Indonesian forests are burning, and Malaysia and Singapore are choking on the fumes

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Malaysian authorities distributed half a million face masks to residents on Tuesday after large-scale forest fires in Indonesia spread smoke and thick smog to neighboring countries.

Intense forest fires have raged across the Indonesian regions of Sumatra and Kalimantan in recent weeks. More than 930,000 hectares (about 2.3 million acres) of land have been burned, hundreds of residents evacuated, and more than 9,000 personnel have been deployed to battle the flames, according to CNN Indonesia.

Nearby, Singapore and Malaysia have both choked in a dense haze all week, with air quality reaching unhealthy levels.

The fires were allegedly caused by farmers using slash and burn techniques to clear the ecologically rich land — the same practice that led to uncontrollable fires in the Brazilian Amazon this summer.

On Tuesday Malaysia’s National Disaster Management Agency distributed half a million face masks to Sarawak state, which saw a spike in the air pollution index (API), according to state media agency Bernama. 409 schools in the state closed Tuesday before reopening today, Bernama reported.

API measures a variety of pollutants to gauge air quality, which is typically defined by the concentration of fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, per cubic meter. The microscopic particles are considered particularly harmful because they are small enough to lodge deep into the lungs and can pass into other organs or the bloodstream.

In the last 24 hours, 11 of Malaysia’s 16 states and territories have recorded API levels in the “unhealthy” range of 101-200. Rompin district in Pahang recorded the highest level, tipping into “very unhealthy” at a peak of 232.
In Singapore, the API hit a peak of 151 on Tuesday, with levels largely in the “unhealthy” range all day.
To put that in perspective, on Wednesday the API was a healthy 7 in New York City and 24 in London. Even Beijing, a city notorious for its pollution, measured a “good” level of 50.
Images on Tuesday show the iconic Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur shrouded in gray smog. Local media reported many residents wore face masks and stayed indoors.
The unusually high API levels has been linked to smoke drifting from fires in Indonesia, according to the Asean Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC). The ASMC site described “persistent hotspots with extensive moderate to dense smoke haze” in Indonesia’s Sumatra and Kalimantan regions, which have been detected for several weeks now by satellite data.
Winds are then carrying this dense, unhealthy smog to neighboring countries like Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore, which are also experiencing high levels of air pollution, said the ASMC.
Singapore’s National Environment Agency (NEA) issued a health advisory on Tuesday, also pointing to the Indonesian fires as the cause of the pollution and warning residents to stay indoors. According to the NEA, there were 1,286 hotspots detected in Sumatra and Kalimantan on Tuesday.
Malaysian authorities have also urged their Indonesian counterparts to take action and prevent the haze from spreading further, according to Bernama.
The issue is not new, but it’s persistent. For years, fires in Sumatra have caused the rest of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia to choke under the smog. At times, the API in Indonesia has reached as high as 1,000, with visibility falling below 100 meters.
It stems from the annual burning of land for the production of pup, paper, and palm oil — industries that have devastated the Indonesian forests for years.
The particles in the pollution caused by the burning can increase the risk of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and cancer, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Authorities in Indonesia have tried to put a stop to the burning. It’s an illegal practice, and those found guilty can be fined up to 10 billion rupiah (US$700,000), and management faces up to 10 years in jail — but burning has continued anyway. Last month, Indonesian President Joko Widodo said he felt “embarrassed” by the fires, acknowledging the smoke’s effects on Singapore and Malaysia, according to Bernama.
The fires also raise Indonesia’s contribution to climate change, as the land burned is extremely carbon rich. Environmental organizations like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund have spoken out against the fires, calling for action to preserve the land.

via Indonesian forests are burning, and Malaysia and Singapore are choking on the fumes – CNN

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Haze blankets Kuala Lumpur, Singapore as fires rage in Indonesia

Posted on September 11, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

A regional agency monitoring land and forest fires in Southeast Asia has raised the alert on the danger of haze from Indonesia, as neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore woke up to smoke-filled skies on Tuesday.

The ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC) warned that the “transboundary haze situation could worsen” in the coming days, with winds expected to continue blowing from the south towards the direction of the Malaysian Peninsula.

“Over the past few days, there has been a further escalation of hotspot activities and deterioration in haze situation in Sumatra,” the ASMC said in a statement posted on its website on Monday evening, as it issued its highest alert level, 3, for the Indonesian province.

WATCH25:30
Indonesia: Where There’s Smoke
“The smoke haze has been blown across the Strait of Malacca to western parts of Peninsular Malaysia by the prevailing winds.”

The Alert Level 3 is raised when dense smoke plumes are recorded on two consecutive days, and the number of hotspots exceeds 250. A total of 52 and 206 hotspots were detected in Sumatra on Saturday and Sunday, according to ASMC.

According to reports, this year’s El Nino warm-ocean pattern has contributed to the increase in forest fire hotspots to its highest level in four years.

The forest fires raging on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the province of Kalimantan on Borneo island in recent weeks have prompted the Indonesian government to deploy 9,000 personnel to help stop them.

On Tuesday, Malaysia’s environment department reported a continuing rise in the air pollutant index (API) in Kuala Lumpur.

As of Tuesday morning, API levels in five areas in and around the capital rose to between 119 and 140, which are considered as “unhealthy”.

The country’s Ministry of Education has ordered schools in areas affected by the haze to cancel all outdoor activities. The order is compulsory when the pollutant index hits 100.

In September 2015, Indonesia declared a state of emergency in Sumatra after forest fires created a thick haze that spread across the region, including Singapore and Malaysia. The fire raged for days affecting Indonesia’s neighbouring countries across the Strait of Malacca.

Azrul Mohd Khalib, CEO of Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy, told Al Jazeera that compared with this year, the transboundary haze in 2015 was worse, because of the combination of smoke from peat fires and burning forests in the Sumatra and Kalimantan regions.

“However, the stakes and risks are increasing [this year] as this dry season may be more serious compared to what was experienced in the last few years,” he said.

Syed Hasnain Raza, an environmental researcher and wildlife filmmaker from Kuala Lumpur, told Al Jazeera that the recent thick haze has gotten him “really worried” about his health and that of his family.

“Something has definitely gone wrong. The last time that it was this bad was in 2015,” he told Al Jazeera. “The haze is just adding to the greenhouse gases, so it is really bad.”

Meanwhile, the city-state of Singapore reported a “moderate” API as a result of the smoke from the fires, according to the country’s National Environment Agency (NEA).

But it said districts in southern and eastern parts of the city were inching towards the “unhealthy” level, which is between 101 and 200.

“Singapore could experience slightly hazy conditions if the hotspot situation in Sumatra persists,” NEA said, referring to the Indonesian island’s ongoing fires.

Further escalation of hotspots

The issue of haze in Malaysia and Singapore has been a continuing source of friction with neighbouring Indonesia. On Friday, Kuala Lumpur hinted it would send a diplomatic note to Jakarta to address the cross-border haze.

But in a social media post on Sunday, Indonesia’s environment and forestry minister, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, denied that the haze had spread to other parts of the Southeast Asia region.

“It has been determined that until now, there has been no transboundary haze from Indonesia to neighbouring countries,” she wrote.

Siti said most forest fire incidents were caused by human factors.

ASMC, the regional monitoring agency, warned that dry weather in the region will continue in the coming weeks “and further escalation of hotspots activities in Sumatra is possible”.

Elsewhere in Indonesia, ASMC reported that “persistent hotspots continued to be detected” in many parts of Kalimantan, also affecting Sarawak, the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo.

According to reports, there have been over 6,000 hotspots in Kalimantan.

In Sarawak, Malaysia’s state education agency ordered hundreds of schools in eight districts, including in the state capital of Kuching, to close because of the poor air quality.

“Some smoke haze was also observed to extend over the adjacent South China Sea area.”

ASMC raised the alert to the highest level in Sarawak last Thursday.

Among those who are relatively healthy, with previous serious health conditions, exposure will likely cause irritation in the eyes, nose and throat, according to Azrul, of the Galen Centre.

But those who already have chronic lung or heart disease, as well as children and elderly, are vulnerable to complications such as breathing difficulties and asthma, he added.

“Fortunately, Malaysia’s exposure to haze is short-term and does not occur throughout the year.”

Pressure on Jakarta

Forest fires are a familiar scene during the dry season in Indonesia.

But the pressure against Jakarta to end to slash-and-burn practises in tropical forests has been more intense this year, amid international outrage over the enormous forest fires in the Amazon.

In the past, the Indonesian government has promised to prosecute those who were responsible. But so far, there has been no reported progress on those cases. In 2016, police in Sumatra’s Riau province dropped charges against 15 companies, suspected of their roles in the fires in 2015.

Indonesia’s Walhi Environmental Group had blamed corporations who clear vast tracts of land under concession for being directly responsible for the fires, whether they were deliberately started or not.

The group has also criticised the state governments for failing to prosecute those major concessionaires and companies.

On Sunday, Siti, Indonesia’s environment and forestry minister, promised to prosecute those who were involved, saying: “We will continue to pursue and act decisively.”

“The Indonesian government continues to work hard for the interest of the nation, and we will not lose or let down on the pressures.”

According to Indonesia’s weather agency, BMKG, the dry season will last until October this year.

via Haze blankets Kuala Lumpur, Singapore as fires rage in Indonesia | Indonesia News | Al Jazeera

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Egypt to Stop Burning Rice Straw for Better Air Quality

Posted on September 9, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

In a bid against air pollution, Egypt’s Ministry of Environment is now gathering rice straws to be used for “furniture manufacturing and animal fodder,” according to Egypt Today, instead of burning them.

The ministry revealed that this year alone, Egypt collected 1,900 tons of rice straws from 156 areas to be reused as artificial organic fertilizer, food for livestock, bricks, and furniture. The national campaign aims is aimed towards Sharkia, Gharbia, Dakahlia, Qalyobia, Beheria and Kafr El Sheikh.

During an inspection tour at Dakahlia governorate last August 2019, representatives of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency at the Ministry (EEAA) discovered violations that ranged EGP 5,000 and EGP 100,000.

Egypt Today noted that ‘the Black Cloud,” a dark smog that hovers across Cairo’s capital as a result of igniting fire on rice straws.

Last year, a study, in the journal Environmental Science & TechnologyLetters, air pollution is responsible for shortening the lives of Egyptians by 1.85 years.

Cairo’s air pollution, however, is at the most critical level, with an estimated 43,000 Egyptians dying from diseases related to air pollution in 2012.
For this, Egypt has been taking initiative in to become more environmentally friendly to achieve its 2030 agenda for sustainable development.

In June of this year, the Ministry of Environment installed the first two stations to monitor the surrounding air in Sohag governorate. A monitoring station was installed at the top of the central administration building of Sohag University to the east of the Nile, bringing the number of air monitoring stations at the national level to 100 stations.

Egypt is one of the few countries in the Middle East region, Africa and Asia that owns such a large number of air quality monitoring stations, according to the ministry.

via Egypt to Stop Burning Rice Straw for Better Air Quality | Egyptian Streets

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Research links air pollution and dementia

Posted on September 5, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Australian researchers have established a link between air pollution and an increased risk of developing dementia, a new study shows.

Air pollution has been linked to an increased risk of developing dementia later in life, Australian researchers have found.

A study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease on Wednesday shows rates of dementia were more likely when people were exposed over a long period of time to two air pollutants.

The two pollutants are ‘particulate matter 2.5’ and ‘nitrous oxide’, which are both commonly found in cities around the world.

Study co-author Neuroscience Research Australia’s Dr Ruth Peters said it’s difficult for people to reduce exposure if they live where pollution levels are high.

“This is concerning because the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates 91 per cent of the world’s population lives in places where air quality exceeds WHO guideline limits,” Dr Peters said.

“This research shows that government regulation that reduces our exposure to air pollution has a huge potential health and economic benefit.”‘

Researchers believe air pollutants can increase inflammation in bodies and raise the risk of having a stroke, which increases the likelihood of developing dementia.

Dementia is the second leading cause of death of Australians with 450,000 people living with the condition.

The study brought together research on people living in Canada, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the United States.

via Research links air pollution and dementia

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Review – RESPRO® CINQRO MASK: THE ONLY CYCLING MASK TO BUY

Posted on September 4, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

I’ve used a couple of face masks in the past to try and protect myself when cycling to work. The Respro® Cinqro is the first one I’ve actually been able to get on with long term!

Respro® Cinqro Mask Review: Cycling with an air filter

The Respro® Cinqro mask is one of more sports orientated masks from the UK based pollution mask manufacturer. To the degree that the Respro® Cinqro really is aimed not merely at commuters but squarely at athletes for whom their lives are fitted around their coaches orders, not the other way round. Athletes who normally shrug at air pollution warning and will still head out to adhere to their training plans.

When it comes to pollution, I’m actually quite lucky. I live right on the edge of a housing estate, coming out to the main road I’ve about 70 meters and then I’m in fields. Now that might sound like a bit of a useless comment, talking about a city pollution mask, but it is designed to highlight that not all use cases of face masks are immediately apparent:

I don’t need a mask to go running myself, but I am aware of friends who have used Respro masks in the past to allow them to go running in the summer whilst minimising the effect of the pollen. You might ask in such cases why not used save some money and buy a simple builders mask? Should filter the same?

The problem there is industrial masks are made for a specific job. Filtering dust and chemicals at a low of exertion. If you add in a run, or a cycle, suddenly design limitations of cheaper masks become apparent. The air inflow in not sufficient nor is the outflow, meaning you are not able to get enough oxygen, nor clear the respired carbon dioxide. You MIGHT not be breathless, but you’ll certainly impact on your training. Hence using a properly designed mask. Or at least trying to

You see I’ve used a couple of “sports masks” in the past from 3M, and then a cheap one from Decathlon, a previous Respro Techno mask, and even a Cambridge Mask Company mask. Each mask got used for a couple of weeks at the most, as they were fatally flawed for me. Early morning I’d cycle to work, and before the end of the first hill, I’d have my glasses steamed up, not able to see a thing. Whilst a filter mask might be good for your long term health, it doesn’t matter if you’ve crashed and died due to the mask is stopping you seeing what is in front of you!!!

Read the full review: titaniumgeek.com/respro-cinqro-mask-review-cycling-with-an-air-filter/

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Image: TITANIUMGEEK

Respro® Cinqro Mask Review: Conclusion

Ok, Respro® masks are not the cheapest on the market, but I would have saved money if I had purchased a Cinqro initially rather than trying to save a little money buying cheaper masks which didn’t work. I think that is going to be my main take away: If you have glasses, and want a cycling filter mask, by a Respro® Cinqro. I don’t think I need much more of a conclusion do I? TG 5/5, and I would recommend

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Read the full review: titaniumgeek.com/respro-cinqro-mask-review-cycling-with-an-air-filter/

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Nonsmokers can get emphysema from air pollution, study finds

Posted on September 4, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Researchers hope that understanding the causes of debilitating lung disease may lead to better prevention and treatment.

Long-term exposure to air pollution was linked to increases in emphysema between 2000 and 2018, according to a study funded by NIEHS and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). The findings appeared Aug. 13 in JAMA.

This study adds evidence linking air pollution and emphysema, a lung disease that gets worse over time.
Emphysema, usually associated with smokers, is a chronic disease in which lung tissue is destroyed and becomes unable to effectively transfer oxygen.

“Air pollution is a significant public health concern around the world,” said Gwen Collman, Ph.D., director of the NIEHS Division of Extramural Research and Training. “It’s been a priority of NIEHS research for many years, so it’s great when we can accelerate our efforts by joining with other NIH [National Institutes of Health] institutes in supporting research on lung disease.”

“These findings may offer one explanation for why emphysema is found in some people who never smoked,” said James Kiley, Ph.D., director of the NHLBI Division of Lung Diseases. “The study’s results, duration, and timing offer insight into the long-term effects of air pollution on the U.S. population.”

A long-running, large-scale study

The study included more than 7,000 men and women from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Researchers followed individuals with emphysema, analyzing more than 15,000 computed tomography (CT) scans and lung function tests from 2000 to 2018.

Over the same period, MESA carefully tracked air pollution in the varied metropolitan regions of Winston-Salem, North Carolina; St. Paul, Minnesota; New York City; Baltimore; Chicago; and Los Angeles. The exposure work received support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Clear and consistent associations between long-term exposure to air pollutants and progression of lung disease were found across the six localities.

The combined health effect of multiple air pollutants — ozone, fine particles known as PM2.5, nitrogen oxides, and black carbon — was greater than when the pollutants were assessed individually,” said Bonnie Joubert, Ph.D., a scientific program director at NIEHS. “With the study’s long-running duration, repeated CT scans allowed analysis of changes in emphysema over time.”

Understanding and controlling emphysema

“Rates of chronic lung disease in this country are going up and increasingly it is recognized that this disease occurs in nonsmokers,” said the study’s senior co-author, Joel Kaufman, M.D., from the University of Washington. “We really need to understand what’s causing chronic lung disease, and it appears that air pollution exposures that are common and hard to avoid might be a major contributor.”

People with emphysema have difficulty breathing, along with a persistent cough and phlegm. It makes physical and social activities difficult, creates work hardships, and may result in detrimental emotional conditions. Disease development can be a slow, lifelong process. Although emphysema is not curable, treatments help manage the disease.

Citation: Wang M, Aaron CP, Madrigano J, Hoffman, EA, Angelini E, Yang, J, Laine A, Vetterli TM, Kinney PL, Sampson PD, Sheppard LE, Szpiro AA, Adar SD, Kirwa K, Smith B, Lederer DJ, Diez-Roux AV, Vedal S, Kaufman JD, Barr RG. 2019. Association between long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and change in quantitatively assessed emphysema and lung function. JAMA 322(6):1–11.

via Environmental Factor – September 2019: Nonsmokers can get emphysema from air pollution, study finds

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Growing up in air-polluted areas linked to mental health issues

Posted on September 3, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Correlation found between poor air quality and disorders including schizophrenia

People who spend their childhood in areas with high levels of air pollution may be more likely to later develop mental disorders, research suggests.

Air pollution has become a matter of growing concern as an increasing number of studies have found links to conditions ranging from asthma to dementia and various types of cancer.

There are also signs it may take a toll on mental health. Research published in January found that children growing up in the more polluted areas of London were more likely to have depression by the age of 18 than those growing up in areas with cleaner air.

But a study by researchers in the US and Denmark has suggested a link between air pollution and an increased risk of mental health problems, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and personality disorders.

Between 1% and 2% of the UK population have bipolar disorder in their lifetime, with similar figures for schizophrenia. It is estimated that about 5% of people in the UK have a personality disorder at any one time.

Prof Andrey Rzhetsky, a co-author of the research at the University of Chicago, said the team carried out their work after finding that genetics did not fully explain why some people experienced these conditions and others do not.

Writing in the journal PLOS Biology, Rzhetsky and colleagues explained how they used a rather crude approach when they first examined possible links to air pollution. Insurance data for 151 million individuals collected between 2003 and 2013 was used to explore the rates of particular mental disorders in counties across the US. This was then analysed alongside the average level of air pollution in each county.

The team found the rate for bipolar disorder was 27% higher for counties in the bottom seventh for air quality compared with those in the top seventh (with the best air quality), once factors including age, sex, poverty levels in the county and average income were taken into account. A tentative link was also seen for depression and air pollution.

However, this analysis was based on average air pollution levels over very large areas. What’s more, the rates of psychiatric conditions may not reflect the situation for low-income individuals who may be less likely to have insurance.

The team then looked at air pollution data from Denmark, which was collected on a scale of 1 sq km.

They looked at air pollution exposure for the first 10 years in the life of 1.4 million individuals born and living in the country between 1979 and the end of 2002, as calculated from their home addresses. Levels of 14 pollutants were considered – compared with the 87 considered in the US part of the study – and used to provide a measure of overall air pollution exposure over those years.

The team then explored subsequent diagnoses for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorder and depression up to the end of 2016.

Once factors including age, sex and socioeconomic status were considered, the team found that the rate of all four mental disorders were higher among people who had greater exposure to overall air pollution during their childhood.

When participants were split into seven equal-sized groups, based on the air they were exposed to until the age of 10, the researchers found the bottom seventh (who experienced the worst air) had 29%, 148%, 51% and 162% higher rates for bipolar, schizophrenia, depression and personality disorder respectively than the top seventh (who had experienced the cleanest air).

The team suggested a number of explanations for how mental health is affected by air pollution, pointing to animal studies that had proposed one route could be that it triggered inflammation in the respiratory tract that then led to inflammation across the body, including the brain. Another suggestion was that air pollutants travelled from the nose to the brain where they accumulated, causing inflammation and damage.

If the links to mental health disorders are confirmed, they could – somewhat counterintuitively – offer some cause for hope. “Unlike genetic predisposition, environment is something we can change,” said Rzhetsky.

However, the research has limitations: the findings do not prove that air pollution drives the development of these conditions, while the analyses do not take into account the influence of many factors known to affect mental health, including family history of psychiatric problems or bullying.

Dr Ioannis Bakolis, an expert in biostatistics from King’s College London, said the study added to previous evidence of a possible link between air pollution and mental health disorders.

“While causation cannot be proved, this work suggests substantial morbidity from mental disorders could be avoided with improved air quality,” he said.

Bakolis added that there was already plenty of evidence that air pollution can hurt many other aspects of health, adding that measures such as car-free zones in cities should be given attention.

A second study, published in the Journal of Investigative Medicine, has revealed a link between long-term exposure to traffic fumes and age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) – one of the leading causes of vision problems in older people.

The researchers used national health insurance data from 2000 to 2010 for almost 40,000 people aged 50 or older in Taiwan, together with air quality data from 1998 to 2010 centred on the location of the health centre people visited for help with an illness like a cold.

The team found that patients visiting centres in the highest 25% for nitrogen dioxide levels had almost twice the risk of developing ARMD than those who visited centres in the bottom quartile. A similar link was seen for carbon monoxide pollution. However, several other factors including family history of the condition were not considered in the work, while the data might be skewed by people having less chance of a respiratory infection in less polluted areas.

via Growing up in air-polluted areas linked to mental health issues | Society | The Guardian

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Economists Find First Link Between Early Childhood Exposure to Air Pollution and Later-Life Arthritis

Posted on September 2, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

A recent study by economists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has – for the first time – found a link between exposure to air pollution during early childhood with the development of arthritis later in adult life.

Jamie Mullins, assistant professor in the department of resource economics at UMass Amherst, found that those who were exposed to the 1952 Great Smog of London during their first year of life had a 23.4 percentage point higher incidence of arthritis later in life than those not exposed as infants by virtue of their birth dates and/or the locations of their residence in early life. This increase represents a doubling of the arthritis rate among the exposed population. The higher arthritis rates among those exposed to the Smog in the first year of life are clearest for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) – a 14.9 percentage increase – versus osteoarthritis, which saw a 9.5 percentage point increase.

“These findings are important today, as millions of people continue to be exposed to episodes of extreme air pollution each year. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that 91% of the world’s population lives in areas that experience unhealthy levels of air pollution,” Mullins says.

The report, “Arthritis diagnosis and early-life exposure to air pollution,” was co-authored with Andrew Shepherd, a 2018 UMass Amherst resource economics master’s degree recipient, and was published in the journal Environmental Pollution. The study is one of the first to link early life exposure to air pollution with medical conditions much later in life and the first to do so for arthritis, which is estimated to afflict 54.4 million American adults – nearly 23% of the adult population.

Air pollution is currently implicated in some 7 million deaths per year, but such tallies only take account of deaths from issues related to the respiratory and circulatory systems. According to Mullins, their new results “show that a wider set of physiological systems are harmed by air pollution exposure than is generally considered. This suggests that many more health issues and deaths are likely impacted by air pollution than are currently accounted for.”

The Smog that blanketed London from December 5-9, 1952, was caused by an unexpected temperature inversion, which trapped emissions from the city’s coal-burning heating stoves and diesel-powered buses near ground-level. The resulting ambient pollution mixed with moisture to form a thick, foul-smelling fog that disrupted life in the city and ultimately led to as many as 12,000 deaths in the four months following the event.

The authors interpret their results as causal effects of the Smog, saying that “estimates are identified through the difference in outcomes between groups that are effectively randomly determined by time and place of birth,” and that “any plausible alternative explanation for our results would need to have impacted only London, contemporaneous (or nearly so) to the Smog, and drive higher incidences of arthritis, and especially of RA. We are unable to identify any candidate factors or events that meet these criteria.”

The researchers fear that their results imply that the health effects of poor air quality have likely been dramatically underestimated because such effects continue manifesting for decades after exposure and extend beyond cardiopulmonary issues.

“While the pollution mixture of the Great Smog differs from the pollution mixtures of other places and times, the continued combustion of coal and diesel globally suggests parallels are likely to exist between the Great Smog and today’s worst pollution events,” they conclude. “More work is needed to map the mechanisms through which air pollution taxes health over both the short and long terms in order for the full costs of pollution to be better understood and addressed. We hope that the findings of this article will contribute to more complete assessments of the costs of air pollution and potentially aid medical clinicians and researchers seeking to understand, diagnose, and treat arthritic diseases.”

The complete report, “Arthritis diagnosis and early-life exposure to air pollution,” is available via ScienceDirect.

via Economists Find First Link Between Early Childhood Exposure to Air Pollution and Later-Life Arthritis – ScienceBlog.com

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