Believe it or not, more than five million people die every year from polluted air worldwide. Perhaps the air is ruining your health right now, because urban air is often high in carbon dioxide, methane, ozone and other harmful substances. According to the calculations of scientists, ozone included in the list of substances toxic to humans can cause the development of emphysema of the lungs. This disease destroys the lungs, leading to shortness of breath, wheezing and coughing, thereby increasing the likelihood of sudden death. But how bad are things? Is dirty air more harmful than, say, cigarette smoke?
It was previously thought that the most common cause of pulmonary emphysema is smoking. However, over time, doctors from all over the world began to notice that a terrible disease develops even in non-smokers. Scientists suspect that the destruction of lung tissue can also occur due to dirty air. To check whether this is so or not, they conducted a rather large experiment, which lasted from 2000 to 2018.
How dirty is the air in cities?
First of all, scientists decided to travel around different US states and measure the concentration of nitric oxide and ozone, which are one of the main air pollutants. If the level of these substances is more than 100 parts per billion, the human body is seriously harmed, the researchers said. But to their surprise, in most cities ozone levels are only 10-25 ppb, and nitrogen levels are even lower.
The dirtiest city in the world - Tianying.
The collected data were compared with the results of computed tomography of the heart and lungs of 15,000 people. It turned out that the symptoms characteristic of pulmonary emphysema were actually observed even in nonsmokers. Exactly how the calculations were carried out is unknown, but in the end scientists announced that even a small concentration of ozone could cause lung destruction. The harm of nitric oxide was less pronounced - the study showed that its concentration decreases every year.
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Urban air harm
Thus, breathing ozone-polluted air for ten years, people do the same harm to themselves as smoking cigarettes for thirty years. According to scientists, in the future, polluted air will become even more dangerous - the average world air temperature rises almost every year, which indicates the onset of global warming. And with global warming, we recall that there is an accumulation of greenhouse gases on Earth, including dangerous ozone.
Do you know what else can cause lung destruction? It sounds pretty scary, but human lungs can be damaged even during the Chinese therapy - acupuncture. A 79-year-old resident of Portugal recently faced such an unpleasant situation, who came for a session and, due to the inexperience of the therapist, went home with a punctured lung. The woman had to go through many difficulties, but in the end everything ended well.
Now, let's talk - how clean do you think the air you breathe? Does it affect your health?
Ramis Ganiev