Calculating the risks of the state’s air pollution

Re “State’s Air Is Among Nation’s Most Toxic,” March 22

Your article repeatedly mentions “cancer risk” but never documents diagnosed rates of cancer in California or anywhere else. If you write that Los Angeles and Orange counties have “twice the national average” risk of cancer but, in fact, have the same diagnosed rate of cancer, what does that tell you?

What it should tell you is that your correlations between levels of exposure and levels of diagnosed conditions are wrong. Therefore, your efforts to reduce levels of exposure are moneys spent and jobs lost for no good reason.

FRANK NATOLI

Newton, N.J.

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It comes as no surprise that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s air pollution numbers are lower than California’s. Remember, the Bush EPA framed its behind-the-scenes undoing of environmental protection regulations as the “Clear Skies” initiative. The EPA’s failure to include diesel emissions in its pollution calculation, the best carcinogenic cocktail, is akin to classifying gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles as trucks.

A good friend of mine who lived in Los Angeles died of leukemia a year ago. The cost of his last month in the hospital, where tests were done to extend his life, was $944,000.

ROGER NEWELL

San Diego

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Here we go with the headline-grabbing press terrorizing L.A. residents again, suggesting that if we don’t spend billions more chasing commerce and industry from Southern California, we’ll all die of cancer. So the risk of cancer exists at a level of 1 in 10,700 in L.A. County.

Tell us, by comparison, what the risk is of dying in an auto accident in L.A. County, or getting shot -- or suffering irreparable childhood malnourishment because there are no jobs here because business has been chased away by overtaxation and overregulation.

KIP DELLINGER

Los Angeles

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Perhaps the time has come for the beautiful and caring people of Calabasas to outlaw cars and diesel trucks.

THEODORE DE VRIES

Castaic