From: David A Gabel, Environmental News Network
Published July 23, 2010 10:30 AM

It is well known that certain concentrations of air pollution can adversely affect human respiratory condition. What is not as well-known is how air pollution can affect the heart. A new study presented at the American Heart Association’s Basic Cardiovasular Sciences 2010 Scientific Session by researchers from Texas A&M links ground-level ozone (smog) to cell deaths in the heart.

Ozone (O3) is extremely beneficial to the planet while it is in the upper atmosphere. From there, it blocks damaging ultraviolet light from reaching the planet surface. However, near the ground, it is a harmful and reactive air pollutant. It is created from the reaction of sunlight on air containing NOx or hydrocarbons. These pollutants are cause be vehicle exhaust or other fossil fuel burning operations. Therefore, ozone is a not a direct product, but an indirect product of fuel emissions. Ozone is one of the primary constituents of smog which also includes particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, and water vapor (fog).
The researchers indicate that chronic ozone exposure increases the sensitivity to myocardial (heart muscle) dysfunction. The heart muscle is one of three main types of muscle in the human body along with skeletal and smooth muscle. It is well adapted to be resistant to fatigue and are assured of a constant and abundant blood supply.

To test their theory, the researchers used rats exposed to clean air or air containing 0.8 ppm ozone for eight hours per day. The experiment was also conducted over varying durations — 28 days and 56 days. After completion, the cardiac functions of the rats exposed to ozone were significantly less than those exposed to clean air.

To test their theory, the researchers used rats exposed to clean air or air containing 0.8 ppm ozone for eight hours per day. The experiment was also conducted over varying durations — 28 days and 56 days. After completion, the cardiac functions of the rats exposed to ozone were significantly less than those exposed to clean air.

The ozone-exposed rats had higher levels of TNF α (tumor necrosis factor-alpha). The increase in TNF α has been shown to cause a decrease in Cav1 (Caveolin-1) levels. Cav1 is a protein that is the main component of the caveolae membranes found in most cell types. It acts as a tumor suppressor and serves an important function in promoting the cell cycle progression. Decreases in Cav1 can lead to cell dysfunction and possibly cell death.

This is the first time a link has been made connecting ozone to Cav1 in the heart muscle. Researchers hope this information will help to better understand the mechanisms behind ozone-caused cardiac dysfunction. Then it can be used to guide policies to determine property air quality standards in order to protect the millions of citizens living in smoggy, urban environments.

For more information: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml

The League of Women Voters is doing a forum at the main SL Library on Sept. 15 on the Snake Valley Water Diversion and its air quality & other human well-being implications. It will be at 7:00 in the evening in the large auditorium on the entry floor.

By Van Jones
Grist
20 JUL 2010 11:22 AM

In exchange for cutting their carbon emissions, power plants want to undermine the EPA and get permission to increase other kinds of dangerous pollution. They even want the go-ahead to dump more sulfur and deadly mercury into our air and water.

This literal “poison pill” proposal would turn progress in climate protection into a devastating setback for the health of all Americans — especially for those who live near power plants. The dirty energy lobby hopes that America can be convinced to accept more poison to get less carbon.

Fortunately, national leaders began sounding the alarm last week. Grist’s David Roberts took a break from vacation to alert the nation, calling the utility companies’ backroom play potentially the “scam of the century.”

Green For All’s Phaedra Ellis Lamkins and the NAACP’s Ben Jealous put the matter bluntly, stating: “[B]ig utility companies apparently are making unconscionable demands that threaten the health and safety of all Americans.” Green For All immediately launched an online campaign to kill this nutty notion before it mutates into a legislative proposal.

American policy can be smart enough to protect both our children and our grandchildren.

We should heed these warnings. The deadly coal mine explosion in West Virginia and the devastating environmental catastrophe in our Gulf of Mexico are just two recent examples of the consequences of weak federal oversight. These tragedies remind us that we need more, not less, environmental protection.

Beltway insiders may be trying to convince themselves that curbing the authority of the EPA and gutting clean air protections is a necessary step to achieving an agreement on climate change legislation.

But this is a false choice. We can have clean air protection for our children today and climate protection for our grandchildren tomorrow. We must not allow the health of our communities to be used as bargaining chips.

This is no time to increase the load of pollutions and toxins in America’s air and water.

Already today, particulate air pollution kills 64,000 people in the United States every year — more people than die each year in car accidents. We should be redoubling efforts to reduce these premature deaths from heart and lung disease — not rolling back protections.

27 million children under the age of 13 reside in areas with ozone levels above EPA’s revised standard. Two million children with asthma, or half of the pediatric asthma population under the age of eighteen, lived in these areas.
The utility companies’ shameful proposals would make all of these statistics much worse — resulting in more sickness and death for Americans, including children.

Vulnerable communities should not be asked to suffer disproportionately again.

Worse, these proposals would inflict the most harm on the people who are already suffering. After all: who lives near power plants? Disproportionately low-income people and people of color.

All of us may have to make some sacrifices and adjustments along the path to a greener and more prosperous America. But communities of color already have the worst air and drinking water — and suffer the most risk from environmental hazards. In the last century’s dirty energy economy, they already suffered disproportionately.

People of color are exposed to 70 percent more of the dangerous particulate matter linked to greenhouse gas pollution.
People of color, particularly blacks and Latinos, visit the emergency room for asthma at three and a half times the average rate that whites do, and die from it twice as often.

People of color are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods with industrial pollution.
America needs a stronger EPA, not a weaker one.

Therefore, we should look with unease on the willingness of some to strip authority from America’s government to protect our communities and environment. There is only one federal agency standing between our communities and even worse degradation: the EPA.

Undermining the EPA would be a risky choice for all Americans. A climate bill that saves carbon but takes away EPA’s authority to protect communities against toxic hazards is a defeat for all Americans. We should reject false choices.

We must also reject the notion that communities of color and low-income communities will once again be asked to bear the burden of a dirty economy.

Law makers must find a way to achieve progress on a climate bill, but taking major steps backward cannot be part of that solution. An attack on the EPA is an attack on our public health and well being.

We need both a strong climate bill and strong EPA authority to protect our air, our planet, and our public health.

More sobering news about air pollution…clearly this stuff isn’t good for you!! Which begs the question, then why do we, as a society, tolerate our air being so polluted?

SATURDAY, July 17 (HealthDay News) — Exposure to high levels of traffic air pollution among people with heart or lung disease is associated with reduced heart rate variability (HRV), a risk factor for sudden cardiac death, finds a new study. The study included 30 Atlanta-area residents with lung disease (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) or heart disease (previous heart attack).

The Harvard School of Public Health researchers found no link between reduced heart rate variability and ambient levels of air pollutants in the areas where the participants lived. However, 24-hour portable monitoring devices worn by the patients showed a significant association between reduced HRV and personal exposure to traffic-related air pollutants, including elemental carbon and nitrogen dioxide.

A drop in heart rate variability — a measure of the heart’s ability to adapt to changes in the environment — indicates weakened control of the heart by the autonomic nervous system.

The findings add to recent evidence of a link between short-term, personal exposure to traffic-related pollution and reduced HRV. They may also help to explain why some previous studies have found that people have an increased risk of heart attack in the hour immediately after being stuck in traffic, the Harvard researchers said in a university news release.

The study appears in the July issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
The American Heart Association has more about sudden cardiac death.

Medical News Today
American Psychiatric Association

Suicide rates increase not only as a result of mental illness, but also when there are difficulties with breathing, according to two large Asian population studies that detected the effects of air pollution and asthma, an illness that itself is exacerbated by poor air conditions.

Changsoo Kim, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues obtained air pollution measurements for seven cities in South Korea and examined relationships between the timing of particulate matter increases and the 4,341 suicides occurring in 2004. Short-term increases in airborne particles were associated with a 9 percent increase in suicide, with a 19 percent increase in suicide for people with cardiovascular disease. Data on suicides were obtained from a national database.

National suicide records were also used in a second study by Chian-Jue Kuo, M.D., M.S., and colleagues to link suicides in Taiwan over 12 years with cases of asthma in nearly 163,000 high school students. Adolescents with asthma were twice as likely to commit suicide as were teens without asthma, and those with more severe asthma had a higher suicide rate.

Both studies showed a temporal relationship-the suicides came after the asthma or air pollution spikes. In addition, the relationships to suicide were independent of psychiatric illness.

The studies will appear on July 15 at AJP in Advance , the online advance edition of The American Journal of Psychiatry (AJP), the official journal of the American Psychiatric Association. Funding for the Kim study was received from the Ministry of Environment, Republic of Korea.

Funding for the Kuo study was received from the Environmental Protective Administration, National Health Research Institutes, Kaohsiung Medical University, National Science Council, Chungshan Medical University Hospital, and Taipei City Hospital in Taiwan and from the National Institute of Mental Health in the U.S.

Source:
American Psychiatric Association & Med News Today

Due to expected high levels of ozone tomorrow (Friday, July 16th), the Utah Department of Environmental Quality has issued a health advisory for Salt Lake, Davis and Utah Counties:

SALT LAKE / DAVIS Counties: Air Quality Condition: RED
Ozone Forecast: Unhealthy
Health Advisory: Sensitive people (those with respiratory or heart disease, the elderly, and children) should reduce prolonged or heavy exertion outdoors during the mid-morning and afternoon hours.

UTAH County: Air Quality Condition: RED
Ozone Forecast: Unhealthy
Health Advisory: Sensitive people (those with respiratory or heart disease, the elderly, and children) should reduce prolonged or heavy exertion outdoors during the mid-morning and afternoon hours.

In spite of our public officials declaring tomorrow’s ozone levels concerning only to “sensitive groups,” the current medical literature suggests there is no safe level of ozone exposure, thus we all should take care to minimize our exposure. The Department of Air Quality has a website where you can check hourly for ozone levels on their “current conditions” page. You can also track ozone levels on their “trend charts” page.

This data is not quality assured but it does give you the bigger picture regarding ozone levels over a 24-hour period: Is it going up? Is it going down? Are we exceeding NAAQS (National Ambient Air Quality Standards)? You can then tailor your outdoor activities to coincide with the lowest ozone levels, which generally are during the early morning and evening (post sunset) when temperatures are also at their coolest. As a rule of thumb, when the temperatures creep into the 90’s and beyond you are going to see particularly unhealthy levels of ozone.

Tailoring your activities is certainly not the long-term answer to ozone pollution, but in the short-term it is the only choice we have. Utah Moms for Clean Air highly recommends reducing as much as possible (and without pulling your hair out!) your children’s ozone exposure. Young lungs are still growing and can be permanently damaged from chronic ozone exposure. In essence, significant ozone exposure — even within a day’s time frame — causes a chemical sunburn akin to the sunburn we get on our skin from the sun. Like our skin, our lungs can also shed damaged cells, but also like our skin, repeated burns, especially bad ones, will result in scarring.

I don’t know about you, but my mother’s intuition says that is clearly not a recipe for my childrens’ optimal health. So when the Department of Environmental Quality issues a red alert, I listen and find activities indoors that still allow exercise, but also limits their ozone exposure (ozone, by the way, is the result of a sunlight-driven chemical reaction thus it breaks down very quickly indoors — so the good news is you CAN hide from it!!). A few of our recent activities have included:

Ice skating
Indoor rock climbing
Kickball in a gymnasium
Kangeroo zoo (bounce house)
Indoor swimming pools

Other great activities to beat the heat and avoid ozone are:

Mountain excursions (Alpine Slide is great fun, although a bit pricey)
Matinee movies (especially at the dollar theaters)
Library and Museum visits
Bowling

Whatever you do, do take ozone seriously even if it is an odorless, invisible gas, as there is no way around that fact that ozone is a poisonous, unstable form of oxygen, a powerful oxidizing agent and biologically corrosive — and any mother will tell you that is not something to play around with!

Air Now has a great 2-minute mini-video showing how ground level ozone is formed. Look for it in the bottom right-hand corner of the page.

New York Times Editorial
July 8th, 2010

The Obama administration has proposed new air-quality rules that represent another important step in the long, litigious struggle to clean up older power plants. But there is still a considerable distance to go before Americans, especially those in large cities, can enjoy truly healthy air as envisioned by the Clean Air Act of 1970. That will require the administration to keep its promise to seek even tougher standards over the next two years, including restrictions on regulated pollutants like mercury.

The new rules refine and modestly improve on rules issued in 2005 by the Bush administration that were tossed out by a federal court on technical grounds in 2008. The Bush rules were unusually adventurous for an administration that otherwise did little to help the cause of cleaner air. They forced electric utilities to make major new investments in pollution-control technology.

The new rules are tailored to meet the court’s objections, and presumably are more likely to survive legal challenge. They are aimed at reducing power-plant emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides produced by more than 900 coal-, gas- and oil-fired units east of the Mississippi. Sulfur dioxide produces deadly soot particles, as well as acid rain. Nitrogen oxides help produce the unhealthy smog that hangs over American cities, especially during oppressive heat waves like the one that has been smothering New York City and other eastern cities this week.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the new rules will reduce both pollutants by hundreds of thousands of tons a year and will yield $120 billion in annual health benefits by 2014. Between 14,000 and 36,000 premature deaths would be avoided, as would thousands of nonfatal heart attacks and cases of acute bronchitis.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the new rules will reduce both pollutants by hundreds of thousands of tons a year and will yield $120 billion in annual health benefits by 2014. Between 14,000 and 36,000 premature deaths would be avoided, as would thousands of nonfatal heart attacks and cases of acute bronchitis.

The rules will also improve visibility in state and national parks and protect ecosystems sensitive to acid rain, including lakes and streams in the Adirondacks. Industry will be forced to undertake further investments in modern pollution controls, and some companies may choose to retire their dirtiest coal-fired plants. But the benefits of the new rules so plainly outweigh their estimated annual costs of $2.8 billion that the electrical utilities seemed resigned to them, however grudgingly.

That is unlikely to be the case with other E.P.A. rules now in the pipeline. Lisa Jackson, the agency’s administrator, has promised by next year a rule that would impose controls on power-plant emissions of mercury, which are now unregulated. Industry has opposed such controls as too expensive and is almost certain to do so again. Also in the works are tighter health standards for ozone, due in 2012.

Ms. Jackson’s task is to get the new smog and soot rules finalized, then stay the course.

I read a news article on our local KSL.com online news and found it appropriate for the Utah Moms for Clean Air blog.  The article discusses how the cost of fossil fuel/energy consumption on health and human lives is not fully reported. It is refreshing to see news covering the health affects of energy consumption because the majority of the public has no idea of the full repercussions of our energy choices.  Click here for the full article.

Bridget