Anthropogenic air pollution more significant than desert dust: In the Middle East, more than 90 percent of the fine aerosol particles that are detrimental to health and the climate originate from human-made sources

Posted on September 27, 2022 by Respro® UK Ltd

In the Middle East, more than 90 percent of the fine aerosol particles that are detrimental to health and the climate originate from human-made sources

At the beginning of the year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that the Middle East ranks among the regions with the worst air quality. There is a common misconception that desert dust is the most significant cause of air pollution from particulate matter in this region, but a new study has shown that more than 90 percent of the particulate matter that is detrimental to health originates from anthropogenic sources. This human-made fine particulate matter differs from the less harmful desert dust particles. Scientists determined this through ship born measurements and verified it in elaborate modeling calculations. The anthropogenic particles are primarily caused by the production and use of fossil fuels such as oil and gas. They are generally smaller than desert dust and can penetrate deep into the lungs.

In 2017, an international team headed by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry travelled around the Arabian Peninsula on a research vessel in a spectacular expedition. Various measuring instruments were kept on board to sample aerosol particles and trace gases such as ozone and nitric oxides. The researchers also discovered that the Suez Canal, the northern Red Sea and especially the Arabian Gulf are regional hotspots for ozone; the exceptionally strong concentration of ozone in these areas indicates that the harmful gas is also a problem in other densely populated regions of the Arabian Peninsula. Furthermore, the scientists found that concentrations of nitrogen oxides were significantly higher than the WHO guidelines.

“There are relatively few measurements from the region around the Arabian Peninsula and in the Middle East in general. That is why this research campaign is so important,” says Sergey Osipov, an atmospheric physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. “We used the data in atmospheric chemistry models in order to draw conclusions about general air quality and health consequences.”

Air pollution in the Middle East leads to high mortality rates

“The thresholds for particulate matter are constantly exceeded in the region, which is home to 400 million people,” says Jos Lelieveld, director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and project leader. “While the measurements have been performed several years ago, looking into the data more closely with new atmospheric modeling tools surprisingly showed that the health hazardous fraction of the pollution particles is almost exclusively human-made.” In addition to numerous researchers from Mainz, scientists from Kuwait, the Cyprus Institute, as well as from Saudi Arabia, France and the USA were also involved in the project. “The extreme air pollution results in an annual excess mortality rate of 745 people per 100,000. It has similar significance to other leading health risk factors, such as high cholesterol and tobacco smoking, and is also comparable to the mortality rate of COVID-19,” adds the atmospheric scientist, who is also a professor at the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia. Given that anthropogenic air pollution is a key factor in climate change in the Middle East as well, measures to reduce emissions are all the more important, he said.

Story Source:Materials provided by Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Anthropogenic air pollution more significant than desert dust: In the Middle East, more than 90 percent of the fine aerosol particles that are detrimental to health and the climate originate from human-made sources — ScienceDaily
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‘Dramatic’ rise in wildfire smoke triggers decline in US air quality for millions

Posted on September 23, 2022 by Respro® UK Ltd

Recent record fire seasons in the west have increased pollution across the country, affecting people’s health, scientists say

Millions of Americans are now routinely exposed to unhealthy plumes of wildfire smoke that can waft thousands of miles across the country, scientists have warned.

Wildfires cause soot and ash to be thrown off into the air, which then carries the minuscule particles that can be inhaled by people many miles away, aggravating a variety of health conditions. The number of people in the US exposed to unhealthy levels of these particulates from wildfires at least one day a year has increased 27-fold over the last decade, a new study found, with 25 million people in 2020 alone breathing in potentially toxic air from fires.

Pockets of deeply unhealthy air have emerged mainly in the US west, the staging ground for wildfires of increasing intensity that have been fueled by years of fire suppression and global heating, priming forests to burn. Six of the seven largest wildfires in California’s recorded history have occurred since 2020.

Wildfire smoke can result in the closure of schools, the postponement of flights and even cause cycling races and Pearl Jam concerts to be canceled. But its most pervasive impact is a regression in air quality barely seen since the advent of the Clean Air Act in 1970, which helped lift dangerous, choking smog conditions from many polluted US cities.“

We are seeing the undoing of a lot of that clean air progress, especially in the west,” said Marshall Burke, a scientist at Stanford University and co-author of the study published in Environmental Science and Technology.

“There’s been really dramatic increases in wildfire smoke as air pollution, in some places fully reversing the impact of the Clean Air Act. It’s been remarkably quick. Our air pollution regulations are not designed to deal with this. It’s a worrying problem.”

The new study is based on a model that calculates how wildfire smoke has raised background pollution levels in locations across the US. It measures the presence of PM2.5, tiny particles about one-thirtieth of the width of a human hair that can travel through the air and bury themselves deep in the lungs of people when inhaled.

Wildfire smoke has added about five micrograms of these particles to locations in the US west, on average, which is a sizable increase from national levels, which are about 10 micrograms from other sources of particulate pollution, such as the emissions from cars, trucks and power plants.

Unlike these other sources, which are regulated by government, wildfire smoke is less predictable, reaches farther and is more egalitarian in whom it affects – the wealthy and white as well as poor people of color who are disproportionately exposed to pollution from nearby highways and factories.

“Wildfires produce an amazing amount of particulates that can travel thousands of miles, unlike other pollution,” said Burke. Last summer, New York experienced some of the worst air quality in the world due to smoke from wildfires several thousand miles away on the west coast of the US.

A decade ago, fewer than 500,000 people in the US were exposed to any days of an air quality index of 100 or above due to smoke, a level that is deemed unhealthy. Now, Burke said, 5 million Americans are living in areas with such levels at least one day a year.

“If you don’t live near a highway or power plant your air quality is likely to be fairly good, but incursion from wildfire smoke is changing that and there’s evidence this will increase,” he said. “Honestly, it was surprising to see how quickly these extreme exposures have gone up.”

The dangers posed by wildfire smoke are of increasing concern for experts in various places around the world – a summer of intense wildfires in Spain, France and Portugal has resulted in Europe’s highest wildfire emissions in 15 years. The probability of catastrophic wildfire events around the globe will increase by 30% by the end of the century even if planet-heating gases are rapidly cut, according to the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

“As the globe warms, wildfires and associated air pollution are expected to increase, even under a low emissions scenario. In addition to human health impacts, this will also affect ecosystems as air pollutants settle from the atmosphere to Earth’s surface,” said Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization.

“We have seen this in the heatwaves in Europe and China this year when stable high atmospheric conditions, sunlight and low wind speeds were conducive to high pollution levels.”

Research has linked wildfire smoke to the worsening of several conditions. Fierce wildfires in California in 2020 caused people to inhale smoke that raised their risk of heart attacks by up to 70%, a study found, with the smoke causing an estimated 3,000 deaths in people older than 65.

A separate study published in May found that people living within 50km (31 miles) of wildfires over the past decade had a 10% higher incidence of brain tumors and a 5% higher chance of developing lung cancer compared with people living farther away.

Breathing in wildfire smoke while pregnant, meanwhile, raises the risk of premature birth and even worsens outcomes for people who contract Covid-19. Francesca Dominici, a Harvard University professor who led the research on the link between wildfire smoke and Covid, said Burke’s new study is “well validated” and an “exciting area of research”.

“The results are interesting and concerning,” Dominici said, adding that there is “emergent evidence” that PM2.5 from smoke is more toxic than particles from other sources.

George Thurston, an environmental health scientist at the NYU School of Medicine, said that there is still more to be learned about the impact of wildfire smoke, with some research suggesting fossil fuel combustion is in fact more harmful, but that the new study is an “important addition” to the estimates of exposure of wildfire smoke.

“We need studies like this to assess how big a risk this is, because the Environmental Protection Agency exempts these fires from air quality standards,” Thurston said. “This sort of work helps us to work out if new standards are required.”

Burke said the threat of smoke became obvious to many in California in 2020 when the skies over the San Francisco Bay Area turned orange. Some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world have suffered from poor indoor air quality due to smoke, alleviated only by air filtration.

“The sun never came up in the Bay Area, which really brought home this is a different era we are living in,” Burke said. “We naively thought we were safe in our homes but the health guidance is inadequate. In my own home I closed all the windows and doors and yet I got a monitor and found the indoor air quality was appalling.”

Drastic cuts to greenhouse gases, better forest management where fuels are thinned or burned away in a controlled manner and improved guidance to households will all be required to improve the situation, Burke said. “We shouldn’t think about wildfires just in terms of numbers of homes burned down but also how many people have been exposed to pollution, because there are huge impacts that we just aren’t thinking about,” he said.

‘Dramatic’ rise in wildfire smoke triggers decline in US air quality for millions | Air pollution | The Guardian
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Air pollution increases hospital admission risk for autistic children, study suggests

Posted on September 21, 2022 by Respro® UK Ltd

Research shows hospital admissions are linked to even short-term exposure, with boys more at risk than girls

Autistic children face an increased risk of hospitalisation if exposed to air pollution for relatively brief periods, with boys more at risk than girls, new research suggests.

Admissions for issues such as hyperactivity, aggression or self-injury may be prevented by minimising their exposure, and cutting air pollution levels could lower the risks, the researchers behind the study concluded. The findings were published in the journal BMJ Open.

“Short-term exposure [to air pollution] was associated with a higher risk of hospital admissions for autism spectrum disorder,” the researchers wrote. “The associations were demonstrated to be more prominent among boys than among girls in sex-stratified analyses.”

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with a range of symptoms and severity. It is often accompanied by neuroinflammation and systemic inflammation meaning drugs, supplements and diet can improve the core symptoms, according to the report in the BMJ Open.

It is believed that exposure to air pollution in the short-term, over several days or weeks for instance, can induce systemic inflammation and neuroinflammation, potentially increasing the risk of hospital admission in autistic people.

But previous studies have focused on the association between long-term exposure to air pollution over years during pregnancy and the early postnatal period, and ASD development among children.

The researchers sought to find out if short-term exposure may also pose a risk of aggravating ASD symptoms among school-age children. A child’s developing nervous system is more susceptible to environmental exposures than an adult’s, the report said.

Globally, one in 100 children are autistic, according to the World Health Organization.

Researchers from the Institute of public health and medical care at Seoul National university hospital drew on official government data on daily hospital admissions for autism among children aged five to 14 between 2011 and 2015.

They also collected data on national daily levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and ozone (O3) in each of the 16 regions in the Republic of Korea.

Analysis of the data revealed that short-term exposure to PM2.5, NO2 and O3 was associated with a heightened risk of hospital admission for autism, and that boys were at greater risk than girls.

The researchers acknowledged limitations to the study and called for further research in the area.

“This study suggests that short-term exposure to air pollution affects ASD symptom aggravation, which is more prominent among boys than among girls,” the researchers concluded. “Air pollution mixtures were also found to be associated with ASD symptom aggravation, mostly driven by PM2.5 and NO2.

“These results emphasise that reduction of air pollution exposure needs to be considered for successful ASD symptom management, which is important with regard to quality of life and economic costs.

“Because this is the first study on this subject, further studies, especially studies directly investigating ASD symptoms in more detail, are warranted to confirm the results and draw policy implications.”

Air pollution increases hospital admission risk for autistic children, study suggests | Health | The Guardian
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Air pollution increases dementia risk, says leading expert

Posted on September 16, 2022 by Respro® UK Ltd

Air pollution has emerged as a small but important risk factor for dementia and cognitive decline, experts say – and Australia probably has a false sense of security about how clean our air is.

One of Australia’s leading dementia epidemiologists says she would no longer live on a busy road after watching the science linking air pollution and dementia strengthen over the past two decades.

She’s even come to worry about cyclists pedalling along the side of highways.

“All the observational studies keep showing a cognitive decline is associated with high levels of air pollution,” says Professor Kaarin Anstey, director of the University of NSW Ageing Futures Institute and senior principal research scientist at Neuroscience Research Australia. “There has been study after study.”

In the early 2000s, researchers in heavily polluted Mexico City discovered an association between children living in more polluted areas and inflammation of the brain.

Subsequent studies have shown a small but consistent association with neurodegeneration in children and adults across small neighbourhoods and large countries.

But conclusively proving one caused the other is very difficult.

The most compelling evidence emerged in February, when a Chinese study showed people living in provinces with policies to cut air pollution had less cognitive decline over four years than people living in provinces without such policies.

One in eight Australians aged between 80 and 84 has dementia. Large reviews now suggest exposure to high levels of air pollution increases the risk of dementia by about 10 per cent. That’s behind other risks such as obesity, smoking, diabetes or depression, but far more people are exposed.

Health authorities are taking aggressive steps to deal with other risks, but air pollution seems to be largely ignored, says Professor Hui Chen, who is studying the effect of air pollution on fetal development for the University of Technology Sydney.

“The evidence is quite strong,” she says. “It is a silent killer of our brain. People don’t really realise this is in the air.”

Chen is talking about PM2.5 – a catch-all measure of particles 30 times smaller than a human hair.

That’s small enough to get through the lungs and into the blood, “and then pretty much go everywhere”, she says.

PM2.5 particles have been linked to increased blood pressure and stroke risk, which can indirectly cause dementia. But like any foreign particle, they can also trigger an inflammatory immune response.

“And we know inflammatory responses can impact on the start and progression of neurodegeneration,” says Professor Kevin Barnham, head of the neurotherapeutics lab at the Florey Institute.

Barnham points to rates of Parkinson disease, which increased by 22 per cent between 1990 and 2016 – from 2.75 deaths per 100,000 to 4.69 – even after accounting for the ageing of the population.

“The rise in incidence of Parkinson’s disease has been described as a pandemic,” he says. “The only thing we can pin it down to is environmental exposure.”

Professor Bryce Vissel, head of the Centre for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine, says it is “absolutely clear” that particulate matter gets into and deposits in the brain.

“And [the particles] are clearly from engines,” Vissel says. “They are found in amyloid deposits. In mice exposed to polluted air collected from busy roads, they show biological changes relevant to brain damage.”

Studies overseas have shown women living in polluted areas bear children who perform less well at school and Professor Chen has been trying to find out if that is happening here as well.

“No one was doing these studies in Australia because they thought our air quality was so good,” she says. “But now they know it is a problem.“

Official air-quality sensors are designed to measure background air quality so can overstate how good Australia’s air is in locations where people spend lots of time, such as along roads. Monitors are typically placed in parks away from roads where they can pick up large-scale pollution events, such as haze from bushfires.

“They are not measuring often elevated levels of pollution in locations where many people in cities spend time, particularly near roads,” says the University of Wollongong’s Dr Hugh Forehead.

He led a project fitting air-quality sensors around streets in western Sydney that found PM2.5 measures were 10 times higher there than at official monitoring stations.

This may leave us with a false sense of security that our air is cleaner than it is, says Associate Professor Anthony White.

He heads a team looking at neurodegeneration at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. In lab studies, they have shown that bushfire smoke – of the type that blanketed Sydney for weeks in 2019 – is especially toxic to brain cells.

As the climate crisis increases our bushfire risk, this will become a bigger problem.

“It’s a fairly small magnitude of risk,” he says. “But there are a lots of things that add risk to dementia, and if you combine them all that adds up over a lifetime.

Air pollution increases dementia risk, says leading expert
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Healthy teenagers at risk of irregular heartbeats from air pollution, says study

Posted on September 15, 2022 by Respro® UK Ltd

Concern as heart arrhythmias appear to be triggered even when air pollution within quality limits

Healthy teenagers are more prone to irregular heartbeats after breathing in fine particulate air pollution, according to the first major study of its impact on otherwise healthy young individuals.

The findings have raised concern among researchers because heart arrhythmias, which can increase the risk of heart disease and sudden cardiac death, appear to be triggered even when air pollution is within common air quality limits.

Doctors monitored heart activity and the air breathed by more than 300 healthy US teenagers over 24-hour periods. They found that higher concentrations of fine particles called PM2.5s increased the risk of irregular heartbeats for the next two hours. Similar effects have been found in older adults before.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that reports the association between PM2.5 air pollution and cardiac arrhythmias among otherwise healthy adolescents,” the researchers write in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Vehicle exhausts and combustion in the manufacturing and construction industries are a major source of PM2.5s, or particles smaller than 2.5 microns. Once inhaled, they can reach deep into the lungs and even the blood vessels where they cause inflammation that drives disease.

Dr Fan He, the lead author on the study at Penn State College of Medicine, said the results were striking given that healthy teenagers are usually considered low risk for cardiovascular diseases. “Our findings suggest air pollution could trigger arrhythmias and contribute to sudden cardiac death among youth, which are devastating events for their families and larger communities,” he told the Guardian.

The researchers examined the impact of particulate air pollution on 322 healthy teenagers about seven years after they enrolled, aged six to 12 years old, in the Penn State Child Cohort study. The participants were given heart monitors and mobile air sampling kits to carry around for 24 hours, regardless of whether they were indoors or outside, sedentary or active.

The monitors captured two types of arrhythmia that can make people feel their heart has skipped a beat. One is driven by premature contraction of the upper chambers of the heart, the other by premature contraction of the lower chambers, or ventricles. While they are rarely treated unless they cause symptoms, premature ventricular contractions can raise the risk of heart attacks, stroke, heart failure and sudden cardiac death later in life.

According to the report, the risk of premature ventricular contractions within two hours of exposure increased by 5% for every 10 micrograms per cubic metre increase in PM2.5. Dr He said it was “alarming” the effect was seen even at an average daily PM2.5 level of 17 micrograms per cubic metre. In the UK, an average daily level of 35 micrograms per cubic metre is considered low-level pollution.

On days of high air pollution in England, hundreds more people are rushed into hospital for emergency care after suffering cardiac arrests, strokes and asthma attacks. But particulate air pollution also drives up rates of lung cancer, by awakening dormant mutations that trigger the growth of tumours. In 2020, the British Heart Foundation estimated more than 160,000 people could die in the coming decade from strokes and heart attacks linked to air pollution.

He said better air quality standards would improve heart health in the general population and reduce the burden of other chronic conditions such cancer and lung disease. But in the absence of any improvement in air quality, he suggested people take precautions, especially when pollution is at its worst.

“Wearing face masks and avoiding vigorous physical activities on highly polluted days and during rush-hours reduce the amount of air pollution exposure and minimise the associated health risks,” he said.

via https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/14/healthy-teenagers-risk-irregular-heartbeats-air-pollution-study

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List Shows 10 Most & Least Polluted States in the U.S.

Posted on September 13, 2022 by Respro® UK Ltd

According to new reports, not all states across the country fare the same when it comes to air quality.

Over the years, numerous studies have shown that pollution hurts kids and adults in dangerous and insidious ways. And when it comes to air pollution, even though the United States has some of the cleanest air of industrialized nations, even that pretty clean air is not clean enough — because air pollution is a major killer in the United States, associated with 100,000 to 200,000 deaths each year. Water pollution, too, can be incredibly harmful for kids’ health and development. And that harm is not felt equally, according to a new report that shows that some states have far, far more polluted air and water than others.

As part of U.S. News and World Report data from 2021 used to compile its “Best States” list, the publication also looked at air and water pollution levels and ranked states on whether they had clean or dirty water and air.

“Pollution was determined based on air and water emissions from industry and utilities,” The Hill explained in a write-up of the report. The data also investigated the “overall measures to long-term human health effects, using information from the Environmental Protection Agency.”

From there, the states were ranked in order of pollution and air quality levels from best to worst.

States with the lowest pollution levels:

Vermont

New Hampshire

South Dakota

New Mexico

Wyoming

California

Rhode Island

Maine

Colorado

Idaho

States with the highest pollution levels:

Nevada

Indiana

Delaware

Utah

Ohio

Oregon

Tennessee

Illinois

Alabama

Texas

Why should parents care about the pollution levels of their state?

A recent study from Boston College on air quality in Massachusetts — a state ranked 17th best on this US News list — found that air quality in particular is a massive issue in the country, impacting both adults and kids. However, the impact on children has long-lasting consequences. The researchers found that consistent air pollution exposure was linked to babies being born with low birth weight, more kids being diagnosed with asthma, and an average drop of two IQ points in children.

Unfortunately, the health impact kids experience due to pollution isn’t felt equally by all kids across the country. Low-income and marginalized communities are exposed to more air pollution than wealthy families.

What’s worse is that all of these negative health effects happen below the EPA’s air pollution standard.

“All of these adverse health effects occur at fine particulate matter pollution levels below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s current annual standard of 12 micrograms per cubic meter,” said lead author Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., a Boston College Professor of Biology. “So even for a state like Massachusetts, which registered below that standard, air pollution is a formidable public health threat that needs urgently to be addressed.” “Clearly, current EPA air pollution standards are not adequately protecting public health,” Landrigan said.

The amount of pollution in Massachusetts falls comfortably into the category in which children are at significant risk of long-lasting health impacts, according to the World Health Organization.

In terms of water pollutants, children “don’t need as much toxicant” to be harmed, environmental health researcher Abby Mutic told Fatherly. In the United States, well water isn’t subject to federal regulations, and about 20% of Americans get their water from wells. Water contaminants can harm the health of children by, for example, causing lead poisoning and increasing the risk of conditions such as cancer.

List Shows 10 Most & Least Polluted States in the U.S.
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Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution

Posted on September 12, 2022 by Respro® UK Ltd

Scientists uncover link between car fumes and lung cancer that helps explain why so many non-smokers develop disease

Scientists have uncovered how air pollution causes lung cancer in groundbreaking research that promises to rewrite our understanding of the disease.

The findings outline how fine particulates contained in car fumes “awaken” dormant mutations in lung cells and tip them into a cancerous state. The work helps explain why so many non-smokers develop lung cancer and is a “wake-up call” about the damaging impact of pollution on human health.

“The risk of lung cancer from air pollution is lower than from smoking, but we have no control over what we all breathe,” said Prof Charles Swanton of the Francis Crick Institute, who presented the findings at the European Society for Medical Oncology conference in Paris on Saturday.

“Globally, more people are exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution than to toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke, and these new data link the importance of addressing climate health to improving human health.”

Smoking remains the biggest cause of lung cancer, but outdoor air pollution causes about one in 10 cases in the UK, and an estimated 6,000 people who have never smoked die of lung cancer every year. Globally, about 300,000 lung cancer deaths in 2019 were attributed to exposure to fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5, contained in air pollution.

However, the biological basis for how air pollution causes cancer has remained unclear. Unlike smoking or sun exposure, which directly cause DNA mutations linked to lung and skin cancer, air pollution does not cause cancer by triggering such genetic changes.

Instead, those with non-smoking lung cancer tend to carry mutations that are also seen in healthy lung tissue – small errors that we accumulate in our DNA throughout life and which normally remain innocuous.

“Clearly these patients are getting cancer without having mutations, so there’s got to be something else going on,” said Swanton, who is also Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician. “Air pollution is associated with lung cancer but people have largely ignored it because the mechanisms behind it were unclear.

”The latest work unveils this mechanism through a series of meticulous experiments showing that cells carrying dormant mutations can turn cancerous when exposed to PM2.5 particles. The pollutant is the equivalent of the ignition spark on a gas hob.

In laboratory studies, Swanton’s team showed that mice that had been engineered to carry mutations in a gene called EGFR, linked to lung cancer, were far more likely to develop cancer when exposed to the pollutant particles. They also revealed that the risk is mediated by an inflammatory protein, called interleukin-1 beta (IL1B), released as part of the body’s immune response to PM2.5 exposure. When the mice were given drugs to block the protein, they were less vulnerable to the pollutants.

The work explains a previous incidental finding in a clinical trial of a heart disease drug, made by Novartis, that people on the drug – an IL1B-inhibitor – had a marked reduction in lung cancer incidence. This could pave the way for a new wave of cancer-preventing medicines, Swanton said.

The team also analysed samples of healthy lung tissue, taken during patient biopsies, and found that the EGFR mutation was found in one in five of the normal lung samples. This suggests that we all carry dormant mutations in our cells that have the potential to turn into cancer – and chronic exposure to air pollution increases the odds of that happening.

“It’s a wake-up call on the impact of pollution on human health,” said Swanton. “You cannot ignore climate health. If you want to address human health, you have to address climate health first.”

Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, whose nine-year-old daughter Ella’s death in 2013 was attributed by a coroner to illegal levels of air pollution, said there continues to be a “lack of joined-up thinking” about pollution and health. “You can pump all the money you want into the NHS, but unless you clear up the air, more and more people will become ill,” she said. “My concern regarding global health is that every year we churn out the figures – air pollution causes nine million premature deaths – but no one is held accountable.”

Prof Tony Mok, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and who was not involved in the research, said: “We have known about the link between pollution and lung cancer for a long time, and we now have a possible explanation for it. As consumption of fossil fuels goes hand in hand with pollution and carbon emissions, we have a strong mandate for tackling these issues – for both environmental and health reasons.”

Prof Allan Balmain, a cancer geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco, said the findings also had implications for our understanding of how smoking causes cancer. “Both air pollution and cigarette smoke contain lots of promoting substances. This has been known since the early 1960s but has essentially been ignored, as everyone was focused on mutations,” he said. “The tobacco companies are now saying that smokers should switch to vaping as this reduces exposure to mutagens, and therefore the cancer risk is going to go away. This is not true, as our cells get mutations anyway, and there is evidence that vaping can induce lung disease and cause inflammation similar to promoters.”

Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution | Cancer research | The Guardian
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Prenatal exposure to air pollution increases risk of childhood allergic rhinitis and asthma

Posted on September 9, 2022 by Respro® UK Ltd

In a recent study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, researchers assessed the impact of prenatal exposure to air pollution on immune perturbations. 

There is evidence that long-term exposure to air pollution in early life adversely affects children’s respiratory health and increases asthma risk in childhood. Additionally, associations have been observed between particulate matter having diameters less than 2.5 and less than 10 µm (PM2.5 and PM10) as well as nitrogen dioxide (NO2) with respiratory diseases in individuals aged between four and seven years. The mechanisms involved in these associations are, however, still unclear.

About the study

In the present study, researchers investigated the potential mechanisms involved in the manifestation of allergy and asthma in childhood due to prenatal exposure to air pollution.

The COPSAC2010 cohort study involves a prospective mother-child cohort of 700 children born to women living in Zealand, Denmark, with enrolment beginning in week 24 of pregnancy. During pregnancy, the trial comprised randomized interventions with high-dose vitamin D and fish oil.

The team linked the COPSAC-derived data with individual-level maternal and child home address history recorded from conception to the most recent follow-up day, including moving, emigration, immigration, and death dates. This data was obtained using the unique personal identification numbers assigned by the Danish Civil Registration System. Ambient PM2.5, PM10, and NO2 concentrations were modeled at each residential address. The Operational Street Pollution Model (OSPM®) was used to calculate the local impact of traffic at the street level.

Furthermore, the contribution of long-distance transport and regional background as a result of non-local sources was computed. The team estimated the time-weighted mean for each participant from conception to birth (prenatal exposure), from birth to the deoxyribonucleic acid methylation (DNAm) sampling point (total postnatal exposure), and in the year preceding the sampling point at age six. In addition, the researchers estimated three short-term exposure characteristics: the first four weeks of life (postnatal first four weeks), the initial six months of life (postnatal first six months), and the month before the age six-year sample point.

To measure airway immune mediators, nasal mucosal lining fluid samples were obtained using a synthetic absorptive matrix at four weeks and six years of age. At six months, inflammatory markers in the blood were measured with high-sensitivity immunoassays, which were based on electrochemiluminescence. In addition, DNA methylation and gene expression were measured in the respiratory epithelium at six years.

Results

The prenatal mean (IQR) values for ambient NO2 were 18.8 ug/m3, PM25 was 10.1 ug/m3, and PM10 was 15.3 ug/m3. Significant positive connections existed between the pollutants, especially between prenatal exposure to PM10 and PM25. The relationships between birth urbanicity and prenatal exposure to PM10, PM25, and NO2 were low and moderate. At six years old, 22.4% of children had asthma at some point in their lives, 23.7% were sensitized to inhalant allergens, 7.4% had asthma at the time, and 6.7% had allergic rhinitis.

With elevated levels of interleukin-8 (IL-8) and decreased levels of IL-1 across all air pollution components, prenatal exposure to air pollution exposure was significantly correlated to systemic inflammatory markers found in blood at the age of six months. Furthermore, elevated NO2 exposure was associated with decreased levels of IL-6. After accounting for urbanicity, these correlations mainly remained unaltered. Prenatal air pollution’s early-life systemic immunological “fingerprint” was strongly linked to an elevated risk of asthma at age six, but not allergic sensitization or rhinitis.

Nose mucosal immune mediators at age six were not significantly correlated with prenatal air pollution exposure. After multiple testing was taken into account, there were also no conclusive links between postnatal air pollution exposure and immune mediator levels at six. This finding was also consistent when the exposure window was limited to the year before the age of six was sampled.

In nasal epithelial cells in six-year-old subjects, the team found correlations between prenatal exposure to air pollution and gene expression. Notably, following a false discovery rate (FDR) 5% adjustment, higher prenatal NO2 exposure resulted in increased expression of AKAP9. Using an FDR of 15%, it was observed that exposure to more PM2.5 was linked to higher expression of CCL2 and lower expression of RP11-420K14. On the other hand, prenatal PM10 exposure was linked to lower expression of LINC00644 and RP11-420K14. The postnatal air pollution exposure, the four-week nasal mucosal immune mediator fingerprint, and gene expression did not show any significant relationships.

Although the direction of the association had increased OR with increased exposure across all disease endpoints, with the exception of allergic rhinitis and PM, there were no statistically significant direct correlations between prenatal exposure to air pollution and asthma and allergy endpoints at age six years. However, after postnatal air pollution exposure was taken into account, the team found a nominally significant correlation between NO2 and allergy sensitization.

Overall, the study findings highlighted a link between prenatal exposure to ambient air pollution, specifically NO2, PM2.5, and PM10, and the early life immunological profile of the airways, which was associated with the later emergence of allergic airway disease.

Prenatal exposure to air pollution increases risk of childhood allergic rhinitis and asthma
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