Carcinogenicity and Toxicity of benzene

Benzene is both toxic (section 15.4.5) and, separately, carcinogenic (cancer-causing) -- a hazard serious enough that benzene is sometimes described as 'the mother of all carcinogens', since a large number of known carcinogenic compounds are structurally built around one or more benzene rings. Polycyclic aromatic compounds, containing more than two fused benzene rings, form as byproducts of the incomplete combustion of tobacco, coal and petroleum, and these are a major real-world source of exposure. Inside the body, in the liver, benzene itself is metabolically oxidised to an epoxide; a related polycyclic compound, benzopyrene, is similarly converted into an epoxy diol. These oxidised metabolites are the genuinely carcinogenic sp …