the agency still calculates it internally, instead saying only that the agency remains "committed to fulfilling our core mission of protecting human health and the environment... following gold standard science."

The full dispatch is available from the source below.