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Air Pollution, Heart Disease and Stroke

Exposure to air pollution contributes to the development of cardiovascular diseases (heart disease and stroke).

A person’s relative risk due to air pollution is small compared with the impact of established cardiovascular risk factors such as smoking, obesity, or high blood pressure. However, this is a serious public health problem because an enormous number of people are exposed over an entire lifetime.

Background

Until May of 2004, the American Heart Association had not issued any expert reviewed statement about the short-term and long-term effects of chronic exposure to different pollutants. This was due to flaws in research design and methodology of many pollution studies. During the last decade, however, epidemiological studies conducted worldwide have shown a consistent, increased risk for cardiovascular events, including heart and stroke deaths, in relation to short- and long-term exposure to present-day concentrations of pollution, especially particulate matter.

Elderly patients, people with underlying heart or lung disease, lower socioeconomic populations and diabetics may be at particularly increased risk. More research is needed to find out the differential toxicity of various constituents of air pollution.

Components of Air Pollution Air pollution is composed of many environmental factors. They include carbon monoxide, nitrates, sulfur dioxide, ozone, lead, secondhand tobacco smoke and particulate matter. Particulate matter, also known as particle pollution, is composed of solid and liquid particles within the air. It can be generated from vehicle emissions, tire fragmentation and road dust, power generation and industrial combustion, smelting and other metal processing, construction and demolition activities, residential wood burning, windblown soil, pollens, molds, forest fires, volcanic emissions and sea spray. These particles vary considerably in size, composition and origin...

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Air Pollution Impact in U.S. Cities

Another study confirmed the importance of variations of pollution within a single city. Its findings suggested that a person’s exposure to toxic components of air pollution may vary as much within one city as across different cities. After studying 5,000 adults for eight years, the researchers also found that exposure to traffic-related air pollutants was more highly related to mortality than were city-wide background levels. For example, those who lived near a major road were more likely to die of a cardiovascular event.

Some research has estimated that people living in the most polluted U.S. cities could lose between 1.8 and 3.1 years because of exposure to chronic air pollution. This has led some scientists to conclude that

Short-term exposure to elevated levels of particle pollution is associated with a higher risk of death due to a cardiovascular event.
Hospital admissions for several cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases rise in response to higher concentrations of particle pollution.
Prolonged exposure to elevated levels of particle pollution is a factor in reducing overall life expectancy by a few years.

http://www.americanheart.org/presen...identifier=4419