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Science Forum Index » Environment Forum » Study Links Pollution to Heart Disease, i.e. your SUV might
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| Sexually-Starved Deranged |
 Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2003 11:18 pm |
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DALLAS - Air pollution in U.S. cities causes twice as many deaths from
heart disease as it does from lung cancer and other respiratory
ailments, a surprising new study suggests.
The statistical analysis was published Tuesday in Circulation, a
journal of the American Heart Association (news - web sites).
"It certainly did surprise us when we first observed these results,"
said lead author C. Arden Pope III, an epidemiologist at Brigham Young
University in Provo, Utah. "We just sort of anticipated that breathing
particles into your lungs would most likely have a direct impact on
your lungs."
Still, Pope stressed that the lungs are intricately involved. For
example, lung inflammation from breathing polluted air can lead to
heart disease.
The study analyzed data from a survey of 500,000 adults who enrolled
in an American Cancer Society (news - web sites) survey on cancer
prevention in 1982.
It expands on a study by Pope and others published in the March 2002
issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (news - web
sites). Researchers said that study contained the strongest evidence
yet linking air pollution with lung cancer deaths.
In this round of research, Pope and the others looked at the incidence
of heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases, and respiratory
diseases. They then crunched those numbers with air pollution data for
more than 150 cities kept by the Environmental Protection Agency (news
- web sites).
Even after taking into account other risk factors, such as smoking,
diet, weight and occupation, the scientists found that air pollution
increased the chances of heart disease.
"This link was stronger for cardiovascular disease than respiratory
disease," Pope said. "Substantially more than two-thirds of deaths due
to air pollution are cardiovascular deaths, or heart diseases, if you
will, versus respiratory deaths."
The pollution risk is from what scientists call combustion-related
fine particulate matter — soot emitted by cars and trucks, coal-fired
power plants and factories.
Pope said his findings are consistent with other research that
suggests air pollution provokes inflammation and speeds up narrowing
of the arteries.
Ralph Delfino, a University of California at Irvine epidemiologist,
said the study is "quite important."
"I think it should serve not as the last word but as an encouragement
to do more intensive investigations," he said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031216/ap_on_he_me/heart_disease_2 |
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| Jimm6y Dean |
| Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2003 11:42 pm |
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If the SUV drivers don't care about their own health, why would they care
about yours? |
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| Tim Miller |
| Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2003 10:17 am |
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jcrabber@netscape.net (Sexually-Starved Deranged Ultraright Bible-Thumping Master Bater) wrote in message news:<14b024c3.0312172018.5cb3577c@posting.google.com>...
Quote: DALLAS - Air pollution in U.S. cities causes twice as many deaths from
heart disease as it does from lung cancer and other respiratory
ailments, a surprising new study suggests.
The statistical analysis was published Tuesday in Circulation, a
journal of the American Heart Association (news - web sites).
"It certainly did surprise us when we first observed these results,"
said lead author C. Arden Pope III, an epidemiologist at Brigham Young
University in Provo, Utah. "We just sort of anticipated that breathing
particles into your lungs would most likely have a direct impact on
your lungs."
This should surprise no one when you consider that Pope has staked his
career and reputation on finding something bad about particulates,
much like Linus Pauling and vitamin C, which gave a generation of
Americans rhe runs. His buddy Joel schwartz even openly flaunts his
activism.
Too bad nobody outside of the particulate hunting industry gets
funding to look at this issue.
Quote: Still, Pope stressed that the lungs are intricately involved. For
example, lung inflammation from breathing polluted air can lead to
heart disease.
The study analyzed data from a survey of 500,000 adults who enrolled
in an American Cancer Society (news - web sites) survey on cancer
prevention in 1982.
It expands on a study by Pope and others published in the March 2002
issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (news - web
sites). Researchers said that study contained the strongest evidence
yet linking air pollution with lung cancer deaths.
In this round of research, Pope and the others looked at the incidence
of heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases, and respiratory
diseases. They then crunched those numbers with air pollution data for
more than 150 cities kept by the Environmental Protection Agency (news
- web sites).
Even after taking into account other risk factors, such as smoking,
diet, weight and occupation, the scientists found that air pollution
increased the chances of heart disease.
"This link was stronger for cardiovascular disease than respiratory
disease," Pope said. "Substantially more than two-thirds of deaths due
to air pollution are cardiovascular deaths, or heart diseases, if you
will, versus respiratory deaths."
The pollution risk is from what scientists call combustion-related
fine particulate matter ? soot emitted by cars and trucks, coal-fired
power plants and factories.
Pope said his findings are consistent with other research that
suggests air pollution provokes inflammation and speeds up narrowing
of the arteries.
Here's how this stuff works:
from http://www.fumento.com/pollusci.html
How Grim Was My Valley?
On a clear day in Utah Valley, you can see, well, pretty darned far.
But when there's an air inversion caused by the trapping effects of
the Wasatch Mountains to the west, a yellowish-brown haze covers much
of the sky "as if somebody put a lid above the top of a trash can
fire," in the words of one former resident. If air pollution at
current levels were killing Americans, you'd expect it to be happening
here. And you'd find it relatively easy to detect, because you
wouldn't have to worry much about smokers (the populace is
overwhelmingly nonsmoking Mormons), who can cloud statistics about
pollution health effects. Sure enough, an enterprising economist from
Brigham Young University looked for a correlation between pollution
and illness here, and he found one.
C. Arden Pope made a splash in 1989 with an article in The American
Journal of Public Health. He'd studied health effects from a shutdown
(due to a strike) of the Geneva Steel Mill, which, according to Pope,
contributed anywhere from half to 80 percent of all the particulate
pollution in the valley's air. Pope's conclusion: "PM10 levels were
strongly correlated with hospital admissions." Indeed, reported Pope,
"children's admissions were two to three times higher" when the mill
was open than when it was closed.
Pope's work is the bedrock of the EPA/environmentalist position. But
Pope's findings have nothing to do with particulates; rather, they are
explained by contagious disease. "Every other year the Utah Valley has
an epidemic of viral bronchiolitis, an infection of the tiniest tubes
in the lungs," explains Joseph Lyon, an M.D. and a professor of
epidemiology at the University of Utah. "It raises hospitalization
rates dramatically. The year when the steel mill was closed was a low
year for this disease."
Data he and others presented in the January 1996 Journal of Pediatrics
show exactly that. During the epidemic years, children's
hospitalization rates for respiratory problems increased 250 percent
over odd-numbered years. This correlates exactly with Pope's findings.
Sure enough, the plant happened to have been closed during a
nonepidemic year.
Three years later, Pope, along with another researcher at Brigham
Young and Joel Schwartz, a former EPA researcher who now works at
Harvard, looked for a correlation between high PM10 levels in Utah
Valley and higher death rates. They said they found one. Although in
sheer numbers the increases were small – on average only two or three
people die in Utah County (where Utah Valley is) each day – the
highest particulate jumps, they said, led to a 16 percent increase in
deaths.
Examining these results, Lyon and his colleagues at the University of
Utah Medical Center used Utah County data for six consecutive years
and found that in four of them, there was indeed an association
between high PM10 levels and more deaths and hospitalizations for
respiratory diseases. But for two of those years, there was no
correlation. Why would PM10 kill and injure in four years, but not the
other two?
In another study, published in the journal Inhalation Toxicology, Lyon
and colleagues found no significant increase in deaths following
increased levels of PM10 in the air for any of eight years studied.
They did find such an increase in two of the eight years for
cardiovascular disease, but not the other six.
Then Lyon and his colleagues compared Utah County with Salt Lake
County. The adjacent counties suffer the same air inversions, and
while Utah County has the steel plant, Salt Lake County has a copper
smelting plant that puts out more particulates. In any case, says
Lyon, "There is a substantial air mixing between the two counties."
What did he find? "We essentially found no association in Salt Lake
County to PM10," says Lyon. "There was simply no effect."
Lyon says that "if the relationship is causal" between particulates
and hospitalizations, "you'd expect it to be pretty consistent. Yet we
have found an association that in some years isn't present, and is
inconsistent when comparing two counties that share the same air. So
just how causal can this thing be?" Others have come to the same
conclusion, among them Patricia Styer and others at the National
Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS), who studied both Salt Lake
County and Cook County, Illinois, in 1995 and concluded in
Environmental Health Perspectives that "[t]he reported effects of
particulates on mortality are unconfirmed."
But to the EPA, environmental groups, and the media, Pope remains
infallible. Along with Schwartz and another Harvard researcher,
Douglas Dockery, Pope has become one of the Particle Hunter
Triumvirate. Indeed, when you look at all the American studies that
find particles causing health associations, these three names keep
popping up as the authors.
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| Vendicar Decarian |
| Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2003 9:27 pm |
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"Tim Miller" <rabbitispoor@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:27afd67f.0312200717.4fa05e44@posting.google.com...
Quote: How Grim Was My Valley?
Ah. This article was taken from "Reason Magazine". A well known
Libertarian propaganda Rag.
We therefore know it contains nothing but lies. |
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