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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.
Pulmonary Medicine
Published in James M. Rippe, Manual of Lifestyle Medicine, 2021
Lung problems, including shortness of breath, cough, and wheezing are common symptoms experienced by patients seeking medical care. In addition to various respiratory symptoms, there are very significant lung problems which are common in the U.S. population, including asthma, occupational environmental lung diseases, venous thromboembolic disease, and influenza. Also, indoor air quality can cause considerable health issues, including problems associated with secondhand smoke, carbon monoxide, indoor mold, and animal dander. For all these reasons, clinicians should take a careful history to determine if there are environmental hazards which are causing significant lung problems in patients.
Lung Cancer Risk of a Population Exposed to Airborne Particles: The Contribution of Different Activities and Microenvironments
Published in Ayman El-Baz, Jasjit S. Suri, Lung Imaging and CADx, 2019
where I0 is the lung cancer mortality rate not attributable to smoking (background rate); fn, fs, and fe are the fractions of nonsmokers, smokers, and ex-smokers, respectively; and RRs and RRe represent the rate ratios for smokers and ex-smokers compared to nonsmokers. Based on the actual fraction of Italian smokers (0.26 for males and 0.16 for females) and ex-smokers (0.31 for males and 0.16 for females), the excess life cancer risk for nonsmokers is 2.58 × 10−2 for males and 1.77 × 10−2 for females. Therefore, ELCR values determined for nonsmoking Italian population calculated here (1.63 × 10−2 and for males and 2.18 × 10−2 for females) are quite similar to those proposed by Forastiere et al. [89]; that is, the contribution of airborne particle inhalation to ELCR for the overall nonsmoking population represents the main cause of lung cancer risk apart from smoking. Hence, a significant percentage of lung cancer risk for nonsmoking females could be prevented by improving indoor air quality, particularly during cooking activities.
Determinants of self-rated health among elderly patients with hypertension: a cross-sectional analysis based on the Chinese longitudinal healthy longevity survey
Published in Clinical and Experimental Hypertension, 2023
Yang Zhou, Yanjing Huang, Aohua Zhang, Guige Yin, Hongjuan Hu
The residential environment and air quality were used to measure the natural environment in this study. For assessing the natural environment, participants were asked six questions. First, where is your current residential area? (city = 1, town = 2, village = 3); Second, what type of dwelling is your house? (independent house = 1, duplex/triplex = 2, low-rise apartment (1–3 floors) = 3, high-rise apartment (>3 floors, without elevators) = 4, high-rise apartment (>3 floors, with elevators) = 5, others = 6); Third, during the past 1 year, was your home damaged due to broken pipes or heavy rain? (yes = 1, no = 0); Four, does your home frequently have a mildew odor or musty smell? (yes = 1, no = 0); Five, which fuel is normally used for cooking in your home? (yes = 1, no = 0); Finally, does your home use air purifiers or activated carbon to improve indoor air quality? (yes = 1, no = 0).
School practices in supporting children with asthma in Malta
Published in Journal of Asthma, 2022
Maria Caruana, Lorna M. Bonnici West, Maria Cordina
Asthma is the most common chronic health condition in children (1). Malta, an island in the middle of the Mediterranean and the smallest EU member state has a high prevalence of asthma symptoms amongst school children with almost a third (30.2%) of Maltese children aged between 5–8 years old being wheezers ‘ever’, 14.8% being current wheezers and 14.8% asthmatics (2,3). One possible reason may be attributed to pm2.5, suspended particulate matter from cars, found to be particularly high in the Maltese islands, sometimes even reaching peaks of 10 times more the recommended levels (4). Associations between Maltese schools’ indoor environment and asthma in children have been documented (5). Moreover, microbiological contaminants such as endotoxin, bacteria, fungi, dog, and cat allergens have an impact on Maltese schools’ indoor air quality which is significantly associated with asthma (6).
Interaction between occupational radon exposure and tobacco smoke: a systematic review
Published in Expert Review of Respiratory Medicine, 2022
Giuseppina Folesani, Maricla Galetti, Silvia Ranzieri, Pier Giorgio Petronini, Silvia La Monica, Massimo Corradi, Delia Cavallo
On 31 July 2020, with Legislative Decree number 101, the Italian Government implemented the provisions of Directive 2013/59/Euratom, which establishes relevant basic safety standard protection against the dangers arising from exposure to ionizing radiations [21]. Article 10 remarks about National Action Plan for Radon and, for the first time, the legislation provides as mandatory the measurement of radon’s concentration in the workplace, setting as reference level a value of 300 Bq/m3 for annual average concentration of radon. This reference level represents approximately 10 mSv per year, according to recent calculations by the International Commission on Radiation Protection (International Commission on Radiation Protection). These new directives underlay the need to evaluate radon exposure dangerousness through timely measures and health surveillance in all workplaces, assessing also the impact of risk cofactors such as tobacco smoking. In fact, since 2009 WHO has recommended that comprehensive radon programmes should be developed, preferably in close linkage with indoor air quality and tobacco control programmes [9]. At the same time, IARC has evidenced that both tobacco smoke and secondhand tobacco smoke have a carcinogenic lung effect [22,23], supported by different studies showing a correlation between lung cancer risk and smoking intensity [24–26].