Chance News 51
Quotation
Forsooths
Credit utilization ratio
“Is Your Credit Too Good? Why lenders are punishing those who borrow too little and always pay on time”, by Cybele Weisser, TIME, June 22, 2009
[T]he formula for determining credit scores … looks at something called your “utilization ratio,” the total amount of credit you use vs. the amount you have available. If you have $25,000 worth of available credit and you put $5,000 on your cards every month, your utilization ratio is a healthy … 20%. But cut down that credit line to $10,000 and suddenly your ratio jumps to 50%, making you look pretty overextended.
Submitted by Margaret Cibes
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“EPA study: 2.2M live in areas where air poses cancer risk”
by Brad Heath and Blake Morrison, USA TODAY, June 24, 2009
This article gives a brief report about the National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment for 2002 , an EPA study of excess cancer risks from breathing 181 air toxics over an assumed lifetime of 70 years. The EPA updates information about air toxics emissions every three years, after which it conducts an analysis which is reviewed by the states, evaluated for accuracy, and released - apparently a long process.
According to the EPA, the study found 2 million people with an increased cancer risk of greater than 100 in 1 million.
According to the article, the study found air pollution to be a health threat “around major cities … although some of the counties where the air was even worse were in rural areas ….” The worst neighborhood was outside Los Angeles, where the estimated excess cancer risk was “more than 1,200 in 1 million, 34 times the national average.” The article provided no information about rural areas; however, the EPA provides a map (scroll to bottom of web page).
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Discussion
1. How might one measure “cancer risk”?
2. What does it mean to measure “excess,” or “increased,” cancer risk?
3. Why does the EPA measure excess risk over a “lifetime”? How do you think they identified people who had lived in a region over a “lifetime”? Would the fact that air pollution levels might change over a “lifetime” affect any aspect of the study?
4. Estimate the national average excess cancer risk. Is it higher or lower than the EPA’s ceiling of 100 in 1 million? Do you think it makes sense to refer to a _national average_ of excess cancer risk?
5. See the map of county data. Are you surprised about any locales?
Submitted by Margaret Cibes
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