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Avoiding Risky Substances and Environmental Exposures
Published in Michelle Tollefson, Nancy Eriksen, Neha Pathak, Improving Women's Health Across the Lifespan, 2021
Natasha DeJarnett, Neha Pathak
Indoor air quality can be improved by the use of air conditioning, filters, and ventilation; decreasing the sources of fossil fuel combustion sources in homes, like gas stoves; and tobacco smoke cessation. Populations can limit exposure to outdoor pollutants by avoiding outdoor activities during poor air-quality alerts, especially populations that have higher susceptibility including children, pregnant women, and older adults.36 Outdoor air quality can be improved through air pollution mitigation. Air quality sampling, monitoring, and issuing air quality alerts will help vulnerable groups know to limit outdoor activities on poor air quality days. Investing in clean energy will result in less air-harming emissions. Interventions like tree planting can also improve air quality by uptaking pollutants in the air.
All health begins at home in the community
Published in Ben Y.F. Fong, Martin C.S. Wong, The Routledge Handbook of Public Health and the Community, 2021
Air is essential to life and quality of air at home is of paramount importance to health, especially the respiratory system, of family members. The home, and all bedrooms, must be well ventilated to allow fresh, clean air in. A family may consider adding a humidifier or air purifier particularly when there are members with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or if the home is situated in a relatively polluted environment like in the proximity of factories, heavy traffic or construction sites. Keeping the air at a comfortable temperature is also a key to better sleep. Sleep is a vital element in children’s physical and psychological development. Deficient sleep quantity or poor sleeping quality is a general health concern with deleterious health effects (Carter et al., 2016). Keeping the home smelling nice is a priority for some homeowners, but some of the sweet-scented air fresheners, commonly containing volatile organic chemicals, may do more harm than good (Walsh, 2019). Moreover, in the daily living, the smog from cigarette smoking and combustion of cooking fuels in the home may affect domestic air quality.
Effects of Air Pollution on Allergy and Asthma
Published in Pudupakkam K Vedanthan, Harold S Nelson, Shripad N Agashe, PA Mahesh, Rohit Katial, Textbook of Allergy for the Clinician, 2021
As children are most susceptible to the harmful effects of air pollutants as discussed earlier, attempts should be made to reduce maternal exposures during pregnancy and later during the growth phase of children. When new schools are being designed, they should be located further away from busy motorways. Encourage children to indulge in sports and physical activities involving running, exercise etc may be helpful in supporting good lung growth during initial years of life and lung development.
Air Pollutant impacts on the brain and neuroendocrine system with implications for peripheral organs: a perspective
Published in Inhalation Toxicology, 2023
Urmila P. Kodavanti, Thomas W. Jackson, Andres R. Henriquez, Samantha J. Snow, Devin I. Alewel, Daniel L. Costa
Developmental programming of the stress response system that involves the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis (HPA) is known to shape an offspring’s ability to respond to environmental stressors and susceptibility to chronic metabolic and inflammatory diseases during adulthood (Gans and Coffman 2021). Maternal stress has been shown to influence offspring susceptibility to central and peripheral allergic and metabolic diseases through developmental reprogramming of the neuroendocrine stress response system (Bolton et al. 2013; Lee et al. 2016; Smith et al. 2019; van der Leek et al. 2020). Likewise, increased offspring susceptibility to immune and metabolic disorders has been reported in mothers exposed to high levels of air pollution during pregnancy (Burgueño et al. 2020; Rousseau-Ralliard et al. 2021). In this special issue, Cowell and collaborators (2022) report from the Programming of Intergenerational Stress Mechanisms (PRISM) pre-birth cohort study that salivary cortisol output in pregnant women was associated with levels of ambient PM2.5 in a longitudinal manner. This association with salivary cortisol levels was evident during preconception and during pregnancy periods, even at exposure levels below the U.S. National Ambient Air Quality Annual Standard for PM2.5 (12.0 µg/m3) (EPA 2012). This study supports the concern that air pollutants exposure during pregnancy increases stress hormone levels, which might impact fetal development and lifetime disease susceptibilities.
New determinants of mental health: the role of noise pollution. A narrative review
Published in International Review of Psychiatry, 2022
Alfonso Tortorella, Giulia Menculini, Patrizia Moretti, Luigi Attademo, Pierfrancesco Maria Balducci, Francesco Bernardini, Federica Cirimbilli, Anastasia Grazia Chieppa, Nicola Ghiandai, Andreas Erfurth
During the last decades, urbanisation processes and anthropogenic activities contributed to the significant increase in air and noise pollution, which occur predominantly in urban areas (Dijkstra & Poelman, 2014). Air pollution may cause detrimental effects on global health, with a higher risk for developing cardiovascular, neurological, and respiratory diseases (Attademo & Bernardini, 2017; Meng et al., 2021). Similarly, an association between noise pollution and a broad range of medical conditions has been underlined (Liu et al., 2021; Luan et al., 2021; Münzel et al., 2014). In particular, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates, exposure to traffic-related noise was associated with the loss of 1.5 million years of healthy life, mainly due to sleep disturbances, cognitive problems, and cardiovascular diseases (World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, 2011). The WHO also established noise level guidelines, which are aimed at protecting human health from the effects of noise coming from different environmental sources (Guski et al., 2017; World Health Organization, 2018). Despite this, efforts to reduce such effects on human health are offset, since an increase in the number of people exposed to high noise levels, especially in urban environments, was documented (European Environment Agency, 2018).
Association between Fine Particulate Air Pollution and the Onset of Uveitis in Mainland China
Published in Ocular Immunology and Inflammation, 2022
Handan Tan, Su Pan, Zhenyu Zhong, Guannan Su, Aize Kijlstra, Peizeng Yang
When our samples were stratified by age and sex, the results demonstrated that men and those between the ages of 20–50 are likely to be more susceptible to the effects of ambient PM2.5. This may be explained by the fact that the working-age population and men have a higher exposure to PM2.5. PM2.5 also showed a positive association with the uveitis subtype. An association was found with noninfectious uveitis and uveitis associated with systemic disease, but not with infectious uveitis subtypes. These results suggest that air pollution can dysregulate the immune response leading to autoimmune or autoinflammatory subtypes of uveitis confirming findings in other organ systems.3,5 Asthma is one of the main diseases associated with air pollution since the lungs are directly exposed to this environmental factor.5 The eye is also directly exposed to air pollutants, but further experimental evidence is needed to show how this can trigger intraocular inflammation.