| Loss of life expectancy (LLE) was used to evaluate and quantitate the health risk caused by carcinogen and non-carcinogen pollutants, and was proposed as a new method to compare the environmental health risk of different pollutants. The environmental health risks exposed by 6 major environmental pollutants in China, i.e., arsenic，DDTs，BaP，lead，cadmium and mercury, were evaluated and compared by using LLE. The LLE caused by carcinogen pollutants such as arsenic, DDTs and BaP are 3.6 d, 2.2 d and 12.1 d respectively, while the corresponding values caused by non-carcinogen pollutants such as lead,mercury and cadmium are 1.1 d, 1.7 d and 5.8 d respectively. Based on the studies published before, the rank of the health risk of the selected six environmental pollutants is BaP >cadmium >arsenic >DDTs >mercury >lead. The results reveal that the LLE can be utilized as a new index to evaluate and quantitate the health risk, and the environmental health risk caused by carcinogen and non-carcinogen pollutants can be compared within an unitive criterion by LLE. |
