Respro® Bulletin Board

Chiang Mai air pollution hits dire levels

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

Chiang Mai province was hit by unprecedented levels of air pollution on Wednesday as intensifying forest fires sent PM2.5 levels in some areas up to 592 microgrammes per cubic metre (ug/m3) of air, almost 12 times above safe levels.

The level of PM2.5 — fine dust that can get lodged in lungs and cause coronary disease — rose to 592 ug/m3 at Chiang Mai University’s Mae Hia Campus in Muang district, and at 321 ug/m3 at a school in Hang Dong district, according to data from Chiang Mai University’s Climate Change Data Centres (CMU-CCDC), the most popular air-monitoring network used by locals.

The CMC-CCDC network gathers air-quality data from air-monitoring kits set up at community level across the North. This system provides real-time air-pollution measures as it is close to the pollution source, while the air-monitoring system run by the Pollution Control Department (PCD) provides a general average over 24 hours.

Thailand’s safe threshold for PM2.5 stands at 50 ug/m3, while the World Health Organisation’s is set it at 25 ug/m3.

Komsan Suwan-ampa, deputy governor of Chiang Mai province, said that though forest fires have been a chronic problem for more than a decade, this year’s situation was dire because fires had erupted in areas that are not accessible by firefighters and volunteers.

A fire erupted yesterday in Doi Suthep-Pui National Park in Hang Dong district, which had to be doused by helicopters, Mr Komsan said. Meanwhile, the fire-control centre reported that 218 hotspots in 18 districts in Chiang Mai have been detected by the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA).

Pralong Dumrongthai, director-general of the PCD, said that as forest fire hotspots in the North continue rising due to arson, open burning and pollution from bush fires set in neighbour countries, PM2.5 and PM10 particles will continue polluting the air. He added that six pollution control stations detected severely hazardous levels in their areas.

Known for providing conservative readings, even the PCD air-monitoring system showed alarming pollution levels yesterday. For instance, the PM2.5 level in Doi Suthep area was measured at 234 ug/m3 and was 212 ug/m3 in Chiang Dao district.

Mr Pralong blamed the pollution on the lack of humidity and poor ventilation, adding the major culprits were still arsonists and open burning.

The authorities are offering a 5,000 baht bounty and imposing such as 1 to 30 years in prison and fines of 10,000 to 3 million baht for the crimes.

via Chiang Mai air pollution hits dire levels

Posted in Asia, Thailand | Tagged Air Pollution, Chiang Mai, forest fire, Thailand | Leave a comment

Will a beard affect the performance of a mask?

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

Will a beard affect the performance of a mask?

Any beard will interfere with the sealing of a mask, it goes without saying. How much leakage is governed by the thickness of the beard and the correct size of mask.

The Respro® Sportsta™ Mask

Posted in Air Quality, Respro® Masks, Respro® Products | Leave a comment

The smart and easy way to put on a Respro® Streetsmart™ Mask

Posted on March 24, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

Posted in Air Quality, Help & FAQs, Respro® How To Videos, Respro® Products | Leave a comment

INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO MEASURE FOR A RESPRO® MASK

Posted on March 23, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

Sizing guide:

This video demonstrates how easy it is to measure yourself for a Respro® mask. Follow the instructions and click the link below to send us your measurements.

respro.com/pg/faqs/mask-sizing-guide

Posted in Air Quality, Help & FAQs, Respro® How To Videos, Respro® Products | Leave a comment

Air pollution likely to increase coronavirus death rate, warn experts

Posted on March 18, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

Lung damage from dirty air may worsen infections, but isolation measures improving air quality

The health damage inflicted on people by long-standing air pollution in cities is likely to increase the death rate from coronavirus infections, experts have said.

Dirty air is known to cause lung and heart damage and is responsible for at least 8m early deaths a year. This underlying health damage means respiratory infections, such as coronavirus, may well have a more serious impact on city dwellers and those exposed to toxic fumes, than on others.

However, strict confinement measures in China, where the coronavirus outbreak began, and in Italy, Europe’s most affected nation, have led to falls in air pollution as fewer vehicles are driven and industrial emissions fall. A preliminary calculation by a US expert suggests that tens of thousands of premature deaths from air pollution may have been avoided by the cleaner air in China, far higher than the 3,208 coronavirus deaths.

The experts stressed, however, that no one is claiming the pandemic can be seen as good for health and it is too early for conclusive studies to have been done. In particular, they said, other indirect health impacts of the coronavirus, via lost income and lack of treatment for other illnesses, will also be large.

While urban air pollution has declined in developed countries, the understanding of the widespread damage it causes to health has increased, and toxic air has risen to extreme levels in developing countries, such as India.

“Patients with chronic lung and heart conditions caused or worsened by long-term exposure to air pollution are less able to fight off lung infections and more likely to die. This is likely also the case for Covid-19,” said Sara De Matteis, at Cagliari University, Italy, and a member of the environmental health committee of the European Respiratory Society. “By lowering air pollution levels we can help the most vulnerable in their fight against this and any possible future pandemics.”

There is evidence from previous coronavirus outbreaks that those exposed to dirty air are more at risk of dying. Scientists who analysed the S ars coronavirus outbreak in China in 2003 found that infected people who lived in areas with more air pollution were twice as likely to die as those in less polluted places.

Research on the Mers coronavirus outbreak, first seen in Saudi Arabia in 2012, showed that tobacco smokers were more likely to get the disease and were more likely to die. Early research on Covid-19 suggests smokers and former smokers are more susceptible to the virus. But one difference is that Covid-19 appears to have a lower overall mortality rate than Sars or Mers.

“Given what we know now, it is very likely that people who are exposed to more air pollution and who are smoking tobacco products are going to fare worse if infected with [Covid-19] than those who are breathing cleaner air, and who don’t smoke,” Aaron Bernstein, at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health told the Washington Post.

Reductions in air pollution have been recorded over northern Italy, the centre of that nation’s outbreak. Air pollution also fell sharply across China in the four weeks after 25 January, when regions shut down in response to the outbreak. The level of PM2.5, dangerous small pollution particles, fell by 25%, while nitrogen dioxide, produced mainly by diesel vehicles, dropped by 40%.

The link between such pollutants and early deaths are well known and Marshall Burke, at Stanford University in the US, used the data to estimate the impacts on air pollution mortality. The young and old are worst affected by dirty air and, using conservative assumptions, Burke calculated the cleaner air may have prevented 1,400 early deaths in children under five and 51,700 early deaths in people over 70.

“It seems clearly incorrect and foolhardy to conclude that pandemics are good for health,” he said. “But the calculation is perhaps a useful reminder of the often-hidden health consequences of the status quo, ie, the substantial costs that our current way of doing things exacts on our health and livelihoods.”

He said that indirect impacts of Covid-19 are probably much higher than currently known. “It seems likely that any ‘benefits’ from reduced air pollution are going to be dominated by the direct and, especially, the indirect costs of the virus, [such as] the health effects of lost income and the morbidity/mortality costs of non-Covid health problems going untreated.”

Sascha Marschang, the acting secretary general of the European Public Health Alliance, said: “Once this crisis is over, policymakers should speed up measures to get dirty vehicles off our roads. Science tells us that epidemics like Covid-19 will occur with increasing frequency. So cleaning up the streets is a basic investment for a healthier future.”

via Air pollution likely to increase coronavirus death rate, warn experts | Environment | The Guardian

Posted in Air Quality, Health Effects of Air Pollution, Medical Studies | Tagged Air Pollution, China, Coronavirus, India, Italy | Leave a comment

Northern Thailand chokes under shroud of smog

Posted on March 17, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

Chiang Mai may have fallen to third in the race for world’s worst air quality today, but northern Thailand is still choking under a blanket of toxic haze, and the Thai Meteorological Department has forecast “hot to very hot conditions” for the region. The department urges people in the north to “stay safe due to the very hot conditions.”

Visibility on northern roads this morning was just 10 metres, and the morning sun was a dark orange ball due to the haze. The thick smog has blanketed most of the northern provinces, causing difficulty in breathing, sore throats and burning noses.

The shroud is due to forest and crop field burning and forest fires in the region as well as in neighbouring countries, particularly Cambodia. The level PM2.5 (particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less) in the Northern region is still high and is affecting many residents’ health. PM Prayut Chan-ocha has ordered the Royal Thai Air Force to dispatch helicopters to spray water to reduce the impact.

There is a ban on agricultural burning in the region and the PM has ordered all relevant agencies to control and extinguish forest fires, and to strictly prevent new ones so as to urgently reduce the haze level.

The PM has also ordered relevant agencies to implement public health care measures such as arranging safe zones and dispatching mobile medical units until the situation can brought under control.

via Northern Thailand chokes under shroud of smog | The Thaiger

Posted in Air Quality, Asia, Thailand | Tagged Air Pollution, Chiang Mai, crop-burning, forest fire, HAZE, Thailand | Leave a comment

Air pollution in CEE has a high economic and human cost – Emerging Europe

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

Air quality in parts of Central and Eastern Europe is poor, and not enough is being done to tackle the problem.

Poland is the worst offender. The Polish Economic Institute recently released staggering figures regarding the economic costs of air pollution, estimating that the Polish economy loses around 111 billion zloty (25 billion euros) annually.

Even more worryingly, there is a human cost to pollution as well. In Poland, an estimated 43,000 people die prematurely from preventable diseases related to polluted air.

The European Environment Agency (EEA) supports these numbers. In its latest report – from 2016 – it claims that the number of premature deaths each year in Poland tops 43,100, more than 10 per cent of the 400,000 deaths it estimates for the whole of the European Union.

Thirty-three of the most polluted 50 cities in the European Union are in Poland. This is mostly due to the country’s reliance on coal for its energy needs.

“I will focus on PM2.5, which is, according to the World Health Organisation, the most harmful pollutant for human health and the one posing biggest challenges in the CEE countries. In that region, the main emitting sector of primary PM2.5 is the commercial, institutional and household sector. This means, basically, the combustion of fuels for heating,” Alberto González Ortiz, air quality expert at the EEA, tells Emerging Europe.

The situation is similar around the region, especially in the Western Balkans. In the last few months of last year, coinciding with the beginning of winter, pollution was out of control.

Belgrade, Zagreb, Skopje, and Sarajevo all found themselves in the unenviable position of being in top 10 cities in the world with the worst quality of air.

In all of these cities, it is ageing infrastructure and reliance on lignite to produce electricity which causes most problems.

For instance, the 16 brown coal-fired power plants in the former Yugoslavia create as much pollution as all 296 EU coal-fired power plants combined. Additional sources of pollution are old cars and households burning coal and wood for heat.

Things have now become so bad that people are beginning to protest, demanding governments take action.

First there were social media posts online and then citizens in Serbia eventually took to the streets in February. Although by then the air quality had improved slightly, those protesting, led by the Ne Davimo Beograd (Don’t Drown Belgrade) organisation pointed out that improvements in quality because of wind and rain blowing poisonous particles away are not a replacement for concerted institutional efforts.

Politicians in the region have largely downplayed the risks, aware of the cost of moving away from coal.

Serbia’s minister for environmental protection Goran Trivan has said that curbing pollution will cost the state 2.4 billion euros, shedding some light on why the government seems to be dragging its feet.

In Sarajevo, the city government has recommended that people wear masks, close their windows, and only go outside unless they really need to. And this was before the coronavirus took hold in Europe.

The capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina is especially vulnerable because of its geographical location. Surrounded by mountains, the city has always been among the most polluted in the region. While the mountains make for beautiful landscape, they also trap pollutants in the city.

The events of the last few months have caused many to think about the link between air pollution and climate change.

“Climate change is not the cause of air pollution, but climate change makes the air pollution problem worse,” says Danijela Božanić, a climate change expert.

She went on to explain that climate change brings out weather conditions which make it hard for pollutants to disperse into the higher layers of the atmosphere or across a wider geographical area.

Experts and activists make it clear that structural change is necessary.

“Any action to switch to cleaner fuels and to have more efficient ways of heating will help. For example, the promotion of district heating systems, replacing of old stoves, switching to fuels with lower emissions, or the insulation of buildings,” says Mr Gonzáles Ortiz.

There is some good news in the region, however.

In February, North Macedonia approved a national energy strategy that makes it the first country in the Western Balkans to consider a coal phase-out before 2030.

Two of the strategy’s scenarios entail a coal exit by 2025, with the third delaying the closure of the Bitola lignite power plant until 2040. A final decision on which pathway to take will be made later in the year.

via Air pollution in CEE has a high economic and human cost – Emerging Europe | News, Intelligence, Community

Posted in Air Quality, Europe, Poland | Tagged Air Pollution, Belgrade, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Europe, Macedonia, Poland, Sarajevo, Serbia, Skopje | Leave a comment

Air pollution exposure takes a heavy toll on gut bacteria, boosting risk of chronic illnesses

Posted on March 12, 2020 by Respro® UK Ltd

Breathing dirty air takes a heavy toll on gut bacteria, boosting risk of obesity, diabetes, gastrointestinal disorders and other chronic illnesses, new University of Colorado Boulder research suggests.

The study, published online in the journal Environment International, is the first to link air pollution to changes in the structure and function of the human gut microbiome – the collection of trillions of microorganisms residing within us.

The gaseous pollutant ozone, which helps make up Denver’s infamous ‘brown cloud’ – is particularly hazardous, the study found, with young adults exposed to higher levels of ozone showing less microbial diversity and more of certain species associated with obesity and disease.

“We know from previous research that air pollutants can have a whole host of adverse health effects,” said senior author Tanya Alderete, an assistant professor of integrative physiology, pointing to studies linking smog with Type 2 diabetes, weight gain and inflammatory bowel diseases. “The takeaway from this paper is that some of those effects might be due to changes in the gut.”

The study comes at a time when air quality in many U.S. cities is worsening after decades of improvement. In December, the Environmental Protection Agency downgraded the Denver metro and north Front Range regions to “serious non-attainment” status for failing to meet national ozone standards.

Regions of eight other states, including some in California, Texas, Illinois, Connecticut, Indiana, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin, were also penalized for high ozone. Worldwide, according to research published this month, air pollution kills 8.8 million people annually – more than smoking or war.

While much attention has been paid to respiratory health, Alderete’s previous studies have shown pollution can also impair the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar and influence risk for obesity. Other research has shown visits to emergency rooms for gastrointestinal problems spike on high pollution days, and youth with high exposure to traffic exhaust have greater risk of developing Crohn’s disease.

To investigate just what might be going on inside the gut, Alderete’s team used cutting-edge whole-genome sequencing to analyze fecal samples from 101 young adults in Southern California.

The researchers looked at data from air-monitoring stations near the subjects’ addresses to calculate their previous-year exposure to ozone (which forms when emissions from vehicles are exposed to sunlight), particulate matter (hazardous particles suspended in the air), and nitrous oxide (a toxic byproduct of burning fossil fuel).

Of all the pollutants measured, ozone had the greatest impact on the gut by far, accounting for about 11% of the variation seen between study subjects – more of an impact than gender, ethnicity or even diet. Those with higher exposure to ozone also had less variety of bacteria living in their gut.

Subjects with higher exposure to ozone also had a greater abundance of a specific species called Bacteroides caecimuris. That’s important, because some studies have associated high levels of Bacteroides with obesty.

In all, the researchers identified 128 bacterial species influenced by increased ozone exposure. Some may impact the release of insulin, the hormone responsible for ushering sugar into the muscles for energy. Other species can produce metabolites, including fatty acids, which help maintain gut barrier integrity and ward off inflammation.

“Ozone is likely changing the environment of your gut to favor some bacteria over others, and that can have health consequences,” said Alderete.

The study was relatively small and has some limitations, including the fact that stool samples were taken only once.

Alderete is now moving ahead with a larger, more expansive study of young adults in the Denver area. Thanks to a new grant from the nonprofit Health Effects Institute, she’s also exploring how prenatal or early-life exposure to air pollution impacts the formation of the gut microbiome in 240 infants.

She said she hopes her work will ultimately influence policymakers to consider moving parks, playgrounds and housing developments away from busy roads and high pollution areas, and invest more in meeting or exceeding air quality standards.

“A lot of work still needs to be done, but this adds to a growing body of literature showing that human exposure to air pollution can have lasting, harmful effects on human health.”