Excessive air pollution can lead to repeated heart attacks

Many people look at air pollution issue strictly from the environmental point of view, forgetting that air pollution not only has harmful impact on our environment but also on our health. The negative health impact of air pollution doesn't stop on respiratory diseases such as asthma and lung cancer, air pollution also does serious damage to our heart.

The latest interesting study on this topic comes from Israel where scientists have concluded that exposure to air pollution not only increases the risk of heart attack and stroke but it also causes repeated episodes over the long term.

Dr. Yariv Gerber of TAU's School of Public Health at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine said that long-term exposure to air pollution leads to chronic irritation of inflammatory system that can lead to repeated heart attack(s).

People that live in areas with high levels of air pollutants in the air are said to be 40 percent more prone to a second heart attack when compared to people that live in areas with normal level of air pollutants in the air.

Dr. Gerber also said that the actual negative impact of air pollution on our health might be even stronger because using data from monitoring stations gives only a crude estimate of exposure, so the precise results could be lot more serious.

The major sources of air pollution are industrial and car emissions. Many cities all across the world are areas with high levels of harmful air pollutants in the air, and people that live in these cities are very vulnerable to different health issues as the result of excessive air pollution.

The health benefits of clean air are enormous. The health risks of air pollution are great and countries need to take this issue far more seriously. The World Health Organization estimates that around 2.4 million people die each year from causes directly attributed to air pollution.