Air pollution as bad as smoking a cigarette pack per day
New York, Aug 14: Researchers have found that ozone air pollution which is increasing with climate change can accelerate lung disease as much as that by smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
"We were surprised to see how strong air pollution''s impact was on the progression of emphysema on lung scans, in the same league as the effects of cigarette smoking, which is by far the best-known cause of emphysema," said Joel Kaufman, Professor at the University of Washington.
If you live in areas with increased levels of ozone, researchers found an increase in emphysema roughly the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for 29 years.
The study, published in the journal JAMA, demonstrates an association between long-term exposure to major air pollutants - especially ozone - with an increase in emphysema seen on lung scans.
Emphysema is a condition in which destruction of lung tissue leads to wheezing, coughing and shortness of breath and increases the risk of death.
The results are based on an extensive, 18-year study involving more than 7,000 people and a detailed examination of the air pollution they encountered between 2000 and 2018 in six metropolitan regions across the US. The participants were drawn from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) Air and Lung studies.
"To our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study to assess the association between long-term exposure to air pollutants and progression of percent emphysema in a large, community-based, multi-ethnic cohort," said Meng Wang, Assistant Professor at the University at Buffalo.
While most of the airborne pollutants are in decline because of successful efforts to reduce them, ozone has been increasing, researchers said. Ground-level ozone is mostly produced when ultraviolet light reacts with pollutants from fossil fuels.
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US VP JD Vance says Lebanon not part of ceasefire, calls it ‘misunderstanding’
Budapest/Washington: US Vice President J D Vance has said that Lebanon was never included in the ceasefire understanding with Iran, describing the confusion as a “legitimate misunderstanding”.
Speaking to reporters before departing from Hungary, Vance said, “I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon and it just didn’t. We never made that promise.”
He stressed that the United States had not included Lebanon in the scope of the ceasefire at any stage.
His remarks come amid continued Israeli strikes in Lebanon, where more than 200 people were reported killed, even as ceasefire talks between Iran and the US move forward.
Vance said Israel had “offered … to check themselves a little bit in Lebanon because they want to make sure that our negotiation is successful”.
He warned that if Iran allows the situation in Lebanon to affect the negotiations, it could derail the talks.
“If Iran wants to let this negotiation fall apart in a conflict where they were getting hammered over Lebanon, which has nothing to do with them and which the United States never once said was part of the ceasefire, that’s ultimately their choice,” he said.
