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EPA Proposes New Cancer Risk Guidelines 

The guidelines, when made final after a review by the Environmental Protection Agency's science advisory board, would dramatically alter current agency policy, which assumes cancer risks to a fetus or an infant are no greater than for a similarly exposed adult.

For the time being, the increased scrutiny would be limited to assessing a group of chemicals that damage a person's genes by causing them to mutate so that cancer may form more easily later in life. . .

These findings were based mainly on animal studies involving five mutagenic compounds and from data collected in studies of survivors of atomic bomb blasts in Japan at the end of World War II, said James Cogliano, an EPA scientist.

Most of the chemicals that were studied involve industrial applications, ones to which infants would not likely be easily exposed, said Farland.

Still, one of them, benzopyrene, is a carcinogen found in cigarette smoke and auto exhausts [This graph only]

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