tailieunhanh - Health Effects of Fine Particulate Air Pollution: Lines that Connect

Every minute of every day, we breathe six to ten liters of air. If the air carries unhealthy levels of pollutants, those pollutants can enter our bodies and affect us in many ways. Thousands of us live where the air is often unhealthy to breathe. A large number of people are affected leading to the health impacts of air pollution being costly in the long run. Air pollution is especially harmful to the very young and old. Infants and children are at risk because their lungs are not fully developed until they are about 18 years old and because they breathe. | 2006 CRITICAL REVIEW C. Arden Pope III Douglas W. Dockery ISSN 1047-3289 J. Air Waste Manage. Assoc. 56 709-742 Copyright 2006 Air Waste Management Association Health Effects of Fine Particulate Air Pollution Lines that Connect C. Arden Pope III Department of Economics Brigham Young University Provo UT Douglas W. Dockery Department of Environmental Health Harvard School of Public Health Boston MA ABSTRACT Efforts to understand and mitigate the health effects of particulate matter PM air pollution have a rich and interesting history. This review focuses on six substantial lines of research that have been pursued since 1997 that have helped elucidate our understanding about the effects of PM on human health. There has been substantial progress in the evaluation of PM health effects at different time-scales of exposure and in the exploration of the shape of the concentration-response function. There has also been emerging evidence of PM-related cardiovascular health effects and growing knowledge regarding interconnected general pathophysiological pathways that link PM exposure with cardiopulmonary morbidity and mortality. Despite important gaps in scientific knowledge and continued reasons for some skepticism a comprehensive evaluation of the research findings provides persuasive evidence that exposure to fine particulate air pollution has adverse effects on cardiopulmonary health. Although much of this research has been motivated by environmental public health policy these results have important scientific medical and public health implications that are broader than debates over legally mandated air quality standards. INTRODUCTION Efforts to understand and mitigate the effects of air pollution on human health and welfare have a rich and interesting By the 1970s and 1980s attributed largely to earlier well-documented increases in morbidity and mortality from extreme air pollution episodes 4-12 the link between cardiopulmonary disease and very high .