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Clean Air Can Help Prolong Life Expectancy
 

Pollution is harmful for our bodies. This is unarguable. It has been known that polluted air or particulates contain grit, which can lodge deep in the lungs. This would raise the risk of lung disease, heart attacks and strokes. Made of dust, soot and various chemicals, the grit actually comes from factories, power plants and diesel-powered vehicles.

Now, a new research has claimed that living in clean air can prolong life expectancy.

Researchers from Brigham Young University and Harvard School of Public Health reported on January 22, 2009 in New England Journal of Medicine that cleaner air over the past 2 decades has prolonged the average life expectancy by nearly 5 months in United States. Between 1978 and 2001, Americans' average life span increased almost 3 years to 77, and as much as 4.8 months of that can be attributed to cleaner air.

This is the first study that was partly funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to show that reducing air pollution would actually translate into longer live.

In the study, government data was used to track particulate pollution levels over 2
decades in 51 US cities. These changes were compared to life expectancy calculated from death records and census data. Results were adjusted by taking into account of other things that might affect life expectancy like smoking habits, income, education and migration.

It was found that particulate matter levels fell from 21 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 14 micrograms per cubic meter in the 51 cities studied, and meanwhile, Americans lived
an average 2.72 years longer.

Communities that had larger reductions in air pollution on average had larger increases in life expectancies. For example, the life spans in Pittsburgh and Buffalo, New York, which have the cleaner air, saw life spans, were increased by about 10 months. On the other hand, gain in life expectancy was around 5 months were seen in Los Angeles, Indianapolis and St. Louis.

Indeed, the new finding further confirms the population health benefits of mitigating air pollution. Back in 1970, Congress passed a revised Clean Air Act giving power to the EPA for setting and enforcing national standards to protect people from particulate matter, carbon monoxide and other pollutants. The law has improved the nation's air quality through such things as catalytic converters on cars and scrubbers at new factories.

While agreeing that such studies provide critical information to help set standards on particulates, the EPA also released data showing that the average particulate levels nationally have since 2000 fallen 11 percent.

Last year (2008), government researchers reported that life expectancy in United States has surpassed 78 years for the first time. They attributed the increase to falling mortality rates for 9 of the 15 leading causes of death, including heart disease, cancer, accidents and diabetes.

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