Ray D. Strand
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 When you are exposed to these toxins day in and day out, they have a major effect on your health. air pollution has been implicated in the causes of asthma, chronic bronchitis, heart attacks, and even cancer. Understanding oxidative stress as the underlying cause of all of these diseases allows us to develop a strategy of protecting ourselves from the damaging effects of air pollution.
We must consider another aspect of air pollution: the occupational exposure to mineral dust such as asbestos fibers. The addition of iron-containing fibers in asbestos can generate even more free radicals. |
| The health effects of air pollution have caused significant concern. air pollution contains ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and several hydrocarbon molecules, all of which generate a significant amount of free radicals. When you are exposed to these toxins day in and day out, they have a major effect on your health. air pollution has been implicated in the causes of asthma, chronic bronchitis, heart attacks, and even cancer. |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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 And in 2006, a shocking study based on hospital data from thirty-four cities over a fourteen-year span would show that people with autoimmune inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and lupus are at a substantially increased risk of death when they are exposed to particulate air pollution, or soot, for a substantial period of time. Individuals with rheumatoid arthritis or lupus who breathe in heavy particles of air pollution for a year or more face a 22-percent increase in their risk of dying from their autoimmune disease. |
Ray D. Strand
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| Air Pollution
The environment has a tremendous influence on the amount of free radicals our bodies produces. air pollution is a major cause of oxidative stress in our lungs and in our bodies. When you drive into any major city today, you not only can see the thick haze, you can taste it.
I remember my medical-school days at the University of Colorado Medical School in 1970. During my rotation on the neurology unit, I had to make rounds at 6:00 a.m. Before I started, I would walk down to the west windows and admire the sunrise reflecting its light on the beautiful Rocky Mountains. |
| Understanding oxidative stress as the underlying cause of all of these diseases allows us to develop a strategy of protecting ourselves from the damaging effects of air pollution.
We must consider another aspect of air pollution: the occupational exposure to mineral dust such as asbestos fibers. The addition of iron-containing fibers in asbestos can generate even more free radicals. Long-term exposure has been shown to cause lung cancer and interstitial fibrosis (a serious scarring of the lung). |
Mehmet C. Oz., M.D. and Michael F. Roizen, M.D.
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 The rest creates a lot of heat and combines to make a lot of nasties that end up as air pollution. If combustion is 100 percent efficient, there are no free radicals and no air pollution. As combustion becomes less efficient, free-radical levels increase proportionately.
Now, inside our cells, the process of cellular respiration breaks down a molecule of glucose into carbon dioxide, water, and energy. This energy is stored as ATP (the adult human produces 150 pounds of ATP a day). It's your gasoline. The process of breaking down sugar is no different from the process of combustion in the car. |
Mark Hyman, M.D.
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 A major source is indoor air pollution—according to the EPA, indoor air pollution levels are often two to five times (and occasionally as much as one hundred times) higher than outdoor air pollution.
Here's how to clean the air around you:
Purify your air
• HEPA/ULPA filters and ionizers can be helpful in reducing dust, molds, volatile organic compounds, and other sources of indoor air pollution.
• Clean and monitor your heating systems for release of carbon monoxide, the most common cause of death by poisoning in America.
• Use houseplants. |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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| Were Jan's blood clots exacerbated by the air pollution through which she and Dave drove and biked for three solid days? To say yes would be mere supposition. As we have seen, the steps connecting exposure (one on that scale of one to ten) to disease (ten), are still blurry at best. At numbers four, five, and six, we cannot go back in time and travel with Jan's cells to say definitively what prompted Jan's sudden and rapid onset of antiphospholipid antibody syndrome or prove whether those forest fires had a thing to do with it.
It is all supposition, yes, but it is a very good guess. |
Ray D. Strand
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| We must consider another aspect of air pollution: the occupational exposure to mineral dust such as asbestos fibers. The addition of iron-containing fibers in asbestos can generate even more free radicals. Long-term exposure has been shown to cause lung cancer and interstitial fibrosis (a serious scarring of the lung). There are many other occupational hazards: Farmers are exposed to the fine dust in their barns and grain bins. Industrial workers are exposed to various chemicals and fine dust in their work.
Needless to say, the quality of the air we breathe is a major health consideration. |
Devra Davis
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 And we now know from studies of air pollution that small risks which affect the entire breathing planet can have big impacts.
Doll is gone, so we will never know what ensued between the time he first drafted this article and when it finally appeared. But the facts that can't be disputed are these. Right after this article appeared, Doll began privately consulting for Turner & Newall. For many years he defended the company against lawsuits from some of its asbestos-exposed workforce. |
Dr Ron Roberts
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 The human body is now forced to cope with constant health hazards in the form of water and air pollution, noise, stress, radiation and dangerous chemicals, forced upon us from factories, power stations, agriculture, mines and waste disposal.
Environmental pollution has brought about an alarming increase in respiratory diseases and this alone may well be the major cause of today's high incidence of asthma, particularly in industrial areas. |
| The bronchitis can be the result of an infection such as a cold or flu, or irritation by foreign substances, particularly tobacco smoke and air pollution. The condition can be acute—of fairly short duration—or chronic, when it can lead to emphysema. Chronic bronchitis may be treated medically using some of the same drugs that are prescribed for asthma, as the aim in both cases is to reduce the production of mucus and increase the flow of air through the bronchi.
CROUP
Croup is most often caused by a virus but can also be the result of certain bacterial infections or a severe allergy. |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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| Individuals with rheumatoid arthritis or lupus who breathe in heavy particles of air pollution for a year or more face a 22-percent increase in their risk of dying from their autoimmune disease. An obvious question might be, Why don't we see headlines about those with autoimmunity being at such a heightened risk of dying in bigger, more polluted cities? The answer is very likely this: since, unlike cancer, there is no autoimmune-disease registry and no way to track these diseases or those who have them, no one—but a few researchers—has really been looking or taking any note. |
| These domestic emissions are about to overtake car emissions as the primary source of the city's outdoor air pollution.
Some schools and hospitals are replacing chemical-based cleaning agents with natural alternatives. Since September 2006, a state law has required schools in New York to use cleaning products that do not carry any endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, or scents that can trigger reactions such as asthma. Other states may soon encourage similar changes, especially if they hear from enough constituents who support such legislation. |
Lester A. Mitscher and Victoria Toews
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 Toxins in the environment, either natural or artificial, are often free radicals or can generate free radicals. air pollution, toxic waste, and pesticides introduce such free radicals as nitrogen dioxide into the body. Ultraviolet radiation from the sun can produce free radicals in the skin, for example. Many people introduce free radicals into their bodies through their behaviors. Each puff of cigarette smoke contains millions of free radicals, and each swallow of alcohol leads to the production of free radicals. |
Paul D. Blanc, M.D.
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 In the winter of 1952 the "Killer Fog of London," as it came to be known, proved to be a far larger air pollution disaster.13 The exact number of persons who succumbed as a result of this smog episode has not been determined, but even conservative estimates set the lower limit at thirty-five hundred to four thousand deaths. The crisis took governmental leaders by surprise. Harold Macmillan, minister of housing at the time but later to become prime minister, at first even tried to block any official inquiry, professing that acts of nature can be neither predicted nor prevented. |
Devra Davis
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| Hammond was finally given permission to publish his findings showing that tobacco caused lung cancer and many other health problems, so long as he included a litany of reservations about how the association might be tempered by air pollution, workplace dust and other things. |
Paul D. Blanc, M.D.
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| Environmental Protection Agency to weaken its air pollution emission standards for mercury, to the benefit of the utilities industry. In a highly controversial action, White House staffers had personally edited the EPAs rule-making proposal, systematically softening the agency's findings of mercury-associated risk in order to justify better the relaxed controls being proposed.1
The EPA is not the only regulator in the political crosshairs. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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 Many factors can trigger inflammation, including a proinflammatory diet, stress, environmental stressors (such as air pollution, pesticides, herbicides, etc.), weakened immune system, excess exposure to ultraviolet light, and hormonal changes. However, I believe the primary cause is diet—with stress running a close second.
Diet and Aging: The Sugar Connection
Foods that we eat can be either proinflammatory (i.e., they provoke an inflammatory response) or anti-inflammatory (i.e., they suppress the inflammatory response). |
Paul D. Blanc, M.D.
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| In fact, the first book ever devoted solely to the subject of air pollution was published in 1661. It was written about coal smoke and titled Fumifugium: or, the Inconvenience of the Aer, and Smoake of London Dissipated.22 The author of Fumifugium, John Evelyn, was also a major diarist of his age (he was a friend as well as a contemporary of Pepys). He kept his diary from 1620 to 1706. |
Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey
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 Other adducts, such as benzo[a]pyrene-DNA adducts, are nonspecific because benzo[a]pyrene comes from a variety of sources besides diet, including air pollution, tobacco, and occupational exposures. Adducts can be used to monitor exposure within individuals. They can also serve as early markers of the efficacy of interventions designed to prevent exposure to genotoxic agents or to modify the metabolism of procar-cinogens once exposure has occurred. An example of this latter use is an intervention to reduce aflatoxin-DNA adducts using a broccoli sprout supplement [21].
C. |
Ron Garner
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 On the other hand, a poor diet, processed foods, cured meats, tobacco smoke, infections, alcohol, stress, air pollution, pesticides, and radiation all promote oxidation in the human body. Even if we are minimizing the effects of the aforementioned free radical developers, given our modern urban, industrialized, and technological lifestyles, we cannot completely avoid them. We therefore need to take active antioxidant steps against them.
HORMONES OF YOUTH
Human Growth Hormone
When we reach middle age, our bodies start to exhibit the telltale signs of aging. |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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| When Jan and David drove into those smoky Montana fires, they were steering into a chemical path of burning trees and nearly two dozen homes and other freestanding structures—a superinten-sified kind of air pollution made up of what are known in the scientific world as "microparticles. |
Mark Sircus
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 This information is especially important for children who live in cities and other areas where air pollution is a problem.
According to Dr. Ronald Elin and Dr. Robert Rude, "Refining and processing of grains and other foodstuffs typically results in loss of 70% or more of the magnesium content (as well as other nutrients). The conversion of wheat into flour results in a loss of 82% of magnesium. Refining rice into polished rice sacrifices 83% of the magnesium. Milling corn into corn starch loses 98% of the magnesium. When soy beans are cooked, they lose 69% of their magnesium. |
The Editors of FC&A
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| Avoid air pollution. A Korean study found a link between air pollution and stroke deaths. Heed smog alerts and limit trips outside on especially bad days.
• Think twice about chiropractic neck manipulation if you are at risk for stroke.
• Silence startling sounds. Loud noises or sudden movements can trigger a stroke. Muffle your doorbell and telephone and avoid sudden, jerky motions.
• Control your temper. Anger and other negative emotions often precede stroke.
• Get a flu shot. It may cut your risk for stroke in half.
CHAPTER 34 Wipe out the threat of
Syndrome X
What is Syndrome X? |
Mehmet C. Oz., M.D. and Michael F. Roizen, M.D.
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| If combustion is 100 percent efficient, there are no free radicals and no air pollution. As combustion becomes less efficient, free-radical levels increase proportionately.
Now, inside our cells, the process of cellular respiration breaks down a molecule of glucose into carbon dioxide, water, and energy. This energy is stored as ATP (the adult human produces 150 pounds of ATP a day). It's your gasoline. The process of breaking down sugar is no different from the process of combustion in the car. In cellular respiration, sugars are literally burned up just as a car burns gasoline. |
| Others include dioxins, asbestos, and particulate matter (those are the particles produced by the combustion of diesel, gasoline, and other fuels, and tobacco smoke). air pollution caused by particulate matter so small that it can't be seen is what aggravates and leads to respiratory (and cardiovascular) problems—and even death. How? Particles from the polluted air that are too small to be filtered out by the cilia travel deep into the lungs. |
Devra Davis
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| How can you determine the role of one factor, such as cell phone exposure to the skull, when others, like diet, workplace conditions and local air pollution, are changing at the same time and at different rates? The science that was invoked in Newman's case was not the work of lab researchers conducting experiments in test tubes under highly controlled conditions, changing one condition at a time to see which triggered the most serious or severe effects. |
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