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Pittsburgh – According to a new study, air pollution is responsible for 33 million visits each year to emergency rooms for asthma attacks worldwide.
While previous research had examined the link between air pollution and a number of other diseases, the new study, led by researchers from George Washington University and published this week in Environmental Health Perspectives, is the first to quantify the global burden of asthma caused by unhealthy air.
Asthma is the most common chronic respiratory disease in the world and affects approximately 358 million people. In Pittsburgh, the long-term problems of air pollution and asthma persist in the region: Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, has listed all the F's on the quality monitoring sheet of the Air 2018 from the American Lung Association, and recent research suggests that about 22% of asthma affects the most polluted neighborhoods in the city, compared to the national average of 8% .
"An increasing number of publications in recent decades have linked health and air pollution, but we have never been able to integrate asthma," said Susan C. Anenberg, lead author of the study and associate professor in environmental health and occupational health. at the School of Public Health of the Milken Institute of George Washington University, told EHN. "This is important because these global burden of disease figures are used to determine the distribution of public health resources around the world."
Anenberg and her team first reviewed asthma emergency visits in 54 countries and Hong Kong territory, then combined this information with an analysis of epidemiological studies. carried out worldwide and on global pollution levels detected by satellites in Earth orbit (with the help of NASA).
The researchers found that between 9 and 23 million annual visits to asthma emergency rooms around the world (ie 8 to 20% of the total number of asthma visits worldwide) could to be caused by pollution by ozone, generated when cars, power plants and other types of emissions interact with sunlight. They also estimated that between 5 and 10 million visits each year to emergency rooms for asthma (ie 4 to 9% of the total number of asthma visits in the world ) were linked to fine particles – small, inhaled airborne particles that can be lodged in the airways, which are often associated with industrial emissions.
Anenberg's findings confirm a recent study by the Allegheny County Health Department in Pennsylvania that asthma emergency room visits dropped by 38% the year after one of the most major industrial polluters in the Pittsburgh area.
"Ozone and particles are important risk factors, and should be considered as targets to reduce the burden of asthma," Anenberg said. "Focusing only on particles or ozone may not be enough."
She added, "The good news is that traffic is a major source of pollution, so reducing traffic by improving public transit and developing an infrastructure that encourages people to walk or bike can be improved at the same time.
Approximately half of the asthma emergency room visits attributed to polluted air during the study took place in South Asian countries and around the world. East is India and China. Although the air in the United States is relatively clean compared to the air of these places, it is estimated that ozone pollution is at the origin of 8 to 21% of the visits. asthma emergencies, while particulate pollution accounted for 3 to 11% of emergency room visits. in the USA
"We hope this research will help public health practitioners, physicians and other health sector stakeholders engaged in efforts to reduce the burden of asthma in the general population," said Anenberg. "Now that we have a clearer picture of the overall burden, we hope to start taking more action to reduce these risk factors."
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