Thefossil fuel emissionsthe atmosphere does not only affect the climate. Researchers at the University of Michigan have just shown that exposure topolluted airin the short term increases the risk of sufferingheart attack and heart attack.
In two experiments carried out in the United States with a hundred subjects, inhaling polluted air for two hours caused a significant increase in thediastolic blood pressure. ? Although this increase in blood pressure hardly affects the health of healthy people, in hypertensive patients or with an underlying disease of the coronary arteries it can become the trigger of a heart attack or a stroke ,? explains Robert D. Brook lead author of the study and cardiologist at the Cardiovascular Center of the UM.
Brook and his colleagues have shown that these effects are due toinhalation of small microscopic particles, about the size of a tenth of the diameter of a human hair, present in polluted air, causing an increase in blood pressure and a constriction of the vessels. Researchers suspect that these fine particles settle in the lungs and pass into the bloodstream. The alteration can last up to 24 hours.
This new research, published in the journalHypertension, is framed in the field ofenvironmental cardiology, a new discipline that studies the link between air pollution and heart disease.
