From the Editorial Staff
The newspaper La Jornada
Monday, September 9, 2024, p. 19
Karen Elizabeth Nava Castro, a researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Change (ICACC) of UNAM, highlighted that air pollution is one of the main environmental threats to human health, along with climate change.
According to the World Health Organization, he said, pollution levels remain dangerously high in many parts of the world, causing nearly 99 percent of the population to breathe poor quality air that exceeds the limits set by the organization.
Currently, he stressed, it is associated, above all, with chronic-degenerative diseases, such as cancer, obesity, respiratory diseases, among others. He stressed that a large part of the affected population resides in developing countries such as ours, Nava Castro warned.
The researcher made this point on the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies, which was commemorated on September 7. She stressed that air pollution is one of the greatest environmental risks to health.
He added that it is also associated with heart disease and currently with some reproductive and mental illnesses and, in general, in a systemic manner in the body. In this context, the research group made up of experts from the ICACC and the Institute of Biomedical Research of the UNAM, in which he collaborates, said that they study breast and colon cancer, depression and obesity linked to air pollution.
“We have not studied cardiovascular conditions in particular, but we know that many of the air pollutants, per se“That is, both PM10 particles (particulate matter) and especially PM2.5, and even smaller and invisible particles suspended in the air for long periods, such as PM0.5 and PM0.1, are capable of penetrating deeply into our lungs, the bloodstream and the body in general,” says the university researcher.
They can cross the pulmonary epithelial barrier and reach the bloodstream, as well as other organs in the body. When we breathe, PM and its associated pollutants reach the olfactory bulb area, then other areas in the brain and subsequently the systemic pathway.
he explained.
The researcher stressed that PM05 and PM01 particles are responsible for approximately one third of deaths from stroke, chronic respiratory diseases and lung cancer, as well as a quarter of deaths from heart attacks.
Furthermore, tropospheric ozone, produced by the interaction of various pollutants with sunlight, is also a cause of exacerbation of asthma symptoms and other chronic respiratory diseases, he said.
