Air Pollution and Heart Attacks
Stuck on the freeway again in rush hour? The smoggy air from all that exhaust can raise your risk for heart attack.
In a study that analyzed the results from a number of other studies on causes of heart attack, smog came in first, over coffee, alcohol and sex, as an everyday exposure that raised the risk.
“That doesn't mean a single drive down a smoggy highway will lead to a heart attack. Nor will having a cup of cigarette or a fatty meal," said Joseluis Ibarra, MD, from The Heart Group of Lancaster General Health." But spread out over the population, these risks add up to have an impact.”
For example, air pollution is a minor trigger for heart attacks, but because so many people are exposed to smog, it triggers many more heart attacks than other more potent triggers, such as alcohol and cocaine.
"Small risks can be highly relevant if they are widely distributed in the population," says lead researcher Tim S. Nawrot, Ph.D., at Hasselt University in Diepenbeek, Belgium.
In their research, Nawrot's team looked at 36 studies on environmental triggers for heart attacks. In their review, the researchers searched for common threads that could establish whether some factors created greater risk than others.
The team found that air pollution increased a person's risk of heart attack by just under 5 percent. In contrast, coffee increased the risk by 1.5 times, alcohol tripled the risk, and cocaine use increased the odds for heart attack by 23 times.
But because only a small number of people are exposed to cocaine, while hundreds of millions are exposed to air pollution daily, air pollution was estimated to cause more heart attacks across the population than cocaine.
Although exposure to secondhand smoke wasn't included in the analysis, the effects are probably about the same as air pollution, the authors say. Where bans on smoking in public places exist, the rate of heart attacks has dropped an average of 17 percent.
"This work stands as a warning against overlooking the effects of moderate risks when they affect the entire population," says Andrea Baccarelli, Ph.D., at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Always talk with your health care provider to find out more information.
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