Air pollution: diabetes caused by fine dust
All content is checked by medical journalists.Munichsoot, fine dust, exhaust gases - there are all kinds of pollutants in the air. Apparently they can cause even more diseases than previously thought, shows a Danish study.
Humans take in air twelve to 15 times per minute - about one liter per breath. That adds up to an enormous 20 cubic meters of air flowing through the lungs every day - with all the pollutants it contains. The list of potentially fatal diseases they cause is long. It ranges from cardiovascular diseases to asthma and COPD to lung cancer.
Diabetes caused by particulate matter
Now Ole Hertel's team from Aarhus University has identified another disease that is linked to air pollution: diabetes. “That was a real surprise,” says Hertel. "At the moment we are trying to find a scientific explanation for it."
The result was made possible by the so-called AirGis model. This links calculations on air pollution and its distribution in the air with the Danish register for buildings and apartments. This made it possible to get precise information on air pollution for any address. Combined with the very precise Danish health register, the researchers were not only able to track the health careers of their fellow citizens, they also knew where they had lived and for what periods of time and how polluted the air they breathed was.
Breathing air that makes you sick
The air pollution in Copenhagen and other major European cities is rather moderate with 20 to 50 micrograms of fine dust per cubic meter. In the megacities in Asia, Africa and South America, on the other hand, it is often an average of 200 micrograms per cubic meter. The burden on human health is likely to be correspondingly higher there. "But even in moderately polluted cities, such as we have in Denmark, we find numerous serious illnesses, the cause of which is the air we breathe every day," says Hertel.
Increased risk to the heart
A study recently published in the British Medical Journal, which followed over 100,000 people from various European countries over a period of more than ten years, shows how delicate even small amounts of dirt in the air can be.
The result: if the exposure to very small particles (less than 2.5 micrometers) rose by five micrograms per cubic meter, the risk of suffering a serious cardiovascular incident such as stroke or heart attack increased by 13 percent during the study period. An increase of ten micrograms per cubic meter in terms of particles up to ten micrometers in diameter increased the heart risk by twelve percent.
Limit values are not enough
This also applied to values that are below the European limit values for air pollution. A maximum of 25 micrograms per cubic meter for particles under 2.5 micrometers and 40 micrograms per cubic meter of air for particles under ten micrometers are permitted on an annual average.
The WHO, on the other hand, calls for guidelines that are well below these values. According to her, 1.3 million people worldwide die every year as a result of air pollution. (cf)
Sources:
Ole Hertel: Utilizing Monitoring data and Spatial Analysis Tools for exposure Assessment of Atmospheric Pollutants in Denmark: Occurrence, fate and Impact of Atmospheric Pollutants on Environmental and Human Health; rapporteur: DOI: 10.1021 /BK-2013-1149.ch006, p. 95-122
Giulia Cesaroni: Long term exposure to ambient air pollution and incidence of acute coronary events: prospective cohort study and meta-analysis in 11 European cohorts from the ESCAPE Project, BMJ 014; 348: f7412
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