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    Air and Your Health: Clean Air Is Vital to Your Health
    Air and Your Health: Clean Air Is Vital to Your Health
    Air and Your Health: Clean Air Is Vital to Your Health
    Ebook132 pages2 hours

    Air and Your Health: Clean Air Is Vital to Your Health

    By Beatrice Trum Hunter

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    About this ebook

    Most people have no idea that they arent breathing in only oxygen when they inhale. Outside, they may be inhaling volatile organic compounds from car exhausts, benzene, solvents, wood smoke, dust particles, soot and ozone. Inside, they may be inhaling formaldehyde, radon, radiation, or asbestos fibres. This book is important reading for everybody who wants to know how air quality relates to health and how it can be improved in their personal environments.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTurner Publishing Company
    Release dateMay 1, 2004
    ISBN9781591206378
    Air and Your Health: Clean Air Is Vital to Your Health
    Author

    Beatrice Trum Hunter

    Beatrice Trum Hunter has written more than 30 books on food issues, including whole foods, food adulteration, and aditives. Her most recent books include The Whole Foods Primer, Probiotic Foods for Good Health, and Infectious Connections.

    Read more from Beatrice Trum Hunter

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      Book preview

      Air and Your Health - Beatrice Trum Hunter

      PART ONE

      Air and

      Your Health

      Chapter 1

      THE LUNGS: AN INTRODUCTION

      The lungs, a marvelously developed organ, are meant to function with a good intake of clean air. The lungs provide a very large surface for gas exchange. We breathe in oxygen, our breath of life, and breathe out waste. Unfortunately, in a polluted world, along with the life-sustaining oxygen we also inhale many substances that irritate and damage the lungs as well as the rest of our bodies. These air pollutants are numerous and include automobile exhaust, soot, dust, cigarette smoke, smog, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), radon, formaldehyde, wood smoke, asbestos, commercial fragrances, solvents, benzene, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), insect repellents, and aerosols, to name just a few.

      How Do the Lungs Function?

      The airways consist of the trachea, bronchi, and bronchioles. These structures act as air conditioners, and protect the body by minimizing its losses of heat and water. The first few sets of bronchi convert dry and cold inhaled air to air with full humidity, at a comfortable body temperature.

      The airway structures are like a main branch, which splits up into smaller and smaller branches. It begins with the trachea, the main branch, which is a tube that extends almost to the middle of the chest. The bronchi branch off the trachea, split in two, and then split further into bronchioles. These are thin, short, distensible airways that once again divide many times to form alveolar ducts into the alveoli. This multiple division of branching results in many generations of airways, increasing exponentially in numbers and decreasing progressively in diameter. A single adult trachea, about 180 millimeters (mm) in diameter (1 mm is 0.0394 inch), divides so that by the tenth generation, there are 1,000 bronchi; by the twentieth generation, there exist 1,000,000 bronchioles and about 300,000,000 alveoli, which are only about 0.1 to 0.3 mm in diameter. It is estimated that if the alveolar surface could be laid flat, its area would reach the size of a tennis court!

      The walls of the trachea and bronchi have several layers. On the inner surface (the luminal side) is a layer of epithelium (skin). A network of fine nerve fibers in the epithelium contain microscopic hairs (cilia) that respond to inhaled pollutants. The cilia set up reflexes such as coughing, mucous secretion, and smooth-muscle contraction. The cilia also continuously sweep any surface material toward the larynx, from which the substance is dispelled by either ingesting it or coughing it out of the body. This mechanism helps keep the lungs clean and free of noxious substances.

      A dense blood capillary network under the epithelium provides nutrients for the epithelium and glands. The network may be the site for uptake into the lungs of inhaled pollutants. Submucosal glands secrete mucus, a protective lubricant that lines the airways. In healthy lungs, the mucous sheet is very thin and does not block airways. In irritated and diseased lungs, a huge mucous output can narrow the airways dangerously or, even worse, block them completely, especially if accompanied by inflammation. Overproduction of mucus results from pathological changes in the lungs. Its manifestation is familiar, both in chronic bronchitis and in so-called smoker’s cough.

      Many pollutants, including cigarette smoke and viral or bacterial infections of the airways, stimulate the glands to secrete mucus. The mucus stimulates coughing, as a means of rapidly dispelling the offending pollutant. Sneezing achieves the same objective.

      For asthmatics, the contraction of bronchial smooth muscles narrows the airways and demands greater muscular effort to inflate the lungs. The smooth muscles contract in response to chemical or nervous stimuli. Either stimulus can cause asthmatics to wheeze. Formerly, medications were used to relax the smooth muscles. However, most types of asthma involve inflammation of the airways. Currently, anti-inflammatory medication is used to prevent swelling of the mucosa due to leaking blood vessels, narrowing of the airways, and smooth-muscle contraction.

      How Important Are Healthy Lungs?

      Healthy lungs are vital to life. At the very beginning of life, we are reminded of this fact. The infant is given a gentle slap to begin the functioning of the lungs. We learn to respect the vitality of the lungs whenever, after vigorous exercise, we need to catch our breath. In underwater swimming, we know that in a finite amount of time we will need to resurface to fill our lungs with air. Throughout life, it is important to maintain our lungs’ full and undiminished capacity. And at the end of life, adjuncts of tubing and oxygen tanks remind us, once again, how our lungs sustain the breath of life.

      Chapter 2

      YOUNG CHILDREN AND AIR POLLUTION

      The incidences of childhood cancers, birth defects, asthma, and neurodevelopmental dysfunction have all been rising in the United States. Many indicators point to environmental pollutants in air, water, and food as major factors. Interest in this problem was heightened by a study, Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children, issued in 1993 by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The study found that regulatory standards for pesticides and other chemicals may not protect children adequately. Infants and young children are more vulnerable than adults to environmental assaults. Children’s bodies are still developing. Their detoxification mechanisms are not yet fully functioning. Nevertheless, young children are exposed to more toxins than adults in proportion to their size and body weight. Because they crawl, roll about, and climb over contaminated surfaces (for example, pesticide-treated grass outdoors, and chemically shampooed rugs indoors), they breathe in and have greater skin contact with toxins than do adults in the same environments. Also, young children put many nonfood items into their mouths, and sometimes handle and eat foods that have dropped to floors, sidewalks, and other contaminated surfaces.

      As a result of these differences, regulations designed to protect adults from environmental assaults are deemed inadequate to protect young children. Increasingly, public health officials, medical doctors, federal regulators, and even the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) have acknowledged the inadequacies of environmental regulations in protecting young children.

      What Newer Programs Strengthen Young Child Protection?

      In 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched the Children’s Health Chemical Testing Program. Initially, about fifty industrial chemicals would be tested for their impact on young children. The program would continue to add more industrial chemicals for testing each year.

      Originally, the EPA intended to mandate the new tests. However, the CMA and other industry groups convinced the agency to make the testing program voluntary. The program is time consuming and costly. For example, carcinogenicity tests may require five years, and tests can cost from $5 million to $10 million for each chemical tested. Under the high-production-volume (HPV) chemical testing program, the chemical industry volunteered to conduct basic toxicity screening tests for 2,800 of the most commonly used industrial chemicals.

      The Endocrine Disrupter Screening and Testing Advisory Committee, comprising industrial representatives as well as governmental and public health officials, devised a program to test some 87,000 chemicals to find out if any of these substances can disrupt hormonal systems.

      A rise in childhood cancers gives impetus to these programs. In 1997, Richard Klausner, M.D., director of the National Cancer Institute, reported that the rate of cancer among American children has been rising for decades. Overall, childhood cancers have been rising by 1 percent a year since 1974. Some increases have been among very rare forms, such as testicular cancer and retinoblastoma (a tumor arising from the retinal cells in the eye). After accidents, cancer is the second leading cause of death in children. Concern about environmental causes of childhood cancers has been growing.

      After the NAS’s report, Carol Browner, former EPA administrator, called for new research in air and water pollutants, as well as on pesticides and their effects on children. She also called for new testing guidelines to confront a dramatic rise in the overall number of kids who get cancer.

      Why Are More Children Getting Cancers?

      The environmental causes of childhood cancers are unclear. Numerous factors are suspected, among them the exposure of the developing fetus to environmental toxins in the womb, including pregnant women’s exposures to x-rays; pregnant women with polyomaviruses, who may transmit the infection to fetuses; and pregnant women with cancers who are given chemotherapy. Lifestyle habits of pregnant women may be factors: smoking has been indicted, as have diets deficient in vital nutrients such as folate (a vitamin B fraction),

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