Poor diet, lack of exercise, and now, breathing...

Dirty air could kill you

BostonNow Daily News, March 4, 2008

by

Adrianne Appel, BostonNOW Correspondent

     People in Boston and other cities are more likely to have heart attacks, strokes and hardening of the arteries than non-city dwellers, according to public health experts.

     The culprit, scientists now believe, is air pollution, especially the small particles spewed by cars, trucks, buses, power plants and other sources.

     "It's another risk factor on top of smoking, lack of exercise, obesity and poor diet," Douglas Dockery, chair of the Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health said.

     Heart disease is the leading cause of death for Bostonians, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.

     One recent, peer-reviewed study in Science estimated an additional 60,000 deaths nationwide by heart disease and lung ailments due to air pollution.

     And a large, 2003 study by New York University researchers found that people have a 31 percent higher risk of dying of heart disease if exposed long-term to significant air pollution levels permitted by law until 1997.

     The federal Environmental Protection Agency disappointed Dockery and other public health experts in 2006 by failing to lower the annual allowable level of small particles in air, currently at 15 micrometers per cubic meter of air. Boston averaged 13 micrograms in 2002, down to 11 in 2006, according to the EPA.

     While Boston air pollution is not as bad as many cities, it is dangerous enough.

     When air pollution in Boston has spiked, heart attacks have too, Dockery said. Ditto for the incidence of dangerous, irregular heartbeats, called arrhythmias, often controlled with devices called defibrillators.

     "The defibrillator alarms go off more frequently when air pollution is increased," Dockery said.

     Scientists are trying to zero in on which of many toxins in small particulate matter harm the heart.

     "There are so many components of air pollution, it's difficult to pinpoint which component is responsible," Michael McClean, an assistant professor of environmental health at Boston University said.

"We are basically breathing an aerosolized oil spill."

--John Incardona, M.D., biologist, on breathing dirty city air

     John Incardona, a biologist and physician, spent years studying the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska and its impact on fish and other vertebrates. He found that a group of chemicals in oil called small PAH's, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, damaged the developing hearts of herring and pink salmon.

     Biologically speaking, fish and humans are closely related. "What isn't good for them, isn't good for us," said Incardona during the recent meeting in Boston of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

     While fish are exposed to PAH's in water, humans are exposed to PAH's released into the air from the incomplete combustion of oil, gas and coal, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

     "We are basically breathing an aerosolized oil spill," Incardona told BostonNOW