Search for tag: "pollution"

Oh, little bits of dirt that you breathe that get into your body and affect your baby. Air pollution in pregnancy: What do we know and what should you do?

You thought that your lungs filtered out dirt and the placenta filtered out bad stuff? Well, that's sort of true, mostly true, but not completely true. Recently we've had yellow air days and orange air days and even a red day. What does this mean to you if you're pregnant, and what happens to you and your baby on a red-air day? And what can you do about it?

In Utah and across the west, we settled our towns in valleys where there was water. That was a good thing, right? And the towns grew and the cars were invented and industry grew and that was a good thing, right?

Well, we know in the past London, England had some of the worst air quality episodes in the world. And we know that people died when air got that bad. So what's happening in the Salt Lake Valley, a city in a valley prone to air inversions and when you have to breathe what your car and the refineries have pooped? Bad air has a lot of bad stuff to it-ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and particles of incompletely burned stuff, the thing I so inelegantly called poop.

From your cars, from your favorite barbeque place, from the big industries, and from refineries. The incompletely burned particles come in different sizes, but the worrisome ones are very small, and they are called PM2.5 and they are too small for your lungs to clean and they get into your body and inflame your body and your placenta.

It is hard to do research on pregnant women. In fact, we're specifically told we have to be very careful doing research on pregnant women. And it's really hard to put pregnant women into a controlled room and expose them to various amounts of bad air. And some women get good air. And then see what happens to their pregnancies and their babies. We do have research from areas with bad air that look at pregnancy outcomes and children's health. California has been very active and looking at outcomes of pregnancy and bad air. Women exposed to bad air, living close to a freeway when they were pregnant, had smaller babies and more premature babies. And their children had more asthma and more autism.

Can we prove it was the bad air or something else, like freeway noise instead of bad air? This is hard, but here in Utah we had an experiment in Utah County about 20 years ago. We used to have really bad air when Geneva Steel was open, so we could look at outcomes when it was open and when it was closed. One specific outcome, prematurity, was a lot worse when it was open.

So what do you do if you're pregnant in bad air days, on orange days or red days? I'm not suggesting that you get in your car and go to Park City; that just makes air worse. And in recent years, the bad air has traveled up to Park City anyway. So don't drag your bad air up to Park City. You should never use a wood fireplace or wood-burning stove when you're pregnant. The air quality inside is many, many times worse than the worst air day.

I hope staying inside on bad air days helps, but our inside air comes from outside. There is some research that home air filters that can filter PM2.5 might make the air better in your home. There will be more information on this in the future as we get better small air quality measuring devices and the U is funding research just for this purpose.

Don't use your snow blower. It's a very inefficient high polluting engine. Get someone to shovel your snow.

Stay off the road; air quality on bad days is worse next to the freeways. Minimize your trips, not just for you but also for everyone, and don't wait for bad air day to limit your trips. Don't idle your car. The Utah Department of Air Quality has predictions about the next few days; act now to make tomorrow's air better.

Google the Utah Air Department of Air Quality or you can go to Airnow.gov and get a look at the country and click on Utah.

So pay attention to the air quality and the Department of Air Quality's predictions. Be an advocate; let your local and state representatives know that you're very concerned about Utah air quality; you're willing to put up with tighter controls for cars and industry, and you vote. And don't hold your breath; you're breathing for two.

updated: February 18, 2020
originally published: March 13, 2014

Host: Did you know even if you're a non-smoker, just because you live in Utah you have an increased chance of getting lung cancer? We're going to talk with Dr. Shamus Carr of Huntsman Cancer Institute about what's causing that coming up next.

Announcer: Interesting, informative, and all in the name of better health. This is The Scope Health Sciences Radio.

Host: Lung cancer, what causes it? I think everybody thinks it's only smoking.

Dr. Carr: Well, 90% of patients who get diagnosed with lung cancer, it is related to smoking. However, what's interesting is that there's 10% who do not. More interesting is here in the state of Utah 30% are non-smokers.

Host: Really? What's the cause of that?

Dr. Carr: There's a lot of things that have been proven to be the cause. Radon, which is a colorless, odorless gas which is in the basement of pretty much everybody's home here in the state of Utah, is a risk factor.

Host: Why is it so predominant here?

Dr. Carr: It's the geology, so it just comes up through the ground and here it is. Additionally, we make homes so well today, they are air tight. They keep the cold out. In the winter they keep the heat in. In the summertime they keep the heat out and they keep the cool in. If you have a colorless, odorless gas that's coming up through your basement it's not going anywhere. You run your air conditioner all summer, that air doesn't go anywhere. It just keeps recirculating in your house.

Host: What about the inversions that we get?

Dr. Carr: That's a great topic, and I think we're going to learn a lot more about that here in the coming years, pollution in general. In fact, there was just a recent study that just came out of China where they looked at the incidence of smoking over the last thirty years, and it hasn't changed. They smoke a lot over there, but the amount of smokers hasn't changed by percentage.
However, as we all know, you always see in the papers the pictures of Beijing in the summertime. They even pushed the Olympics off and didn't allow people to drive because of air pollution. The air quality there is horrible. What's interesting is the incidence of lung cancer has doubled in Beijing in the last 30 years. Pollution? I think so. However, we're still working on that issue.
I believe the inversion definitely definitely plays a role here in health issue here in the valley in the Great Salt Lake Basin, but time will tell.

Host: We talked about radon. We talked about air pollution, not necessarily proven yet, but likely.

Dr. Carr: Very likely.

Host: What are some other reasons we've got this 30% incidence of lung cancer in non-smokers here in Utah?

Dr. Carr: I think there is also, believe it or not, we're going to find that there's going to be a genetic component. I think there are people out there whose bodies are essentially predestined for this. I've met a number of families, non-smokers, dad died of lung cancer and they said, "Oh, well he worked in the mines," so they kind of attributed it to something else. Then all of a sudden there's somebody else who's got lung cancer, then somebody else. We're starting to see that kind of issue.
I think the state of Utah's really well set up for that because we keep such amazing genealogical records here in this state that we're starting to mine this kind of data, no pun intended, and see if there's something to this. We think that there is going to be.

Host: Is there research currently going on looking into this?

Dr. Carr: Yes.

Host: When do you think we'll see some results? Do you have any idea?

Dr. Carr: As soon as the person who's pulling the data gives it to me. We had a meeting just recently about this. The preliminary data is very striking, very striking that there's going to be a genetic component that we can start talking about in lung cancer, but not yet published.

Host: You're saying that 30% of people who get lung cancer in the state of Utah are not smokers, so even though I don't smoke I've got an increased chance just because I live here. Is there a stigma attached to people who get lung cancer in general because for so many people it is because of smoking?

Dr. Carr: Yeah, you know, I think there is. It's a shame because it's like, "Oh, they did this to themselves. They were bad people. They smoked cigarettes. They weren't healthy." I think that we need to get beyond that. I think this is a multifactorial problem. The incidence of smoking in the United States continues to decrease, in fact, nationally we're under 20% for the second year in a row.
Here in the state of Utah we're only at 10%, so I think we need to realize that there are a lot of other factors that we aren't controlling, like air pollution, they have to work in a mine because they need a job as an environmental hazard, and the radon. The best thing you could do, honestly, the one take home message is go get a radon testing kit for your house, simple. You can go to, I think it is, radon.utah.gov, and for $7 they will send you a testing kit and you can get your own house tested.

Host: We're your daily dose of science, conversation and medicine. This is The Scope, University of Utah Health Sciences Radio.