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For heart health: avoid tobacco smoke, pollution

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-01 10:38

In the second study, Dr. Michelle Bell from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and colleagues studied how carbon monoxide levels in the air - mostly from traffic -- affect the numbers of people who show up in emergency rooms with heart problems.

They use hospitalization data from Medicare on more than 9.3 million enrollees, and pollution data from air quality monitoring stations in 126 urban counties across the United States where the Medicare recipients live.

The research team found "a positive and statistically significant association" between carbon monoxide levels on any given day and increased risks of hospitalization for a wide variety of heart problems.

Furthermore, this effect was evident even when daily 1-hour maximum carbon monoxide exposure was less than 1 part per million, well within the 35 part per million limit set by US regulatory agencies.

"Although much of the current research on health and traffic-related air pollution focuses on particulate matter, our study indicates that ambient carbon monoxide and traffic may present a far larger health burden than suspected previously," Bell and her colleagues conclude.

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