Air Pollution – Soil Vapor Intrusion
Environmental Law Video
Lawyer & Attorney ReferralsHealth Effects from Indoor Air Pollutants
Posted By James J. Periconi, Esq. on July 1, 2008
While pollutants commonly found in indoor air are responsible for many harmful effects, there is considerable uncertainty about what concentrations or periods of exposure are necessary to produce specific health problems. People also react very differently to exposure to indoor air pollutants. Comprehensive worker protections provided pursuant to OSHA, discussed below, are not considered particularly stringent. Where there have been competing regimes, whether by EPA or state agencies, these agencies have generally set standards that are occasionally orders of magnitude more stringent than those set by OSHA.
Immediate or acute health effects may show up after a single exposure or repeated exposures. These include irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat, headaches, dizziness, and fatigue. Such immediate effects are usually short-term and treatable. Sometimes the treatment is simply eliminating the person’s exposure to the source of the pollution if it can be identified. Symptoms of some diseases, including asthma, hypersensitivity pneumonitis, and humidifier fever, may also show up soon after exposure to some indoor air pollutants. Other, chronic health effects may show up either years after exposure has occurred or only after long or repeated periods of exposure. These effects, which include some respiratory diseases, heart disease, and cancer, can be severely debilitating or fatal.
About the author
James J. Periconi, Esq.
James Periconi’s practice focuses almost equally on commercial property transaction counseling, on environmental regulatory matters in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), and on environmental litigation in the federal and state courts. A former Chief of Solid and Hazardous Waste Enforcement for the State DEC and an Assistant New York Attorney General prosecuting civil and criminal environmental cases, he has in private practice since 1989 had substantial experience representing defendants in governmental actions brought for remediation of Superfund and other contaminated sites, and for prosecution and defense of private cost recovery actions for such sites.
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