Email a Friend
Print ArticleHeart Disease Health Center
This article is from the WebMD News Archive
Air Pollution Linked to Heart Deaths
More Exposure, Greater Risk continued...
The 36 cities represented in the study had average levels of this type of pollution ranging from 3.4 micrograms per cubic meter (in Honolulu) to 28.3 (in Riverside, Calif.), write the researchers.
According to the EPA, in 2005, Los Angeles, Birmingham, Detroit, and Pittsburgh were among the cities with the most fine particulate air pollution, with pollution levels ranging from 18 to 21 micrograms per cubic meter.
Tucson, Ariz.; Miami; and Reno, Nev., were among the cities with the cleanest air, with levels below 10.
After adjusting for other heart disease and stroke risk factors, Kaufman and colleagues concluded that each 10-unit increase in air levels of fine particulate matter was associated with a 76% increase in the risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
Higher long-term exposure to air pollution was also linked to an increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease.
‘Overwhelming Evidence’
Environmental epidemiologist Douglas Dockery, ScD, of the Harvard School of Public Health, tells WebMD that it is now clear that fine particle air pollutants poses a unique risk to health, but the reason for this is not so clear.
“It may be their chemical composition, their size, or their ability to transport other pollutants deep into the lungs,” he says. “There is a lot of research going on right now attempting to figure this out.”
Dockery says the scientific evidence supporting tighter restrictions on fine particle pollution levels is now overwhelming.
EPA officials failed to tighten these restrictions when they considered the matter last fall, ignoring the recommendations of the agency’s own scientists.
On Wednesday, EPA scientists called for tightened restrictions on ozone pollution, according to the Associated Press, which quoted a government official as saying that the move was also likely to stir controversy within the agency.
“The [Washington University] findings provide important new information about the health risks associated with air pollution that needs to be addressed,” Dockery says.
American Heart Association spokesman Russell Luepker, MD, MS, agrees that federal regulators could be doing much more to address the problem.
Luepker is a cardiologist and a professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota.
“We have the technology to reduce the fine particle pollutants in the air, but we don’t have the political will,” he says. “As with many environmental issues, we have seen a great deal of resistance to change.”
del.icio.us
Being overweight is a heart disease risk factor, but there may be something more women of all shapes and sizes should worry about.
