Toxicology Study in Human Volunteers Helps Explain Utah Valley Epidemiology Studies
The temporary closure of a steel mill in the Utah Valley during a labor dispute in the late 1980’s provided a unique opportunity to study the health of residents during period the mill was closed, compared to before and after the closure.
A series of epidemiological studies published in the 1990s reported associations between elevated PM concentrations and increased elementary school absences, bronchitis and asthma hospital admissions for pre-school aged children, total respiratory hospital admissions, pulmonary function abnormalities, and mortality.
In what commentators call “a strikingly innovative study”, researchers obtained the archived air pollution filters from the late 1980s, extracted the particles, and instilled them in the lungs of healthy human volunteers. The following day, they washed the lungs to check for signs of inflammation. They found more inflammation in those exposed to particles from the monitoring site nearest to the steel mill during the years when the steel mill was operating, compared to when it was closed.
“This is the first demonstration that pulmonary effects after experimental exposure of humans to PM can correlate with health outcomes observed in epidemiologic studies of the same material under normal exposure conditions,” the study concluded. Researchers suggest that the metals contained on the particles may contribute to the toxic effect.
Ghio, A.J. and Devlin, R.B. Inflammatory Lung Injury after Bronchial Instillation of Air Pollution Particles. Am. J. Crit. Care Med. Vol. 164, pp. 704-708, 2001. The American Thoracic Society [ajrccm.atsjournals.org] offers the full article online.
Beckett, W.S. The Air Pollution Detectives. Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med., Vol. 164, No. 4, pp. 515-516, August 2001. The American Thoracic Society [ajrccm.atsjournals.org] offers the full article online.
