Breathing Smog Causes Blood Vessels to Constrict
A chamber study on healthy human volunteers has demonstrated that breathing ozone and particulate matter for only two hours, at levels typical of a polluted day in Los Angeles, causes a major artery in the arm to constrict significantly.
Scientists observed that breathing air pollutants caused an immediate constriction of 2 to 4 percent in the blood vessel in the arm. Although this is unlikely to harm a healthy person in the short term, it could impact those with existing heart disease or circulatory problems, and could possibly trigger a heart attack, according to researchers.
The authors concluded, “This finding is important because it suggests that alterations in arterial tone may be a relevant mechanism contributing to air pollution-mediated acute cardiac events and because it provides evidence that the observations shown by large epidemiological studies are biologically plausible.”
Brook, R.D., Brook, J.R., Urch, B., Vincent, R., Rajagopalan, S., and Silverman, F. Inhalation of Fine Particulate Air Pollution and Ozone Causes Acute Arterial Vasoconstriction in Healthy Adults. (Circulation. 2002;105:1534).
The American Heart Association [www.circ.ahajournals.org] offers the abstract online.
