Even ‘safe’ pollution levels can be deadly
Just how bad is air pollution for you? A study of more than 60 million Medicare recipients has found that even pollution levels below those generally considered safe increase the risk for premature death.
Using satellite, meteorological and other data, plus data gathered from 3,805 monitoring stations maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency, researchers were able to accurately estimate daily air pollution levels nationwide. The study is in The New England Journal of Medicine.
They followed the population for a median of seven years, recording 22,567,924 deaths. They found that each increase of 10 micrograms per cubic meter in particles smaller than 2.5 microns, or PM 2.5, was associated with a 7.3 percent increased mortality, and each increase of 10 parts per billion in warm-weather ozone was linked to a 1.1 percent increase.
Average PM 2.5 ranged from 6.21 to 15.65 over the study period; a level of 12 is considered tolerable. Warm-season ozone concentrations ranged from 36.27 to 55.86; a level of 70 is thought to be safe.
“When you have a large study that shows that the current level of air pollution is toxic — I hope that’s something we can do something about,” said one author, Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at Harvard.
NOISE MAY RAISE BLOOD PRESSURE RISK
Airport noise could raise the risk for high blood pressure, a new study suggests.
Greek researchers studied 420 people living near Athens International Airport, where an average of 600 airplanes take off and land every day. Maps made during construction of the airport divided the surrounding area by noise level: less than 50 decibels, 50-60 decibels (60 decibels is about the noise level of a room air-conditioner), and more than 60 decibels, so researchers could track noise exposure precisely.
About two-thirds of the residents lived in the areas that regularly experienced noise at the 50- to 60-decibel level, and almost half of them had high blood pressure when the study began. Over the next 10 years, there were 71 newly diagnosed cases of hypertension.
The study, in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, found that for each 10-decibel increase in noise at night, the risk of developing hypertension more than doubled. Cardiac arrhythmia was also associated with nighttime exposure.
There was no significant link to stroke, diabetes or how annoyed someone felt about the noise. The researchers controlled for age, sex, body mass index, smoking, exercise and other factors that affect blood pressure.
The lead author, Klea Katsouyanni, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Athens, said that this is one of the first studies showing that outdoor noise may be bad for cardiovascular health.
WITH OBAMACARE, MORE BREAST CANCERS DIAGNOSED AT EARLIER STAGES
More breast cancers have been found at earlier — and potentially more treatable — stages since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
Using a nationwide database that includes about 70 percent of all newly diagnosed cancers in the United States, researchers studied breast cancer diagnoses in 211,028 women ages 50-74 diagnosed from 2007 to 2009, before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. They compared these with 259,437 diagnoses from 2011 to 2013, when, under a provision of the act, neither private insurance companies nor Medicare could charge co-payments for mammography screening.
About 85 percent of the women were white, 10 percent black and 4 percent Latina. Both before and after Obamacare, minority women were more likely than white women to be given diagnoses at a younger age and at a later stage.
The study, in Cancer Epidemiology, adjusted for other variables and found that after Obamacare, the percentage of cancers diagnosed at the earliest stage increased by 3.2 percent for white women, 4.0 percent for blacks and 4.1 percent for Latinas.
“The same woman who pre-ACA would have been diagnosed at Stage 2 was diagnosed at Stage 1 after ACA,” said the lead author, Abigail Silva, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago. “The ACA had the potential to improve public health, and there’s more and more evidence coming out each day to show that it is doing that.”