Health experts are still investigating the harmful effect people get from air pollution, this time they focus their attention on cardiovascular disease (CVD).
With the help of the data collected from the Nurses' Health Study, a joint study that began in 1976, researchers examined the questionnaires which were completed by 114,537 women ages 30 and up. They were asked questions that would give detailed information on their specific demographics, lifestyle characteristics, and the prevalence of certain diseases. This included if they were diagnosed with CVD by the doctor, specifically if there was any incident of coronary heart disease and ischemic stroke. This study was followed up by the NHS every two years so they can update risk factors and disease status, and they always get a response of 90 percent.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, particulate matter is a complex mixture of small particles and liquid droplets. The agency assesses the exposure using certain prediction models for all months between January 1988 and June 2006 for residential addresses in the United States. These models depend on monthly averages of PM or PM monitoring data from the agency's Air Quality System called the IMPROVE network, and also calculated different PM size: PM 2.5 and PM 2.5-10.
PM 2.5 is usually created by car combustion and power plants and was found to be 2.5 thousandths of a millimeter in diameter which is a whole lot smaller than a speck of dust.
The women that were surveyed suffer from small, non-statistically significant increase CVD, CHD, and Stroke incidence. The risk for each 10 micrograms per cubic meter of air, however, was 44 percent for CVD for the tiniest PM size; 17 percent for CVD for road dust size; and 19 percent for CVD from exposure to both PM size fractions.
Generally, there were 6,767 out of 114,437 NHS women participants who developed CVD during the study follow-up, while 3,878 and 3,295 cases of CHD and stroke were reported. But the researchers found out that women with diabetes have statistically significant increase risk for all PM size fractions.
The study also revealed that women obese women aged 70 and older, and those who lived in the Northeast or Southern part of the country are more at risk.
