When she turned 62 in 2012, Lata Dewan and her husband decided to move down from their home in small-town Georgia. They moved into a brand-new townhouse in the commercial center of Atlanta. “It was my dream home … close to my daughter’s family.”
Dewan was excited to spend more time with his grandson and lead an active life in the city. But in the first year in his new house, he started having trouble breathing. At first, he tried allergy pills, thinking that it was only a rough ragweed season. Over the next 5 years, he had long and long stretches of wheezing with trouble breathing and needed more and more drugs. She started a short-acting inhaler, then a long-acting inhaler, and eventually needed steroids to keep her airway open.
Winters were the most difficult. “I had no energy for months … I could barely breathe,” Dewan said. Her lung doctor dismissed the usual suspects. Mr. Dewan had no history of lung disease. He did not smoke, no one else was smoking. And did not change his diet or start using new products in his home.
His Visit in India
Lata Dewan left, and her husband, Raj, walked off a busy, traffic-choked street in a quiet part of downtown Atlanta. His lungs thank him. Once he had similar problems on his rare visits to India, which have some of the highest pollution levels in the world.
Finding that gridlock outside her window in Atlanta helped her void. “The car packs the road from morning to night; Only the evening will be clear.” Dewan and his doctor began to suspect the polluted air that she had been breathing for years was having a huge impact on her health.
For millions of Americans like Dewanji, every breath brings toxic air into the lungs. There, pollutants can mix into the bloodstream and cause damage throughout the body. The American Lung Association’s 2019 “State of the Air” report shows that more than 141 million people live in counties with unhealthy air, an increase of 7 million from the 2018 report.
Science clearly shows that unhealthy air is dangerous. Air pollution, particularly invisible, airborne particulate pollution – known as PM 2.5 – increases the risk of serious health problems. And it can kill. Despite very low levels play a role in death from cardiac and lung diseases.
Correlations
The relationship between health risks and air pollution is so strong that the Director-General of the World Health Organization; Tedros Adenom Ghebaius, Ph.D., call air pollution the new tobacco. Recent estimates suggest that polluted air played a role in bus breathing. More than 8 million deaths worldwide, outnumber tobacco deaths.
Richard Muller, Ph.D., a physicist and climate researcher at the University of California, compares tobacco one step further. Based on their work, in 2018, the average American harmed about one-third of cigarette health every day. While one-third of cigarettes a day may not sound much, it adds more than a hundred cigarettes in 1 year, and more than 1,000 in 10 years. He said that every man, woman, and child in America has been included in the health risks caused by air pollution.
“Air pollution is the biggest environmental disaster in the world today. “In my mind, it’s condemnable that we’re not paying too much attention to it,” Muller says.
Are we all smokers?
Müller warns that he is not suggesting that breathing in air pollution is actually similar to smoking cigarettes. This is like a mathematical example of how both can be equally damaged for some time.
Yet research suggests that the health risks from cigarette smoking and air pollution are similar. A recent study found that breathing air with a slight increase in air pollution levels over 10 years causes the same type of lung damage, which appears on a day after 29 years of smoking cigarettes. Air pollution also leads to many other health risks connected with smoking – from emphysema and lung cancer to heart disease and stroke. Like cigarettes, even small amounts are not safe. The more we inhale, the greater the risk.
Researchers have found that even a slight increase in particulate pollution increases the risk of dying from heart or lung disease and lung cancer. People who have never smoked are also more likely to get lung cancer and this leads to death due to increased levels of air pollution.
Pretty much everyone understands air pollutants throughout, which is partly due to air pollution causing health obstacles in so many people. Dr. Egdon Pope, Ph.D., professor of economics at Brigham Young University and the effects of World-renowned experts on effects say. Air pollution. He prefers to equate air pollution to second-hand smoke rather than actual smoke. He describes- living in a space with high pollution is higher like living with characters who smoke 2 to 3 packs daily.
There is another major difference as well. Unlike cigarettes, air pollution does not usually come with a warning label or a telltale odor. For most of us, there are no signs that we are “breathing” until the damage has been done. And we do not have control over the air we breathe.
What are we doing
Cigarette smokers inhale more than 7,000 chemicals each time they light, and at least 69 of these are thought to be the cause of cancer.
The structure of air pollution is very diverse and depends on where we reside. In the US, fossil fuel pollution is the biggest killer, with an estimated 200,000 deaths per year. Burning fossil fuels such as gas and coal, from cars to power plants, removes many dangerous pollutants into the air. Every time we start our engines, cancer-causing toxins such as benzene are filled with air with hazardous gases and particles. Whenever coal is burnt, dangerous fine particles, mercury, lead, and other heavy metals are spread in the sky. Even natural phenomena such as wildfires can harm our health, sending particles and dangerous gases far into the air.
Why it Happen
These gases and toxins can be mixed through chemical reactions to create ozone and fine particulate pollutants, which are the most common and most harmful pollutants found throughout the US and worldwide. Particle pollution is not really a thing. It is an umbrella term for any small particles, which is smaller than a grain of sand, mixed with liquid. The smaller the particles, the more effective they affect the body’s defenses. Fine and ultrafine particles are considered the most dangerous because toxic contaminants such as metals and small allergens can ride on them and travel deep into the lungs.
Ozone is the core of the smog. Ground-level ozone can cause shortness of breath, asthma, and lung swelling. Toxic ozone is produced when some gases and chemicals are cooked in the heat of the sun. According to summer temperatures globally due to climate change, researchers say, ozone will remain more common and longer after exposure to it.
What happens when we breathe?
In the short term, spikes in air pollution can worsen medical problems such as asthma and heart disease. For a long time, low-level exposures considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may also play a role in developing lung and heart diseases. More and more research now finds links to damage almost every organ in our body, from our brain to our bones.
Dean Schröfnagel, MD, director of the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Forum of the International Respiratory Society, helps people make connections between the steady stream of “low-dose” pollution. Down the line. “Air pollution is really a silent killer. … as long as people have lung cancer or heart disease, they think … that oh, it’s bad luck or bad genes’; He did not realize that air pollution could also have a role in many years. ”
All Human beings are Victims
Younger children and older adults face the greatest risk because their body defenses are less strong than healthy adults. For children, the loss may begin before their birth. Air pollution can cause early births and low birth weight, which can cause infants to have lifelong health problems.
After birth, babies face a greater risk from air pollution because their organs are still developing. They also carry high amounts of pollutants as they spend more time outdoors, breathe faster than adults, and breathe more through their mouths. Nostrils are very good at keeping pollution out of the body.
Breathing in polluted air at critical development times can also damage young children’s brains, affecting how they think and feel. Polluted air has been associated with a higher risk of mental health problems such as autism, low intelligence, attention problems, and anxiety. The elderly brain may also see harmful effects along with air pollution. Older adults living close to busy roads have a higher risk of dementia. And spikes in air pollution can commence to a stroke.
Researchers have begun to see why air pollution has such far-reaching effects on our bodies. In addition to direct damage from many parts of the body, when the lungs are bombarded with pollutants, a set of signals leads to the release of chemical messengers into the blood. These chemicals can damage the lining of blood vessels, increase the risk of blood clots and cause inflammation that can affect each organ of our body.
Silent Killer
Most of us do not know about the pollutants we are breathing. Also paying less attention to the long-term health risks of air pollution.
In the United States, air monitoring stations collect data on pollutants such as ozone and ozone so that people can be alerted when the level is acceptable. But these monitors do not provide neighborhood-level information and cannot capture “hot spots” where people like Dewanji live. This is perfect for people living on busy roads. Even on alert days, people who do not have symptoms may not think that they should be warned.
Two young app developers in Paris want to change this.
Amauri Martini came into Muller’s air pollution-to-cigarette calculation about a year ago and describes it as an “aha” moment. Martini and designer Marcello Coelho created a free app using Muller’s formula and PM2.5 data from hundreds of air quality data stations in cities around the world. When the app is open, it locates your phone, finds the nearest Air Monitor data for PM2.5, and converts it to the “equivalent” number of health-damaging cigarettes. He found that many of his American downloads occurred during a California wildfire in 2018 when the app would have made 45 staggering performances per day in a wildfire area.
Martini and Coelho stress that their “main goal is to raise awareness of the risk of air pollution. … What was amazing about the equation was that it was really solid for everyone to do something that was really This very essence of PM2.5 was transformed into scientific perception.… Everyone knows what effect cigarettes can have on your body. “And everyone knows that to smoke cigarettes is” safe. ” Per level is not “.
Why don’t we cut back?
Over the past 20 years, Americans have mostly been shielded from high levels of air pollution because EPA programs have greatly improved air quality. Annual particles have decreased by an average of 40% since 2000. According to a 2017 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Congressional report, EPA’s air regulations save tens of billions of dollars.
Most of the savings are known as “co-benefits”, meaning benefits to human health that result from lower health care costs and fewer premature deaths.
“We have done a good job of reducing our air pollution. It has improved our health, and we have done it at a time of rapid economic expansion, ”says Pope. “It is very clear that this is not a trade-off between clean air and jobs. The reality is that we can reduce our air pollution, as well as improve economic activity. So it’s a win-win situation.” Is like. ”
Air Quality
But recent changes to the EPA may affect air quality and health far and wide in the future. The leadership of the EPA has shifted from important committees such as the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) to replace independent science advisors and has stopped a panel of experts who study the most up-to-date particle pollution science are doing.
But the ALA (American Lung Association) and other health advocacy groups have raised alarm about EPA plans to gush or limit many programs that curtailed air pollution and recover the health of American societies. The organization cites:
Plans to roll back fuel efficiency standards for trucks and cars. Repeal the Clean Power Plan and replace it with a rule that can increase emissions. Changes how EPA is beneficial to human health by reducing pollution from toxic air pollutants including mercury and PM2.5
According to experts, all these changes will probably have the opposite effect of progress in reducing air pollution and preventing related deaths.
What happens when we leave?
Although air pollution levels are better in most communities in America than in other places in the world, we can do more to reduce our risk of long-term health problems. “The only thing that makes sense based on the evidence is that we should continue to try to reduce our risk of air pollution. “It doesn’t come without vigilance, and it doesn’t come without efforts,” Pope speaks.
Did you know
New electronic tolls (E-ZPass) in New Jersey and Pennsylvania reduced traffic congestion from idle cars, improved birth weight, and reduced early births for mothers living less than 1.5 miles from the toll plaza.
Much of what, we understand about the health advantages of clean air comes from “natural operations.” Whereas researchers study what happens to people in areas after pollution levels decrease, such as when large Factories are closed or traffic routes changed. Most of these studies show improvement in health quickly.
After the closure of coal and oil power plants in California, there were fewer victims in neighboring communities. New electronic tolls (E-ZPass) in New Jersey and Pennsylvania reduced traffic congestion from idle cars, improved birth weight, and reduced early births for mothers living less than 1.5 miles from the toll plaza . When air pollution was controlled during the Olympics in Beijing, birth weight improved for infants in the area. And when traffic reopened during the Olympics in Atlanta, there were fewer ER visits and hospitals for asthma for local children.
Around the world, research suggests that fewer emissions lead to cleaner air, less asthma, lungs that work better, and less cough, congestion, and mucus in young children.
How can we protect ourselves?
The most reliable way to reduce the risk of health problems is to bypass breathing in the polluted atmosphere. This is especially true for pregnant women, infants, children, older adults, and people with chronic medical problems. But if you live in high-traffic areas or close to polluting factories, it is difficult to do so.
Facemasks, especially those called Respirator Masks, if worn properly, can filter out polluting effluents. The main problem is that people have to buy the right mask and wear it with an airtight seal; Otherwise, it does not filter out harmful pollution. Besides, most masks do not filter out certain toxic gases and can still prevent harmful lung irritation.
For most people, paying consideration to air quality signals is a good start. It is very important to avoid outdoor activities on “unhealthy wind days”. Beyond air quality alert days, doctors recommend walking or exercising in areas away from high-traffic roads and idle cars or buses. High-quality HEPA air filters can reduce air particles in the home. And eating a healthy diet and exercising can also reduce health risks from air pollution.
Why Face Dirty Air
For Dewanjee, after trying air filters in her home and taking several medications to improve breathing, she finally decided to walk away. Two years ago, he found a home in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood in Atlanta. Now 69, she sees a major improvement in her breathing. “Myself see a big difference. I do not use any steroids, no inhalers. Only, I use allergy pills for a few weeks a year. Me suspected these difficulties when I travelled to India. … That can’t believe that I would have the same problems here. ”
But for the largest people, moving is not a choice. Schröfange l emphasized that the most important thing people can do about the risks of air pollution is. “If enough people say ‘we don’t want dirty air. We want clean air, and we fear it’s affecting our health’. Then the decision-makers take steps to ensure. All that will be required to lift is automobiles are cleaners and power plants are cleaners.” So we can all breathe clean air.
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