Benzene concentrations in Hamilton, 2003–16

Benzene is a volatile organic compound (VOC) that is common in the air. Motor vehicles are benzene’s primary emission source (Guerreiro, Foltescu, & de Leeuw, 2014; Weisel, 2010) although burning wood or coal for home heating, volcanoes, and forest fires also emit benzene.
Benzene is a human carcinogen (World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe Copenhagen, 2000) that has been shown to cause leukaemia (Smith, 2010), and is associated with developmental, immune, neurological, reproductive, and respiratory problems (Bahadar, Mostafalou, & Abdollahi, 2014). Acute exposure can affect the liver and respiration (Bahadar et al, 2014).
More information on this dataset and how it relates to our environmental reporting indicators and topics can be found in the attached data quality pdf.