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People living near highways are 22% more likely to suffer a stroke
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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People who live in areas with high levels of traffic-related air pollution are at higher risk of dying from stroke, Danish scientists say.
They found that people living in urban areas with high levels of nitrogen dioxide were 22% more likely to suffer a stroke than people living in less polluted areas.
Nitrogen dioxide is a component of car exhaust and is known to cause lung tissue damage. Previous studies have also shown that spikes in air pollution over days or weeks can cause death by stroke.
Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency changed its pollution standards to prevent short-term exposure to high levels of pollutants, but the average threshold for those levels has remained unchanged for decades.
The latest study, published in the journal Stroke, is one of the largest and most comprehensive studies to date of the link between chronic exposure to everyday levels of pollutants and stroke.
The researchers looked at data from more than 52,000 people living in two of Denmark's largest cities. Over the course of a decade, about 2,000 of the participants, aged 50 to 65 at the start of the study, suffered a stroke, of whom 142 died within 30 days.
People exposed to high levels of nitrogen dioxide were 5% more likely to have a stroke and 22% more likely to die from a stroke than those who breathed clean air, according to scientists from the Danish Cancer Society in Copenhagen.
The study also took into account other factors associated with the risk of stroke, such as obesity, exercise and smoking.
In addition to long-term exposure to air pollution, stroke in this study was more common among men who were obese and had other cardiovascular disease risk factors, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking.