Air Pollution is bad for your heart, even short term exposure to elevated levels of particulate matter

Main Category: Cardiovascular / Cardiology
Article Date: 02 Jun 2004 - 1:00 PDT

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When you are exposed to air pollution it is not only your lungs that are affected, but also your heart - and the threat is a serious one, says the American Heart Association (AHA) after conducting a comprehensive review of documents and studies on air pollution and cardiovascular disease.

You can read about this new study in the journal Circulation.

This new study carried out by the AHA, was led by Dr. R Brook, Michigan University, Ann Arbor, USA. Dr. Brook wrote "The existing body of evidence is adequately consistent, coherent, and plausible enough to draw several conclusions." He went on to say that when levels of PM (particulate matter) are elevated, even short-term exposure contributes to increased acute cardiovascular mortality, particularly in certain at-risk subsets of the population.

Dr. Brook and his team (panel) found that when levels of PM were elevated hospital admissions for cardiovascular and pulmonary disease went up significantly. The team also added that long term exposure to elevated levels of PM had a negative impact of some years on life expectancy.

Dr. Brook said "The increase in relative risk for heart disease due to air pollution for an individual is small compared with the impact of established cardiovascular risk factors. However, this is a serious public health problem due to the enormous number of people affected and because exposure to air pollution occurs over an entire lifetime."

More worrying, said the team, was data that indicated that even when PM levels were not that high (within normal levels) there was still an impact on harmful cardiovascular effects. They said the Environmental Protection Agency should look again at what normal PM levels should be (bring the acceptable levels down).