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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 "The exposure-response relationship is linear, but only over a very long scale," Pope said. "If you are a smoker, reducing your smoking helps some, but quitting entirely helps a lot more."
In the second report, researchers at Yale University reviewed hospital records of 9.3 million Medicare enrollees and air pollution records gathered between 1999 and 2005 in 126 U.S. urban counties.
They found that an increase of only one part per million in daily one-hour exposure to carbon monoxide was associated with a nearly 1 percent increase in the risk of hospitalization for cardiovascular disease among people over 65.
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's national air quality standard currently sets a limit of 35 parts per million for one-hour daily exposure to carbon monoxide, an odorless gas whose main source in cities is traffic exhaust.
The association between hospital admissions for a wide range of cardiovascular conditions, including heart rhythm disorders and heart failure, persisted when adjustments were made for other traffic-related air pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide and fine particles.
An accompanying editorial by Annette Peters, an epidemiologist at the German Research Center for Environmental Health, said the new research "makes an important contribution of the assessment of the role of the environment for cardiovascular health."
"The common thread in both is thinking about the air we breathe and what it does to cardiovascular disease," Peters said of the studies.
Carbon monoxide is not the only damaging pollutant in urban air, she noted. "Ambient air in an urban environment is a mixture. Whether carbon monoxide alone is responsible is not clear, but it is an important marker for the problem," Peters said.
While individual actions are important in reducing exposure to tobacco smoke, pollutants such as carbon monoxide require action by society at large, she said. For example, the German government has established low-emission zones in some cities and imposes penalties on higher-emission automobiles, Peters said.
"Still, combustion products of traffic remain a problem, even at much lower levels than we have seen in earlier years," Peters said. "We need cars with very efficient motors that use less gasoline and we need to reduce the number of miles traveled by cars."
More information
There's more on air pollution at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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