Formaldehyde causes more cancer than any other toxic chemical in the air. It can be emitted by cars, trucks, airplanes, industrial plants and many other sources. It also forms in the atmosphere when other chemicals combine in the presence of sunlight. Even if you don’t live in an industrial or high-traffic area, the geography and climate of your area may increase your risk of formaldehyde cancer due to this so-called “secondary formation.” Here’s what the new research says
In a world full of dangerous air pollutants, there is one that is most likely to cause cancer. It’s there formaldehydea chemical so pervasive that a new analysis has found that it puts everyone at high risk of developing cancer, no matter where they live. And perhaps most worryingly, it often poses the greatest risk in the one place people feel safest: inside their homes.
Not everyone knows it, but formaldehyde is the backbone of commerce, a real workhorse in the main sectors of the economy. The risk is not just for the workers who use it: formaldehyde threatens everyone because it pollutes the air we all breathe and leaks from products even long after they have entered our homes.
This is the picture that emerges from an investigation by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalism publication, according to which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) significantly underestimated the dangers posed by formaldehyde for a long time.
The study
Reporters analyzed federal air pollution data from each of the 5.8 million U.S. census blocks and did their own testing in neighborhood homes, cars and businesses. They interviewed more than 50 experts and analyzed thousands of pages of scientific studies and EPA records, arriving at a single conclusion: The public health risks from formaldehyde are greater and more widespread than is widely understood. How come?
There Formaldehyde is ubiquitous: Already in the air we breathe formaldehyde gas from cars, smoke, factories and oil and gas extraction. Much outdoor formaldehyde also forms spontaneously from other pollutants. Invisible to the eye, the gas increases your chances of getting cancer
This year, the EPA released its estimate of the chance of developing cancer from exposure to chemicals in the air and showed that, among dozens of individual air pollutants, Formaldehyde poses the greatest cancer risk.
ProPublica found that the risk of getting cancer from lifetime exposure to formaldehyde in outdoor air is above the limit of one cancer incidence in one million people: this means that if one million people in an area are continuously exposed to formaldehyde for over 70 years, the chemical would cause at most one case of cancer, in addition to other risks people already face.
According to ProPublica’s analysis of the EPA’s 2020 AirToxScreen data, approximately 320 million people live in areas of the United States where the cancer risk from outdoor exposure to formaldehyde is 10 times higher than the maximum limits imposed by the agency. In the Los Angeles/San Bernardino, California area alone, approximately 7.2 million people are exposed to formaldehyde with a cancer risk level 20 times higher than the EPA target. In an industrial area east of downtown Los Angeles that is home to several warehouses, the risk of cancer from air pollution is 80 times higher, most of it from formaldehyde.
Where is formaldehyde found?
Especially in clothes, in paint and on home surfaces, in cosmetics, perfumes and detergents, in fumes and gaseous fumes, in the garage. On labels, it can be present under different names: some of the most common are formalin, formaldehyde.
As established by Regulation (EU) 2022/1181 of the Commission of 8 July 2022, if its percentage is greater than 0.05%, it must be expressly indicated on the label with the words “contains formaldehyde”.
The rules in Europe
Last year, new, more restrictive limits were placed: the new rules establish an emission limit of 0.062 mg/m³ of formaldehyde in closed environments for the main products that contribute to emissions, such as articles and wood-based furniture and the interior of road vehicles. To all other articles, such as textiles, leather, plastics, building materials or electronic products, will apply a limit of 0.08 mg/m³.
The new limits are specifically aimed at ensuring a high level of human health protection, while limiting the socioeconomic burden and need for technological changes for a wide range of industries and sectors.
It’s about much more restrictive limits than in the pastconsidering for example the wooden panels of furniture, the value goes from 0.124 mg/m³ to 0.062 mg/m³.
The World Health Organization has instead established maximum limits of 100 micrograms/cubic meter (equal to 0.1 parts per million – ppm) for the concentration of formaldehyde in the home.
