Washington, Sept 21 (ANI): A study has found that high levels of pollution could increase the risk of having a heart attack for up to six hours after exposure, though no increased risk after the time frame was seen.
Given the transient nature of the increased risk, they speculate that the heart attack would have happened anyway and was merely brought forward by a few hours.
This is known as a short-term displacement or "harvesting" effect of pollution.
Krishnan Bhaskaran, an epidemiologist from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and colleagues reviewed 79,288 heart attack cases from 2003 to 2006 and exposure, by the hour, to pollution levels.
The authors used the UK National Air Quality Archive to investigate the levels of specific pollutants in the atmosphere. These included pollutant particles (PM10), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and ozone.
Given the authors found no net increase in heart attack risk over a broader timescale, they argue that there may be "limited potential for reducing the overall burden of myocardial infarction through reductions in pollution alone, but that should not undermine calls for action on air pollution, which has well established associations with broader health outcomes including overall, respiratory and cardiovascular mortality".
The findings have been published on bmj.com. (ANI)
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