What is particulate matter
With acronyms PM10 e PM2.5 refers to fine particles that have a diameter, respectively, less than or equal to 10 microns or 2.5 microns. These are the most frequent pollutants in urban areas, because they derive from all types of combustion, from car and motorbike engines to energy production systems, from wood for home heating to forest fires and many other industrial processes.
I study
Over the last twenty years the climate crisis has caused 4 million deaths
by Giacomo Talignani
The scientific evidence: the health damage of pollution
There are now numerous epidemiological, clinical and toxicological studies that have highlighted how exposure to air pollution can have a significant impact on human health, even at much lower levels than believed until a few years ago.
Suffice it to say that, according to a recent study by Monash University published in The Lancet Planetary Health, short-term exposure – even for a few hours or a few days – to high levels of air pollution kills one million people in the world every year, of half of which are in East Asia.
The particles enter the body through breathing and can be deposited in some part of the respiratory system or in the rest of the body. Here they can be absorbed or cause biological damage.
In Italy 80 thousand deaths per year from air pollution
Pollution and inflammation
As SNPA (the National System for Environmental Protection) explains in the Air Quality Report in Italy 2023 report, the onset of pathological conditions linked to particulate matter is preceded and accompanied “by the establishment of an inflammatory microenvironment, which can also contribute to the aggravation of pre-existing pathologies. Chronicity, therefore, leads the inflammation process to transform from an important defense mechanism supporting innate immunity to a pathogenetic process”.
Related diseases
Particulate matter has been linked to illness and deaths from heart or lung disease. Air pollution does not only affect the respiratory system. For example, volatile hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide enter the lungs and reach the brain and other organs via the blood, just as very small metal particles enter the blood and can be deposited in bones, teeth and kidneys.
Smog: suburbs most at risk, experts: “Death rates have doubled”
In more sensitive people, such as asthmatics or those with pre-existing lung and heart diseases, there is a risk of decreased lung function and a triggering of symptoms (for example cough or an asthma attack), as well as an alteration of the mechanisms of regulation of the heart and blood clotting.
According to the World Health Organization, according to the current state of knowledge, it is not possible to set an exposure threshold below which adverse health effects certainly will not occur in the population.
The study on Rome: more psychotic disorders if you live in smog
by the Health editorial team
#Particulate #matter #damages #pollution #human #health
– 2024-03-17 19:39:38
