Poor air quality is “an important public health problem,” researcher says

Oct 8, 2013 18:21 GMT  ·  By

Poor air quality resulting from pollution makes people more vulnerable to cardiovascular diseases and ups heart attack risk, Dr. Savina Nodari from Brescia, Italy said while speaking at this year's meeting of the Acute Cardiovascular Case Association in Madrid, Spain.

The researcher said that, while monitoring both daily concentrations of fine particulate matter in Brescia and cardiovascular events in the same region between the years 2004 and 2007, she found that, whenever local air quality took a turn for the worse, an increased number of people had to be hospitalized for various heart conditions.

“Brescia is one of the most industrialised areas in the North of Italy and according to the European Environmental Agency it has average daily PM10 levels higher than the safety threshold of 50 micrograms/cubic meter,” Dr. Savina Nodari explained.

“This high level of air pollution is clearly having a bad effect on heart health,” she went on to say, as cited by Alpha Galileo Foundation.

The researcher argued that, according to her investigations, each 10 micrograms increase in particulate matter air concentrations translated into a 3% increase in the number of people who sought medical help.

People over the age of 65 were found to be the ones most affected by poor air quality.

“This may be related to a higher prevalence of comorbidities and greater fragility of the cardiovascular and circulatory system associated with ageing,” she theorizes.

At this meeting, Dr. Savina Nodari also said that, although the European Union considered particulate matter air concentrations that did not exceed 50 micrograms per cubic meter quite safe, it was possible that this was by no means the case.

“In the last few decades there has been a worrying increase in air pollution. Regardless of local environmental and social policies to approve air quality, the negative effect of air pollution continues to be an important public health problem,” the researcher said, as cited by Science Daily.

Furthermore, “The European Union has set a PM10 safety threshold of 50 micrograms/cubic meter but the negative effect of PM10 on the cardiovascular system may occur at levels lower than this cut off.”

The researcher recommends that the safety threshold be reduced to 20 – 30 micrograms / cubic meter.