I think most people are now concerned about the health impacts of air pollution. In lecture # 7 and tutorial # 3 of the GE3246 module we will focus on air pollution and its health effects (and also on how those health effects are determined/quantified). We have, of course, already touched on the subject in our discussion of measuring and monitoring variations in pollution, and in particular air quality indices (AQIs).
Most of the concern regarding air pollution is, understandably, on the effects on the health of people exposed to polluted air. In most rich parts of the world we can still choose whether to drink polluted water (although this has not been the case in Flint, Michigan, US, since 2014 in what has become known as the Flint Water Crisis) and we’re perfectly happy to discard food that is past its eat-by date because it might have “gone off” and be contaminated (or “spoiled”) by bacteria etc. However, even in economically wealthy countries such as Singapore we have little choice but to breath the air that is all around us, or ambient air (although we can filter the air, so long as the masks etc are available and we can afford to purchase them). But what about the unborn? Should we also be concerned about the effects of air pollution on foetuses – our yet to be born offspring?
Recent research published on 17 September 2019 in Nature Communications suggests that we should be concerned about the effects of air pollution on our unborn children. The Nature Communication article is open-access, but I have also uploaded a copy to this blog (see below). The research is being reported widely – see for example a report in the Guardian newspaper and on the Live Science website. The latter also includes a link to a short video on urban air pollution, and how urban air pollution levels have a high focality (they vary greatly over relatively short distances). The video features researchers and research from University of Texas, Austin, US. It is worth a watch!
Basically the work published 17 September 2019 in Nature Communications found particles of black carbon – part of the fine particulate matter that is released on combustion of biomass, in the form of fossil fuels but also in the form of extant peatlands and forest – on both sides of the human placenta. In other words, fine particulate matter was able to pass from the maternal side of the placenta to the foetal side. Moreover, the number of particles found on the foetal side of the placenta varied in accordance with the concentration of particles in the air that the mother had been exposed to while pregnant – in other words, the greater the level of air pollution during pregnancy then the greater the number of particles found on the foetal side of the placenta.
We can of course speculate on the health effects of exposure to extremely small black carbon particles from a very early age (even from before a person is born!). You can, for example, watch a short video titled “Smog in our brains” in which Dr. Jennifer Weuve, an Assistant Professor of internal medicine at Rush Medical College in the US, discusses the effects of particulate air pollution on the brain. The authors of the study recently published in Nature Communications conclude their article by saying “[t]he evidence of particle translocation to the placenta might be a plausible explanation for the observed detrimental effects of ambient particulate air pollution on fetal development over and beyond the increased maternal systemic inflammation in response to particulate accumulation in the lungs”. They go on to cite the findings of research published in 2016 in the Journal of Physiology on the effects of ingesting very fine particulate matter (nanoparticles) on different stages of human development, from the foetus to adult. Nanoparticles can be smaller than even our most sophisticated air pollution measuring equipment is able to measure (i.e. smaller than PM2.5), but just because we cannot measure it, conveniently or otherwise, does not mean that it does not exist!
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It’s indeed saddening to hear that despite having the resources and funds, we are still at the mercy of the neighbouring countries. It would be wise to keep a mask handy when leaving the house since air pollution has such large impacts on our health.