Big city pollution tied to dry eye syndrome; Researchers suggest high quality air filters

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Residents of major cities with high levels of air pollution have an increased risk of dry eye syndrome, according to a new study.

Study subjects in and around Chicago and New York City were found to be three to four times more likely to be diagnosed with dry eye syndrome compared to less urban areas with relatively little air pollution. As a result of this study, researchers suggest that environmental manipulations should be considered as part of the overall control and management of patients with dry eye syndrome.

Dry eye syndrome, a deficiency in tear production, is a prevalent condition that effects up to four million people age 50 and older in the United States.

The symptoms of dry eye syndrome can be very detrimental to patients and severely affect the quality of one's life, as well as result in loss of productivity due to interruption of daily activities like reading and using computer screens. While it has been suggested that environmental factors impact dry eye syndrome, this is the first study of a large patient population covering the entire continental United States which linked dry eye syndrome treatment location to atmospheric conditions – in particular, air pollution coupled with weather conditions.

"Undoubtedly, many people living in arid and polluted cities would readily attest to the irritating effect air pollution has on dry eye," said Anat Galor, M.D., MPSH, of Miami Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Assistant Professor of Clinical Ophthalmology Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, and lead researcher. "Our
research suggests that simple actions, such as maintaining the appropriate humidity indoors and using a high-quality air filter, should be considered as part of the overall management of patients suffering from dry eye syndrome."

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Dust storms in Africa affect US air quality

NASA image of dust storm

Your may never have the chance to travel the world, but your lungs may. That's because scientists have identified that that large quantities dust and other pollutants are traveling thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean.

In their study Joseph Prospero, professor at the University of Miami and collaborators at the University of Houston and Arizona State University found that the average air concentrations of inhabitable particles in Houston, Texas more than doubled during a major Saharan dust storm.

The researchers were able to distinguish between particles transported across the Atlantic and those from local sources in the Houston region. In this way they established the "fingerprint" of the African dust. To their knowledge, this is the first study that isolates, differentiates, and quantifies the air contaminants in the US during the incursion of African dust. There is a concern that the fine airborne dust particles could be a health problem for asthmatics and people with respiratory problems.

"Current EPA air quality standards are based on the total amount of particles that are in the air," Prospero says. "Our study will contribute to our ability to discriminate and identify the dominant components in the air during long-range transport events," he says.

The findings published in the journal of Environmental Science and Technology can also serve to address African dust intrusion in other affected regions of the world. For instance, the Caribbean Basin receives enormous quantities of African dust every year. In addition to its impact on air quality, an important factor for the Caribbean basin is the potential effect of Saharan air outbreaks on hurricane activity.

"African dust storms are associated with hurricane season because the meteorological situations that are involved with generating tropical cyclones are also associated with the generation and transport of dust," Prospero says. "The dust emerges from the coast of Africa in a hot, dry, elevated layer – the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) following behind Easterly Waves from which tropical cyclones sometimes develop," he says. "The SAL interacts with the waves in complex way, so that the relationship is not entirely clear. It is the subject of much ongoing research."

Also, the dust suspended in the wind absorbs and scatters solar radiation. Less sunlight reaches the ocean surface resulting in cooler temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean, the main area where hurricanes develop. Cooler ocean temperatures mean less energy for hurricanes to form and strengthen.

"Dust activity has been very intense this year and sea surface temperatures are unusually low," Prospero says. "These may have been contributing factors to the unusually weak hurricane season this year."

A better understanding of all the processes involved in Saharan air outbreaks would help create models that can predict future trends.

"The question is what happens with climate change," Prospero says. "Although much of North Africa is expected to get drier, which would mean more dust, models can't agree on whether the climate in the current major dust sources will get drier or wetter in the future" he says. "We are still trying to understand what drives these differences and the possible impacts."
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Researchers come up with artificial lung to remove carbon dioxide — from smokestacks

The amazingly efficient lungs of birds and the swim bladders of fish have become the inspiration for a new filtering system to remove carbon dioxide from electric power station smokestacks before the main greenhouse gas can billow into the atmosphere and contribute to global climate change.

With climate change now a major concern, many power plants rely on CO2 capture and sequestration methods to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Speaking at a symposium, “CO2 Separation and Capture,” Aaron P. Esser-Kahn, Ph.D., said he envisions new CO2-capture units with arrays of tubes made from porous membranes fitted side-by-side, much like blood vessels in a natural lung. Once fabricated to be highly efficient and scalable to various sizes by repeating units, these units can then be “plugged” into power plants and vehicles, not unlike catalytic converters, he explained.

To capture the most CO2, the Esser-Kahn group from the University of California, Irvine, first had to figure out the best pattern to pack two sets of different-sized tubes –– one for waste emissions and the other a CO2-absorbing liquid –– into the unit. “The goal is to cram as much surface area into the smallest space possible,” said Esser-Kahn.

They studied the way blood vessels are packed in the avian lung and the fish swim bladder. Birds need to exchange CO2 for oxygen rapidly, as they burn a lot of energy in flight, while fish need to control the amount of gas in their swim bladder effectively to move up and down in the water. “We’re trying to learn from nature,” said Esser-Kahn, adding that the avian lung and fish swim bladder are biologically well-suited systems for exchanging gases.

But the blood vessels in the avian lung and fish swim bladder are packed in different patterns. The avian lung consists of a hexagonal pattern where three large tubes form the vertices of a triangle and a small tube sits in the gap, while the fish swim bladder has a squarer pattern where a large and small tube alternate between vertices of a square. It turned out that this tube-packing challenge is a well-studied mathematical problem with nine unique solutions, or patterns, Esser-Kahn said.

Now, scientists can conduct further research to improve CO2-capture units’ efficiencies by adjusting the sizes of the tubes, thicknesses of the tube walls and membrane materials that make up the tube walls. “Biological systems spent an incredible amount of time and effort moving towards optimization,” said Esser-Kahn. “What we have is the first step in a longer process.”

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Study to examine ultrafine particle pollution being spewed by plants that burn wood waste

 (Source: Peninsula Daily News)

A $516,232 state grant will be used to determine how much dangerous fine particle pollution is being spewed by biomass cogeneration plants such as those run by paper mills in Washington State.

The two-year study, which will begin in October and is funded by the state Department of Ecology, could have national significance as one of the first of its kind to delve into ultrafine particle pollution generated by burning biomass, or wood waste, said Odelle Hadley, senior air monitoring specialist with the Olympic Region Clean Air Agency, or ORCAA.

Hadley said the study will be conducted in part in reaction to citizen concerns about ultrafine particles and ORCAA’s inability to monitor its emissions.

Ultrafine particles are known to cause health problems and are more insidious than larger particles because they are so tiny, ORCAA said.

“Smaller particles penetrate deeper into lungs, heart and even brain to cause more health damage,” according to ORCAA’s description of the ultrafine particle study at http://tinyurl.com/ngahbwr.

Port Angeles-based Nippon Paper Industries USA, which manufactures newsprint for newspapers, including the Peninsula Daily News, and telephone-book paper, is completing construction on an $85 million biomass cogeneration plant expansion that will produce 20 megawatts beginning in October.

Port Townsend Paper Corp.’s $55 million, 24-megawatt biomass cogeneration expansion has been delayed until 2014 or 2015 after a state Court of Appeals ruling that sent a suit filed by five environmental groups to the state Supreme Court.

ORCAA regulates and enforces air quality issues in Clallam, Jefferson, Grays Harbor, Mason, Pacific and Thurston counties.

The agency’s light-based monitoring equipment cannot distinguish between pollution particles that are 2.5 microns and those of 0.1 micron or less, known as ultrafine particles.

ORCAA will oversee the study, which will be conducted by University of Washington professor Daniel Jaffe and associate professor Joel Thornton, who will be assisted by university students.

“It does provide an opportunity to extrapolate our findings to national and even international levels because biomass-cogeneration power is certainly being looked at in a number of areas in the U.S. and Europe,” Thornton said.

Their equipment will include mobile monitors that will take measurements while being driven around in a van.

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Lifelong exposure to low levels of pollution may have long-term health consequences

If you're eating better and exercising regularly, but still aren't seeing improvements in your health, there might be a reason: pollution. According to a new research report published in the September issue of The FASEB Journal, what you are eating and doing may not be the problem, but what's in what you are eating could be the culprit.

"This study adds evidences for rethinking the way of addressing risk assessment especially when considering that the human population is widely exposed to low levels of thousands of chemicals, and that the health impact of realistic mixtures of pollutants will have to be tested as well," said Brigitte Le Magueresse-Battistoni, a researcher involved in the work from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM).

"Indeed, one pollutant could have a different effect when in mixture with other pollutants. Thus, our study may have strong implications in terms of recommendations for food security. Our data also bring new light to the understanding of the impact of environmental food contaminants in the development of metabolic diseases."

To make this discovery, scientists used two groups of obese mice. Both were fed a high-fat, high-sucrose enriched diet, with one group receiving a cocktail of pollutants added to its diet at a very low dosage. These pollutants were given to the mice throughout—from pre-conception to adulthood. Although the researchers did not observe toxicity or excess of weight gain in the group having received the cocktail of pollutants, they did see a deterioration of glucose tolerance in females, suggesting a defect in insulin signaling. Study results suggest that the mixture of pollutants reduced estrogen activity in the liver through enhancing an enzyme in charge of estrogen elimination. In contrast to females, glucose tolerance was not impacted in males exposed to the cocktail of pollutants. However, males did show some changes in liver related to cholesterol synthesis and transport. This study fuels the concept that pollutants may contribute to the current prevalence of chronic diseases including metabolic diseases and diabetes.

"This report that confirms something we've known for a long time: pollution is bad for us," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "But, what's equally important, it shows that evaluating food contaminants and pollutants on an individual basis may be too simplistic. We can see that when "safe" levels of contaminants and pollutants act together, they have significant impact on public health."

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Must See Video: 3 minute peek at the harm of plastic pollution from @midwayjourney

"Do we have the courage to face the realities of our time...?"

A beautiful, heartbreaking and shocking film...




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Pollutants from incense causes lung inflammation

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Burning incense generates indoor air pollutants that may cause inflammation in human lung cells, say researchers in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Previous studies have associated incense smoke with a number of health problems, including eye, nose, throat and skin irritation; respiratory symptoms, including asthma; headaches; exacerbation of cardiovascular disease; and changes in lung-cell structure.

Indoor air pollution is an international health concern. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 1 million people a year die from chronic obstructive respiratory disease (COPD), primarily a result of exposure to pollutants from cook stoves and open hearths. Burning incense releases similar pollutants, including carbon monoxide.

In the current study, the authors identified and measured the particles and gases emitted from two kinds of common incense. The testing was done over three hours, the typical timeframe during which incense is burned, in a specially designed indoor environmental chamber.

The researchers analyzed both particulate concentrations and levels of gases such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen and formaldehyde.

Human lung cells were placed in the chamber to expose them to the smoke, then incubated for 24 hours to allow particulates to settle and the cells to respond. The resulting inflammatory response, a hallmark of asthma and other respiratory problems, was similar to that of lung cells exposed to cigarette smoke.

Incense is burned weekly in about 94 percent of households in the United Arab Emirates as a cultural practice to perfume clothing and air and to remove cooking odors. Since people there spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors, researchers said, indoor air pollution has become a source of increasing concern.

Adding to the concern is that charcoal briquettes frequently are used to ignite and burn the incense. That adds significantly to potentially harmful levels of carbon monoxide and other pollutants, they noted.

Two types of incense (Oudh and Bahkoor) are most often used. Both are made with agarwood, which is taken from trees that develop an aromatic smell in response to fungal infection. Bahkoor has a number of additives, including sandalwood tree resin, essential oils and other substances.

Researchers found that both types of incense emitted significant amounts of particles, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and oxides of nitrogen, resulting in the cellular inflammatory response.

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Pollution from U.S. and Europe helped cause 1980s African drought

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Decades of drought in central Africa reached their worst point in the 1980s, causing Lake Chad, a shallow lake used to water crops in neighboring countries, to almost dry out completely.

The shrinking lake and prolonged drought were initially blamed on overgrazing and bad agricultural practices. More recently, Lake Chad became an example of global warming.

New University of Washington research, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, shows that the drought was caused at least in part by Northern Hemisphere air pollution.

Aerosols emanating from coal-burning factories in the United States and Europe during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s cooled the entire Northern Hemisphere, shifting tropical rain bands south. Rains no longer reached the Sahel region, a band that spans the African continent just below the Sahara desert.

When clean-air legislation passed in the U.S. and Europe, the rain band shifted back, and the drought lessened.

Related research by the UW researchers and their collaborators shows that global warming is now causing the land-covered Northern Hemisphere to warm faster than the Southern Hemisphere, further reversing the pre-1980s trend.

Previous research has suggested a connection between coal-burning and the Sahel drought, but this was the first study that used decades of historical observations to find that this drought was part of a global shift in tropical rainfall, and then used multiple climate models to determine why.

“One of our research strategies is to zoom out,” said lead author Yen-Ting Hwang, a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences. “Instead of studying rainfall at a particular place, we try to look for the larger-scale patterns.”

To determine that the Sahel drought was part of a broader shift, the authors looked at precipitation from all rain gauges that had continuous readings between 1930 and 1990. Other places on the northern edge of the tropical rain band, including northern India and South America, also experienced dryer climates in the 1970s and ’80s. Meanwhile, places on the southern edge of the rain band, such as northeast Brazil and the African Great Lakes, were wetter than normal.

To understand the reason, authors looked at all 26 climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Researchers discovered that almost all the models also showed some southward shift, and that cooling from sulfate aerosols in the Northern Hemisphere was the primary cause.

“We think people should know that these particles not only pollute air locally, but they also have these remote climate effects,” Hwang said.

Light-colored sulfate aerosols are emitted mainly by dirty burning of coal. They create hazy air that reflects sunlight, and also lead to more reflective, longer-lasting clouds.

People living in the Northern Hemisphere did not notice the cooling, the authors said, because it balanced the heating associated with the greenhouse effect from increased carbon dioxide, so temperatures were steady.

“To some extent, science messed this one up the first time around,” said co-author Dargan Frierson, a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences. “People thought that a large part of that drought was due to bad farming practices and desertification. But over the last 20 years or so we’ve realized that that was quite wrong, and that large-scale ocean and atmosphere patterns are significantly more powerful in terms of shaping where the rains fall.”

The models did not show as strong a shift as the observations, Frierson said, suggesting that ocean circulation also played a role in the drought.

The good news is that the U.S. Clean Air Act and its European counterpart had an unintended positive effect beyond improved air quality and related health benefits. Although shorter-term droughts continue to affect the Sahel, the long-term drought began to recover in the 1980s.

“We were able to do something that was good for us, and it also benefited people elsewhere,” Frierson said.

Cutting Specific Pollutants Would Slow Sea Level Rise

Photo: Evgeni Dinev/freedigitalphotos.net

With coastal areas bracing for rising sea levels, new research indicates that cutting emissions of certain pollutants can greatly slow down sea level rise this century.

The research team found that reductions in four pollutants that cycle comparatively quickly through the atmosphere could temporarily forestall the rate of sea level rise by roughly 25 to 50 percent.

“To avoid potentially dangerous sea level rise, we could cut emissions of short-lived pollutants even if we cannot immediately cut carbon dioxide emissions,” says Aixue Hu of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the first author of the study. “This new research shows that society can significantly reduce the threat to coastal cities if it moves quickly on a handful of pollutants.”

The study, a collaboration of the Scripps Institution for Oceanography, NCAR, and Climate Central, is being published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change. It was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

“It is still not too late, by stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and reducing emissions of shorter-lived pollutants, to lower the rate of warming and reduce sea level rise,” says Veerabhadran Ramanathan of Scripps, who led the study. “The large role of the shorter-lived pollutants is encouraging since technologies are available to drastically cut their emissions.”

Protecting the coasts

The potential impact of rising oceans on populated areas is one of the most concerning effects of climate change. Many of the world’s major cities, such as New York, Miami, Amsterdam, Mumbai, and Tokyo, are located in low-lying areas by the water.

As glaciers and ice sheets melt and warming oceans expand, sea levels have been rising by an average of about 3 millimeters annually in recent years (just more than one-tenth of an inch). If temperatures continue to warm, sea levels are projected to rise between 18 and 59 centimeters (7 to 23 inches) this century, according to a 2007 assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Some scientists, however, feel those estimates are too conservative.

Such an increase could submerge densely populated coastal communities, especially when storm surges hit.

Despite the risks, policy makers have been unable to agree on procedures for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide. With this in mind, the research team focused on emissions of four other heat-trapping pollutants: methane, tropospheric ozone, hydrofluorocarbons, and black carbon. These gases and particles last anywhere from a week to a decade in the atmosphere, and they can influence climate more quickly than carbon dioxide, which persists in the atmosphere for centuries.

Previous research by Ramanathan and Yangyang Xu of Scripps, a co-author of the new paper, has shown that a sharp reduction in emissions of these shorter-lived pollutants beginning in 2015 could offset warming temperatures by up to 50 percent by 2050.

Applying those emission reductions to sea level rise, the new research found that the cuts could dramatically slow rising sea levels. Their results showed that total sea level rise would be reduced by an estimated 22 to 42 percent by 2100, depending on the extent to which emissions were reduced.

However, the new study also found that delaying emissions cuts until 2040 would reduce the beneficial impact on year-2100 sea level rise by about a third.

If society were able to substantially reduce both emissions of carbon dioxide as well as the four other pollutants, total sea level rise would be lessened by at least 30 percent by 2100, the researchers concluded.

The researchers used mostly percentage changes for sea level rise, rather than actual estimates in centimeters, because of uncertainties over future temperature increases and their impacts on rising sea levels.

“We still have some control over the amount of sea level rise that we are facing,” Hu says.

Another co-author, Claudia Tebaldi of Climate Central, adds:

"Without diminishing the importance of reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the long term, this study shows that more immediate gains from shorter-lived pollutants are substantial. Cutting emissions of those gases could give coastal communities more time to prepare for rising sea levels. As we have seen recently, storm surges in very highly populated regions of the East Coast show the importance of both making such preparations and cutting greenhouse gases."

To conduct the study, Hu and his colleagues turned to the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model, as well as a second computer model that simulates climate, carbon, and geochemistry. They also drew on estimates of future emissions of heat-trapping gases under various social and economic scenarios and on computer models of melting ice and sea level rise.

The study assumes that society could reduce emissions of the four gases and particles by 30 to 60 percent over the next several decades. That is the steepest reduction believed achievable by economists who have studied the issue at Austria’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, one of the world’s leading research centers into the impact of economic activity on climate change.

“It must be remembered that carbon dioxide is still the most important factor in sea level rise over the long term,” says NCAR scientist Warren Washington, a co-author. “But we can make a real difference in the next several decades by reducing other emissions.”

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research under sponsorship by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Chemicals pollutants threaten health in the Arctic

Photo: Danilo Rizzuti freedigitalphotos.net

People living in Arctic areas can be more sensitive to pollutants due to their genetics, says researcher Arja Rautio at the Centre for Arctic Medicine in the University of Oulu, Finland. This is unfortunate since the northernmost areas of Europe are receiving more harmful chemical exposure. Scientists believe climate change may be a culprit as air and water mass movements push some of these undesirable chemicals towards the Arctic.

“In real life, people are exposed to lots of chemicals,” says Rautio, who leads studies into the human health effects from contaminants and the influence of climate change in a EU-funded project called ArcRisk, “and I think the people of the north are exposed to higher levels than for example the general population in Europe.”

Many new contaminants like fluorinated and brominated compounds and bisphenol A can act on hormones and so have impacts on human health. But seeing an effect on humans, at the population level, could take ten or even 20 years, especially in the case of cancer, she adds. This is why ArcRisk has established a database containing data on concentration levels and trends of contaminants in humans. The project team analysed frozen blood samples collected in Norway in 1978, 1986, 1995 and 2008 for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chlorinated pesticides and polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs).

The main challenge that project scientists struggle with is to disentangle the effects of contaminant chemicals from what we do in our everyday lives. “We know that dioxins can lead to more diabetes and high blood pressure,” says Rautio, “but there are many other confounding factors. We are changing our diet and many of us are less active and those lifestyle choices can also increase the risk of diseases like diabetes.” The results of the project are due to be presented at a conference of Arctic Frontiers in Tromsø, Norway, in January 2014.

Previous studies have also struggled with disentangling contaminants effects when trying to understand their impact on health. There are uncertainties between the chemicals and direct health impacts because people are exposed to so many chemicals simultaneously, cautions biologist Thomas Zoeller at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. Besides, the human population is genetically variable and may react differently to the chemicals and we don’t even know which of the chemicals affect us.

“Moreover, some of these chemicals reside in the environment – and in the body – for a long time, and this means that they may build up,” says Zoeller. His recently edited a recent World Health Organization report which warned that chronic diseases are increasing worldwide and many are related to hormones. It noted that known hormone-disrupting chemicals are “only the tip of the iceberg” and better tests are needed to catch others.

Health problems induced by these chemicals could be worse than anticipated. Some of the pollutants found in the Arctic by the project scientists like the fluorinated compounds have higher affinities for hormone receptors than even the natural hormones. “We have documented several direct harmful effects of these and other chemicals, especially in seabirds, top predators such as the glaucous and ivory,” says Geir Wing Gabrielsen, an environmental scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute, who is not part of ArcRisk.

These animal studies already show worrying trends that do not bode well for humans. “When we see these findings in Arctic animals I am very concerned about what we will find with regards to humans, though we ourselves don’t do human studies,” Gabrielsen says. He notes that long periods of warm air are being transported to the Arctic and that the sea currents around places like the Svalbard islands [located midway between Norway and the North Pole] now consist of warmer Atlantic water; they used to consist of polar waters. “Climate change is having an effect and it is resulting in higher levels of contaminants in the environment and [therefore] also in the animals,” Gabrielsen warns.

Rautio concludes that there is a need to clarify the effects so that people—not only in those living in the remote northern areas— can make decisions about their own lives, what to eat, how to avoid exposure to harm.

Source: European Research Media Center, www.youris.com

Harvard researchers say better air quality means improved U.S. life expectancy

A study led by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) has found an association between reductions in fine particulate matter and improved life expectancy in 545 counties in the U.S. from 2000 to 2007. It is the largest study to date to find beneficial effects to public health of continuing to reduce air pollution levels in the U.S.

“Despite the fact that the U.S. population as a whole is exposed to much lower levels of air pollution than 30 years ago—because of great strides made to reduce people’s exposure—it appears that further reductions in air pollution levels would continue to benefit public health,” said lead author Andrew Correia, a PhD candidate in the Department of Biostatistics at HSPH.

The study looked at the effects on health of fine particulate matter, small particles of 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter—referred to as PM2.5. Numerous studies have shown associations between acute and chronic exposure to fine particle air pollution and cardiopulmonary disease and mortality. Studies have also shown that reductions in air pollution are associated with reductions in adverse health effects and improved life expectancy. Air pollution has been declining steadily in the U.S. since 1980, but the rate has slowed in the years since 2000. The HSPH researchers wanted to know whether the relatively smaller decreases in PM2.5 levels since 2000 are still improving life expectancy.

Controlling for socioeconomic status, smoking prevalence, and demographic characteristics, the results showed that a decrease of 10 micrograms per cubic meter (10 ?g/m3) in the concentration of PM2.5 during the period 2000 to 2007 was associated with an average increase in life expectancy of 0.35 years in 545 U.S. counties.

The research expanded on a 2009 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by some of the same authors (Pope, Ezzati, and Dockery) that found that reduced air pollution was associated with increased life expectancy in 211 urban counties. This new study looked at more recent data, more than two-and-a-half times as many counties, and included both rural and urban areas. The findings showed that there’s a stronger association between declining air pollution and increased life expectancy in more urban, densely populated areas than in rural areas. The results also suggested that reduced levels of air pollution may be more beneficial to women than to men.

As to why there was a stronger association between reductions in fine particulate matter and improvements in life expectancy in urban areas, the researchers speculated that the composition of the particulates there may be different from that in rural areas.

“Since the 1970s, enactment of increasingly stringent air quality controls has led to improvements in ambient air quality in the United States at costs that the U.S. Environ­mental Protection Agency has estimated as high as $25 billion per year. However, the extent to which more recent regulatory actions have benefited public health remains in question. This study provides strong and compelling evidence that continuing to reduce ambient levels of PM2.5 prolongs life,” said senior author Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics at HSPH.

Photo: freedigitalphotos.net

Exposure to traffic pollution in pregnancy, first year of life appears to be associated with autism

Exposure to traffic-related air pollution,  during pregnancy and during the first year of a child's life appears to be associated with an increased risk of autism, according to a new report published by Archives of General Psychiatry.

Researchers at the University of Southern California, looked at the relationship between traffic-related air pollution, air quality and autism in a study that included 279 children with autism and control group of 245 children with typical development.

"Exposures to traffic-related air pollution, PM [particulate matter] and nitrogen dioxide were associated with an increased risk of autism. These effects were observed using measures of air pollution with variation on both local and regional levels, suggesting the need for further study to understand both individual pollutant contributions and the effects of pollutant mixtures on disease," the authors comment.

The authors used mothers' addresses to estimate exposure for each pregnancy trimester and for a child's first year of life. Children living in homes with the highest levels of traffic-related air pollution were three times as likely to have autism compared with children living in homes with the lowest exposure.


Autism is a diverse disorder with genetic and environmental factors likely contributing to its origins. Autism spectrum disorders are commonly characterized by problems in communication, social interaction and repetitive behaviors. Emerging evidence suggests the environment plays a role in autism, but only limited information is available about what exposures are relevant and what stages of  development in which they act.

"Although additional research to replicate these findings is needed, the public health implications of these findings are large because air pollution exposure is common and may have lasting neurological effects," the authors conclude.

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How does city pollution end up in the Arctic? Scientists say pollutants hitch a ride...

For decades, atmospheric scientists have been trying to explain how particles manage to transport harmful pollutants to pristine environments thousands of miles away. Now a new study has uncovered a detail that could provide an explanation.

Researcher have long thought that pollutants coat other particles in the air, but scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory say that the pollutants actually travel inside other particles and are therefore protected from decay.

"In this study, we propose a new explanation for how polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) get transported so far, by demonstrating that airborne particles become a protective vessel for PAH  transport," said physical chemist Alla Zelenyuk. "What we've learned through fundamental studies on model systems in the lab has very important implications for long-range transport of pollutants in the real world."

Floating in the air and invisible to the eye, airborne particles known as secondary organic aerosols live and die. Born from carbon-based molecules given off by trees, vegetation, and fossil fuel burning, these airborne SOA particles travel the currents and contribute to cloud formation. Along for the ride are pollutants, the PAHs.

Zelenyuk and her colleagues developed an ultra-sensitive instrument that can determine the size, composition and shape of these individual particles.

Called SPLAT II, the instrument can analyze millions of tiny particles one by one. The ability of this novel instrument to characterize individual particles provides unique insight into their property and evolution.

Using SPLAT II to evaluate laboratory-generated SOA particles from alpha-pinene, the molecule that gives pine trees their piney smell, Zelenyuk has already discovered that SOA particles aren't liquid at all. Her team's recent work revealed they are more like tar -- thick, viscous blobs that are too solid to be liquid and too liquid to be solid.

Armed with this data, Zelenyuk and researchers from Imre Consulting in Richland and the University of Washington in Seattle set out to determine the relation between the SOA particle and the PAHs. Again they used alpha-pinene for the SOA. For the PAH, they used pyrene, a toxic pollutant produced by burning fossil fuels or vegetation such as forests.

They created two kinds of particles. The first kind exemplified the classical SOA: first they produced the particles with alpha-pinene and then coated them with pyrene. The second kind resembled what likely happens in nature: they mixed alpha-pinene and pyrene and let the particles form with both molecules present. Then they sent the particles through SPLAT and watched what happened to them over time.

With the pyrene-coated particles, the team found the PAH pyrene evaporating off the surface of the particle quickly, all of it gone after four hours. By the next day, the particle itself had shrunk by about 70 percent, showing that the alpha-pinene SOA also evaporates, although more slowly than pyrene.

When they created the particles in the presence of both SOA and PAH, the PAH evaporated much more slowly. Fifty percent of the original PAH still remained in the particle after 24 hours. In addition, the SOA particle itself stayed bulky, losing less than 20 percent of its volume.

These results showed the team that PAHs become trapped within the highly viscous SOA particles, where they remain protected from the environment. The symbiotic relationship between the atmospheric particles and pollutants surprised Zelenyuk: SOAs help PAHs travel the world, and the PAHs help SOAs survive longer.

Zelenyuk and her colleagues performed comparable experiments with other PAHs and SOAs and found similar results.

In the real world, Zelenyuk said, the evaporation will be even slower. These results will help modelers better simulate atmospheric SOA particles and transport of pollutants over long distances.

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Report: Pollution critical threat on par with malaria, TB

A new report released today by New York-based Blacksmith Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to cleaning up life-threatening pollution, and Green Cross Switzerland calculates, for the first time, the global health impact of pollution across 49 countries, giving the broadest picture of pollution’s toll to date. The 2012 report The World’s Worst Pollution Problems reveals that the health impact of pollution is the same or higher than some of the most dangerous diseases worldwide, threatening millions of lives. It is similar in scope to better-known problems such as malaria and tuberculosis. The report also identifies the top ten toxic industries responsible (see list below), and offers workable solutions.

“The report underscores the need to fully recognize the health impacts caused by toxic pollution at this critical juncture. Life-threatening pollution is likely to increase as the global economy exerts an ever-increasing pressure on industry to meet growing demands. The damage will be greatest in many low and middle-income countries, where industrial pollution prevention regulations and measures have not kept pace,” says Richard Fuller, President, Blacksmith Institute.

“Even though it puts nearly 125 million people at risk, pollution remains one of the most under-recognized global problems. Appropriately, large amounts of time and resources are devoted to addressing the burden of diseases like tuberculosis and malaria. The striking fact is that international and local government action on these diseases greatly outpaces the attention given to toxic sites, which, as demonstrated in this report, contribute greatly to the global burden of disease,” says Dr. Stephan Robinson, Unit Manager (Waste, legacy), Green Cross Switzerland.

The 2012 World’s Worst Pollution Problems Report is the latest in a series of pollution reports released annually since 2006 that document the state of the world’s worst polluted places and pollution problems. The reports have been instrumental in increasing public understanding of the health impacts posed by toxic pollution, and in some cases, have compelled cleanup work at pollution hotspots. These reports have been issued jointly by Blacksmith Institute and Green Cross Switzerland since 2007. All released reports are available for download at www.worstpolluted.org.

Snapshot of industrial pollution in 49 countries, plus solutions

This year’s report identifies those pollutants commonly found in industrial processes, whose health impacts are quantifiable, and traces their industry uses and health risks. It goes on to list the top ten polluting sources/industries and offer solutions, highlighting opportunities to implement life-saving cleanup and pollution prevention efforts.

Most importantly, the new report attempts to quantify the true extent of pollution’s threat by measuring the global health impacts of contaminated sites across 49 low and middle-income countries. This is the first time such a calculation has been made to measure pollution’s toll on lives over such a wide area. The previous report began the effort by calculating the disease burden of individual contaminated sites.

Calculating Pollution’s Toll in 17 Million DALYs

The impact of pollution is measured in Disability Adjusted Life Years, or DALYs, which capture the total number of life years lost from early death as well as any reduction in quality of life resulting from disease.

DALYs allow for comparisons to be drawn between different types of public health risks, taking into account both the severity and duration of a given disease. Chronic headaches for example are given a lower value in the DALY metric than more severe health outcomes such as blindness or cancer.

The report found that the public health impact of industrial pollutants, measured in DALYs, is the same or higher than some of the most dangerous diseases worldwide. The report finds that exposure to contaminants at hazardous waste sites across the 49 countries analyzed results in more than 17 million DALYs. By comparison malaria results in some 14 million DALYs in the countries reviewed while tuberculosis results in some 25 million DALYs. These numbers are by no means conclusive but can be taken as indicative of the potential scale of the problem.

The 2012 report was generated out of analysis of on the ground data collected by Blacksmith Institute’s Toxic Sites Identification Program over the past three years during site assessments at thousands of toxic hotspots in low- and middle-income countries. The impact estimates are based on the body of research that the field studies provided. This, in combination with toxicological information provided by the World Health Organization and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other public health leaders, enabled the Blacksmith Institute to quantify the most severe and widespread pollution problems.

Top Ten Toxic Industries Listed by DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Year) 

1. Lead-Acid Battery Recycling - 4,800,000
2. Lead Smelting - 2,600,000
3. Mining and Ore Processing - 2,521,600
4. Tannery Operations - 1,930,000
5. Industrial/Municipal Dump Sites - 1,234,000
6. Industrial Estates - 1,060,000
7. Artisanal Gold Mining - 1,021,000
8. Product Manufacturing - 786,000
9. Chemical Manufacturing - 765,000
10. Dye Industry - 430,000

Inner city kids may be more prone to asthma as a result of respiratory illnesses in infancy

Children living in low-income urban areas appear especially prone to developing asthma, possibly related to infections they acquire early in life. In a new study in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, available online, researchers from the University of Wisconsin in Madison investigated viral respiratory illnesses and their possible role in the development of asthma in urban versus suburban babies. The differences in viral illness patterns they found provide insights that could help guide the development of new asthma treatments in children.
To document patterns of respiratory viruses in infants living in urban and suburban locations, James E. Gern, MD, and his team of investigators collected nasal secretions from 500 infants from four inner-city areas in the U.S. (Boston, Baltimore, New York City, and St. Louis) and 285 infants from suburban Madison, Wis. Nasal secretions were sampled during periods when the babies had respiratory illnesses and when they were healthy.

The inner-city infants had lower rates of viral detection overall. This may suggest that other factors, such as bacteria or allergic reactions to air pollutions or toxic exposures, contribute significantly to respiratory illness. Sick urban infants had lower rates of two kinds of viruses, HRV and RSV, and higher rates of adenovirus infections, compared to suburban infants. In the urban babies, 4.8 percent of nasal washes tested positive for only adenovirus, while just 0.7 percent of samples from suburban babies were positive for only adenovirus. “Adenovirus infections, either as a single pathogen or when detected in concert with other viruses, were significantly more common in the urban population, and this held true for each of the four urban locations where our study was conducted,” the authors wrote.
This is of particular interest, the researchers noted, because adenovirus can cause persistent infections. The study authors believe this may suggest that development of the lungs or airways could be altered by adenovirus infections in early life.

In an accompanying editorial, Peter W. Heymann, MD, and Thomas A.E. Platts-Mills, MD, PhD, of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, noted that the findings are of interest given the pervasiveness and the morbidity and mortality of asthma in poor urban areas. “The results clearly show differences in the detection of viral infections during the first year of life,” they wrote, “and this approach is likely to provide novel insights that will serve to guide the development of treatment interventions to decrease the prevalence and severity of asthma during childhood.”

In an effort to better understand the origins of non-viral respiratory illnesses, Dr. Gern and colleagues are planning experiments to evaluate other pathogens and microbes in the airways. They also plan to follow the urban children in this study for at least 10 years to “test the hypothesis that infections with adenoviruses might be associated later on in childhood with an increased rate of asthma and perhaps lower levels of lung function.”

Photo: David Castillo Dominic, freedigitalphotos.net

The link between chemicals, air pollution and cancer

Researchers are studying lifestyle factors
and chemical exposure as cancer risks.

Cancer incidence is on the rise – and cancer might even surpass heart disease as the world’s leading cause of death, the World Health Organization says.

According to HealthNewsDigest.com, cancer is the only major cause of death that has continued to rise since 1900.

Trying to explain the cause, researchers are increasingly turning to environmental factors as worthy study objects.

A 240-page report based on hundreds of other studies entitled “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now” placed part of the blame to our exposure to chemicals, pollution and radiation.

According to the report, 41 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives and 21 percent are likely to die from it.

Numerous studies have linked chemical exposure to a higher risk of cancer, but the medical community is nevertheless divided since it is so difficult to establish a clear link between exposure to certain chemicals and serious health effects later on.

Personal lifestyle factors like smoking, obesity, excessive alcohol intake and overexposure to sunlight (read sunburns) certainly play a role, but no one can deny that our reliance on chemicals and the effect on public health warrant a closer look.

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Serious Air Pollution Becomes Growing Concern in Alaska

Federal environmental officials announced yesterday that citizens living in Fairbanks and Juneau, Alaska, are at risk to serious health concerns, as a result of the chronic air pollution in these two cities.

Fairbanks and Juneau join the list of places where tiny bits of airborne dust, termed “particulate” pollution, or PM2.5, is bad enough to cause serious health concerns and force local officials to respond. Like the rest of North America, Alaskan residents are also at risk to a high degree of chemicals in the air.

Federal health officials have linked particulate pollution to short-term and long-term health problems. It's prevalent in places like Fairbanks and Juneau due in part to weather patterns that trap cold, stagnant air close to the ground.

The indoor air experts at AllerAir are warning Juneau and Fairbanks residents to take their own measures to ensure their indoor air is clean. “This announcement most certainly should not be taken lightly,” said AllerAir Indoor Air Quality Expert, Karen Hand, B. Chem. Eng. “Residents need to be proactive in these situations to ensure the safety of themselves, as well as their families.”

The experts at AllerAir suggest:

1) Incorporating indoor plants in your home that scrub the air and produce oxygen.
2) Using non-toxic cleaners, i.e., non-solvent cleaners.
3) Using air purifiers that combine a deep carbon bed with a HEPA filter.

Short- and long-term exposure to fine-particulate pollution can cause serious health problems. When they become lodged deep in the lungs, particulates can cause chronic bronchitis, decreased lung function and, for people with lung or heart disease, shorter lives.

To talk to an Air Quality Expert at AllerAir, call their tollfree number at (888) 852-8247 or visit their website at www.allerair.com.