The Heavy Health Toll of Air Pollution: Recent studies

Not that we needed any more evidence of the negative effects of pollution, but three studies this week found that higher levels of air pollution not only increased risk of stroke, but of heart attacks and cognitive decline. A previous post on pollution here . There is a very disturbing trend on the conservative side to defund public transit which is abominable given these recent statistics on the health toll of traffic pollutants, let alone the threats from climate change. Info on the practice here.

February 15, 2012, 10:31 am
Air Pollution Linked to Heart and Brain Risks
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
Keith Meyers/The New York TimesA layer of smog rests over Lower Manhattan.

It may be time to start paying more attention to those local air pollution alerts.

That is the message of three new studies this week that found, collectively, that people exposed to higher levels of air pollution have a greater risk of stroke, heart attacks and cognitive deterioration.

The impact of pollution on the heart and brain was seen over both the short and the long term. One nationwide study that followed nearly 20,000 women over a decade found that breathing in levels of polluted air like those commonly found in most parts of the country greatly accelerates declines in measures of memory and attention span. Another study in Boston found that on days when concentrations of traffic pollutants went up, so did the risk of stroke. The odds climbed by more than 30 percent even on days classified by the federal air quality index as “moderate” pollution days, which is intended to correspond to a minimal danger to health.

“At levels that the Environmental Protection Agency says are safe, we’re seeing real health effects,” said Gregory A. Wellenius, an associate professor of epidemiology at Brown University and lead author of the study linking pollution to stroke. “We saw these effects within 12 to 14 hours of when pollution levels went up...”.

After controlling for age, hypertension and a slew of other risk factors for stroke, the researchers found a 34 percent higher risk at times when pollution levels climbed from “good” to “moderate.” (In the Boston area, where the study was conducted, pollution levels rarely climb very high, Dr. Wellenius said.) The effect was particularly strong when the researchers looked at levels of so-called black carbon and nitrogen dioxide, two markers of pollution from traffic.

Reducing air pollution levels by just 20 percent, an “achievable” goal, Dr. Wellenius said, “would have prevented about 6,000 of the 184,000 hospitalizations for stroke in the Northeast region” in 2007 alone, he said. The results were published this week in The Archives of Internal Medicine.

In a separate report published Tuesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, scientists at the University Paris Descartes in France helped bolster the link between short-term exposure to air pollution and cardiovascular disease. They found that a variety of common pollutants — carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and others — raised a person’s immediate risk of having a heart attack...

An Ounce of Prevention: Parallel Stories in the Newspaper

This article was a plea from a computer scientist at UCB for more computer experts to get involved in the "war on cancer." And, indeed, in such a multifactorial, huge medical health issue, the more help the better. In the last week there was also this article outlining an online website to raise funds for cancer research: a highly laudable effort, also.

In the same bout of newspaper reading, there is this article exploring the increasing dust in the American west and its effect on snow melt (it increases it.) Some of the reasons posited for the increase in dust (which has lead to high asthma rates) is global warming and off road vehicle use.
And this article looking at the risky but lucrative practice of deep sea drilling off the coast of Brazil. ""We see big slicks of oil, fish that have changed colors," he said."
And this article examining the ground water pollution resulting from the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. ""Fracking poses serious threats to safe drinking water... Last year, Wyoming became one of the first states to require oil and gas companies to publicly disclose the chemicals used in fracking. Colorado regulators are considering doing the same."

And this article describing the dangerous lack of regulation, ie "self regulation" in the natural gas pipelines in Pennsylvania.

The point being, that there is a cavalier, reckless attitude toward the potential health risks in all of these practices mentioned above from carbon emissions, to off road vehicles, deep oil drilling, fracking, and natural gas production. And then scrambling on the other end to try to combat cancer, asthma and other health risks that are increasing by the day. It is glaringly obvious that it is all about incentives, and that is where the conversation needs to go.

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Update:
And then there is this story about the nuclear regulatory commission members, all pro-industry fighting tooth an nail to relax regulations. It never ends.