Air pollution may kill more Africans than HIV/AIDS

Posted on December 21, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

AIDS and malaria epidemics receive much attention from international health organizations, but a sneakier killer is on the loose in Africa. Air pollution may now be the continent’s number one killer, according to a forthcoming study. Susanne Bauer, an Earth Institute affiliate who models atmospheric composition at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, presented these findings at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Thursday.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the widespread practice of burning crop residues helps to clear stubble from fields and fertilize the soil. “It’s really, really cheap to treat your fields after the harvesting season with fires,” explained Bauer during her presentation. But where there’s fire, there’s smoke. The practice releases fine particles into the air that can harm human health, and sub-Saharan Africa alone produces about a third of the planet’s burning biomass emissions. Bauer and her colleagues set out to learn more about the particles’ origins, chemistry, and health effects.

The Biggest Killer

The team used a climate model and satellite data to map where the biomass burning takes place. They tracked where the smoke from those fires ends up, and studied the distribution of gases and harmful particulates that come from other sources, such as industry and nature. Then they fed the data into an economic health model to estimate how many lives each type of pollution would shorten. The model takes into account factors such as population density, age distribution, and risk factors from other diseases.

Bauer and her colleagues calculated that the largest portion of Africa’s air pollution-related deaths came from a surprising source. “The biggest killer on that continent is nature, because of the gigantic dust sources around the Sahara,” said Bauer.

Particles smaller than 2.5 microns—about half as wide as a red blood cell—can lodge themselves in human airways. Once inside, they increase a person’s risk of lung cancer, heart attack, lung disease, stroke, heart disease, and more.

The team calculated that Saharan dust and other natural pollutants cause 1.2 million Africans to die prematurely every year. That’s more than AIDS, which kills around 760,000 Africans per year, on average.

In 2015, AIDS was unseated as the leading cause of death in Africa. It was replaced by lower respiratory infections, such as pneumonia and bronchitis, which claim one million African lives per year.

By these estimates, air pollution from the Sahara is the number one killer in Africa. In addition, studies suggest that some types of air pollution are linked to respiratory infections.

Other Dangers

Industrial and urban emissions were the second deadliest source of air pollution. They claim 324,000 lives per year, according to the team’s estimates. Gases emitted by vehicles and factories—such as ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides and sulfates—as well as soot and organic carbon were mostly to blame. This manmade pollution ranks between meningitis and malaria in Africa’s leading causes of death.

Although burning forests and fields created the largest amount of air pollutants in the study, the practice takes place in areas where population density is low. As a result, biomass burning ranked as the third largest source of air pollution-related deaths. It causes an estimated 70,000 premature deaths per year.

One weakness of the study, said Bauer, is that she and her colleagues assumed all types of fine particles had equal toxicity. That may not be the case in reality. However, scientists don’t know much about each particle’s specific effects on human death rates.

Growing Awareness

“I think it’s very striking that air pollution’s overall mortality is the same order of magnitude as AIDS,” said Bauer. “There are a lot of initiatives to fight AIDS, to fight malaria, but air pollution is certainly under-addressed on that continent.”

Part of the reason for its obscurity may be that premature deaths from air pollution are hard to pinpoint. You can’t diagnose them like you can for malaria and AIDS. The negative effects of air pollution can manifest in a variety of ways, and exacerbate conditions that can have multiple causes.

“I don’t think society understood how dangerous it is,” she said.

The team calculated that interventions—such as reducing pollution from industrial sources, improving land management techniques, distributing masks, and informing people about the dangers of dust storms—could save 350 thousand lives each year.

Tackling air pollution in Africa will not be easy. Many nations already face political, economic, and social challenges, on top of other known health problems. But Bauer says awareness about the dangers of air pollution is growing, and that’s the first step toward fixing the problem.

via Air pollution may kill more Africans than HIV/AIDS

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Salt Particles From Afghanistan Are Causing Severe Air Pollution In Delhi, And It’s Gonna Stay

Posted on December 20, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

The pollution is Delhi is touching an all-time high because of Afghanistan and there is a scientific research to support this argument. According to a new study, air-borne particles from the salt mines of Afghanistan are pushing up the levels of air pollutants in Delhi.

At first, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) team had thought that the wind might be carrying sea salt from either the Bay of Bengal or the Arabian Sea. Subsequently, the source of the pollutants was traced to Afghanistan.

A study by the CPCB scientists, including its air laboratory chief Dipankar Saha, has found that about 11 per cent of PM2.5 in Delhi are salt particles.

However, since the study was undertaken during the winter months, the scientists ruled out the possibility of the particles being carried from the sea as the wind direction was generally from the north or north-west during this period.

The scientists also found the presence of metals such as chromium and copper in the city’s air, which Saha said were being emitted by the electroplating industries in Haryana.

via Salt Particles From Afghanistan Are Causing Severe Air Pollution In Delhi, And It’s Gonna Stay – Indiatimes.com

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Tehran’s football matches cancelled due to air pollution

Posted on December 19, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Two football matches in Hazfi Cup were postponed because of air pollution in Tehran, capital of Iran.

Esteghlal match against Iranjavan Bushehr was cancelled on Monday and Iran football officials also postponed a match between Persepolis and Sanat Naft in Tehran’s Azadi Stadium.

No new date for the fixtures has been announced.

Iran shut primary schools in the capital and other parts of the country on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday due to choking levels of air pollution.

A blanket of smog has covered neighbourhoods in the capital in the past few days. Authorities also ordered mines and cement factories in Tehran province to close and reinforced regular traffic restrictions in the capital’s centre.

In 2012, pollution contributed to the premature deaths of 4,500 people in Tehran and about 80,000 in the country, the health ministry said.

via Tehran’s football matches cancelled due to air pollution

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How Air Pollution Affects Young Brains

Posted on December 19, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

A new study from the University of Southern California suggests a link between air pollution and adolescent delinquency.

We already know that invisible elements of our environment can harm us: Lead exposure can lower a child’s IQ, and air pollution kills more than 3 million people a year. Now, a study from the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine suggests that air pollution may be having insidious effects on young people’s brains.

The study, published last week in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, followed 682 children in greater Los Angeles for nine years from the age of nine to 18. It concluded that air pollution may increase delinquent behavior in adolescents.

From 2000 to 2014, researchers measured daily air pollution in Southern California. The pollution was measured as particulate matter or PM2.5, which refers to the maximum diameter, 2.5 microns, of the tiny particles measured. (As a point of comparison, a strand of hair is around 60 microns thick.) To assess delinquency, researchers asked parents to keep a child-behavior checklist, where they recorded behaviors such as lying, stealing, and substance abuse.

While parsing the study’s air quality and child behavior data, researchers saw that air pollution estimates were higher in neighborhoods near freeways and with less foliage, and found that delinquent behavior was more prevalent among boys, African Americans, adolescents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and those who lived in neighborhoods with limited green space. The study also noted that the effects of air pollution on delinquency were worsened by poor parent-child relationships and social stress.In order to adjust for the different living and environmental factors of participants, researchers gave questionnaires to parents that recorded the gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and residential characteristics of the children who were participating.

“We saw that [air pollution] was still having an adverse affect, even after for controlling for all these variables,” said Diana Younan, the study’s lead author. Younan said she wasn’t exactly surprised by the study’s findings. “Over the past 20 years, air pollution studies have been coming out and showing that it can affect the brain,” she said. “But looking at specific behaviors, [like] substance abuse and mental health, is still new.”The new study points out that both PM2.5 concentrations and crime rates have been falling in Southern California, and suggests conducting more research into whether the former may have been a contributing factor for the latter. But the effects of existing pollution are detrimental, particularly for minority communities. According to the Los Angeles Times, the City of Los Angeles signed off on 3,000 housing units near freeways in 2016, even though people who live near traffic pollution suffer from a spate of health problems including higher rates of hearth attacks and lung cancer. And research has shown that communities of color tend to be disproportionately affected by air pollution.

Younan said that she would be careful about claiming outright that air pollution causes delinquency. “I wouldn’t use the word ‘causation,’” she said. “But we know the exposure occurred before the outcome. We can say [the study] provided evidence that there’s a strong association between the two.”

Delinquency can’t just be written off as youthful misbehaving. Especially from the ages of 12 to 16, it is a strong predictor of future criminal convictions. (A 2015 paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research posited that car pollution had a measurable effect on Chicago’s criminal activity.) But it is only one of the side effects of air pollution. Younan’s past work has looked at the link between air pollution and obesity, and how air pollution may cause dementia in older women.

Younan hopes that more researchers will take up the issue, so that the evidence of air pollution’s effects on adolescents will become impossible for cities to ignore. “For policy to change, there [have] to be a lot of studies coming out to show this,” she said.

Decreasing air pollution is no easy feat: Its causes are rooted in many aspects of city life. Lawmakers would have to tackle reforms in everything from transportation to construction to industry to curtail it significantly. According to Younan, one of the hardest parts of enacting pollution reform is getting the city and its sectors even to address it.

“Air pollution is dangerous for many organs,” she said. “Not just the lungs, or the heart, but the brain.”

via How Air Pollution Affects Young Brains – CityLab

Posted in Air Quality, Health Effects of Air Pollution, Medical Studies, USA, USA & Canada | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bad behavior in teens linked to air pollution

Posted on December 14, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

A lack of clean air through pollution — and the foliage necessary to filter it out — in urban areas has been linked to bad behavior among 9- to 18-year-olds.

Tiny pollution particles called particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5), which measure 30 times smaller than a strand of hair, are extremely harmful to your health, especially to developing brains that shape the personalities of young people, a new study from the University of Southern California revealed.

“These tiny, toxic particles creep into your body, affecting your lungs and your heart,” the study’s lead author, Diana Younan, told the USC News. “Studies are beginning to show exposure to various air pollutants also causes inflammation in the brain. PM2.5 is particularly harmful to developing brains because it can damage brain structure and neural networks and, as our study suggests, influence adolescent behaviors.”

The study, published in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, focused on Los Angeles. It saw that with heavy pollution, bad behavior in teenagers was exacerbated by poor parent-child relationships and the parents’ mental and social stress levels.

“Previous studies by others have shown that early exposure to lead disrupts brain development and increases aggressive behavior and juvenile delinquency,” Younan said. “It’s possible that growing up in places with unhealthy levels of small particles outdoors may have similar negative behavioral outcomes.”

For nine years, beginning when the 682 Los Angeles-based children involved in the study were 9 years old, parents completed a behavioral checklist on their kids every few years. The list was made up of 13 bad behaviors like lying, cheating, stealing, arson, truancy, vandalism and substance abuse.

Additionally, 25 air quality monitors were used to gauge pollution levels in Southern California from 2000 to 2014 and to measure the PM2.5 amounts outside the homes of each participant.

The researchers found that about 75% of the kids in the study were breathing air that was polluted beyond the recommended federal levels with some measuring at double that amount. The areas where this was most prevalent were in impoverished neighborhoods, some close to freeways, that lacked greenery. More delinquent behaviors were noted from African American boys in these areas.

“Poor people, unfortunately, are more likely to live in urban areas in less than ideal neighborhoods,” Younan said. “Many affordable housing developments are built near freeways. Living so close to freeways causes health problems such as asthma and, perhaps, alters teenagers’ brain structures so that they are more likely to engage in delinquent behavior.”

“Both lead and PM2.5 are environmental factors that we can clean up through a concerted intervention effort and policy change,” Younan said. “If you live in an area with high air pollution, like near a freeway or in a neighborhood with little greenery, try to avoid being outside so much and keep windows closed as much as possible when the ambient PM2.5 levels are high.”

via Bad behavior in teens linked to air pollution – NY Daily News

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Thomas Fire | Smoke impacts SLO County air quality

Posted on December 12, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

For the second day in a row, San Luis Obispo County residents have woken up to haze and an orange sun, as smoke from the Thomas Fire drifts this way.

The air quality ranged from good to moderate throughout the county on Monday, with the worst conditions in the Nipomo area and in North County, according to the SLO County Air Pollution Control District’s data map. Air quality in those areas was listed as moderate.

In San Luis Obispo, Morro Bay and Arroyo Grande, where smoke tinted the sky orange all day on Sunday, air quality was listed as good. The National Weather Service cautioned that smoke would impact the county on Monday and advised people to stay inside, drink plenty of fluids and take precautions while outdoors.

“It’s cleaner today than it was yesterday, generally speaking,” said Gary Willey, air pollution control officer for the SLO County Air Pollution Control District.

Willey said that the harmful particles carried by the smoke have been up in the upper atmosphere, so SLO County hasn’t seen any significant impact.

“There are no air quality alerts in our county,” Willey said. “We have some moderate conditions on the Nipomo Mesa, but it’s much lower than springtime dust levels on the Mesa at this point.”

Willey said county officials don’t currently have plans to distribute N95 masks in SLO County, but they are monitoring the air quality throughout the county on an hourly basis. He emphasized that though SLO County isn’t experiencing poor air quality, that could change based on wind and weather patterns.

“We have a fraction of what they have in Santa Barbara County,” Willey said. He added that air quality conditions in the county look to remain the same throughout the week, but “smoke can come into our county at any time.”

“We’ll definitely be on guard and monitoring it closely,” he said.

No local school districts canceled classes on Monday, but Nipomo High School announced it would not hold sports practices outside due to unsafe air quality. School districts in the Santa Maria area canceled classes on Monday due to poor air quality. They planned to reopen on Tuesday.

via Thomas Fire | Smoke impacts SLO County air quality | The Tribune

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4th Straight Spare the Air Alert Issued Across Bay Area

Posted on December 11, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

A Winter Spare the Air Alert has been issued for December 11 in the Bay Area, the fourth day in a row. Wood burning and manufactured fire logs are banned both indoors and outdoors from since Friday.

First-time violators of the Wood Burning Rule will be encouraged to take a wood smoke awareness course to learn more about the health impacts from wood smoke and the weather conditions that lead to unhealthy air quality in the winter. Those violators who choose not to take the course will receive a $100 ticket.

Second violations are subject to a $500 ticket, with the ticket amount increasing for any subsequent violations.

Air quality in the Bay Area is forecast to be unhealthy. It is illegal for Bay Area residents to burn wood or other solid fuels in fireplaces, wood stoves and inserts, pellet stoves, outdoor fire-pits, or other wood-burning devices.  This wood-burning ban will be in effect for Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, southern Sonoma and southwestern Solano Counties. (Visit www.sparetheair.org/Stay-Informed/Todays-Air-Quality/Reporting-Zones.aspx to see if your city is located within the Air District.)

Winter air pollution is mainly caused by particulates or soot pollution from wood smoke. Smoke from wood-burning fires is linked to illnesses such as asthma, bronchitis and lung disease, and is especially harmful for children and the elderly.

For more information about the Wood Burning Rule, or to check before you burn, visit www.sparetheair.org or call 1-877-4NO-BURN.

You can also call 1-800-430-1515 and register to receive automatic phone calls when a Winter Spare the Air Alert has been called.

To see the current air quality forecast visit www.sparetheair.org.

Download our FREE Spare the Air iPhone/Android application for alert notifications, local air quality forecasts, podcasts and several tools to help reduce air pollution.

Thank you for doing your part to Spare the Air!

This AirAlert is provided by your Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

Do not reply directly to this email. If you want more information on the air quality forecast, or other aspects of the local air quality program, please contact your local air quality agency using the information above. For more information on the U.S. EPA’s AIRNow Program, visit http://www.airnow.gov.

via 4th Straight Spare the Air Alert Issued Across Bay Area | East County Today

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Air Pollution May Harm Babies Even Before They Are Born

Posted on December 7, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Air pollution may be harmful to babies even before they are born, a new study has found.

Researchers in London calculated mothers’ exposure to air pollution and traffic noise in various parts of the city from 2006 to 2010. Then they amassed data on birth weights of 540,365 babies born during those years to women who lived in those areas.

The average pollution exposure was 14 micrograms per cubic meter of PM 2.5, the tiny particles that easily enter the smallest airways in the lungs. The researchers found that for each 5 microgram per cubic meter increase in PM 2.5, the risk of low birth weight increased by 15 percent. Low birth weight is a predictor of an increased risk for diabetes, heart disease and hypertension in later life.

The study, in BMJ, found no effect of traffic noise on birth weight.

The Environmental Protection Agency standard for PM 2.5 is 12 micrograms per cubic meter averaged over three years, and the World Health Organization suggests 10 as a limit. But the lead author, Mireille B. Toledano, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, said that there really is no safe level of air pollution.

“For every 10 percent reduction in PM 2.5,” she said, “we can prevent 90 babies being born with low birth weight in London. The current limits are not protecting pregnant women, and they’re not protecting unborn babies.”

via Air Pollution May Harm Babies Even Before They Are Born – The New York Times

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