A new data out of the United Kingdom shows that air pollution can seemingly trigger heart attacks and stokes — thus bringing into focus the more immediate impacts of poor air quality.
For this study, researchers from King’s College London gathered data on daily air pollution levels in nine cities in the U.K. and divided the data into “high pollution days” and “low pollution days.”
Each year emergency services see more than 120 additional cardiac arrests, more than 230 additional strokes and nearly 200 more people with asthma requiring hospital treatment on days of high pollution compared with the average on days of lower pollution.
The researchers defined high pollution days by dividing the year in two based on levels of pollution and comparing the number of cases of the relevant illness in the higher pollution half of the year with the number of similar cases on each day in the lower half.
Many people may not realize how dangerous air pollution at high levels can be, and that it can trigger heart attacks, strokes and asthma attacks apart from having long-term health effects. These figures will be a wake-up call for city dwellers.
“These new figures show air pollution is now causing thousands of strokes, cardiac arrests and asthma attacks, so it’s clear that the climate emergency is in fact also a health emergency. Since these avoidable deaths are happening now, not in 2025 or 2050, together we need to act now.”
Reference- Futurism, The Guardian, King’s College London Study