People living near the trails are 22% more likely to suffer from a stroke
Last reviewed: 23.11.2021
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People who live in areas with a high level of air pollution associated with traffic, are at greater risk of death from stroke, say Danish scientists.
They found that people living in urban areas with high levels of nitrogen dioxide are 22% more likely to suffer a stroke than people living in less polluted areas.
Nitrogen dioxide is one of the components of car exhaust and is known to damage lung tissue. Previous studies have also shown that outbursts of air pollution for several days or weeks can cause death from a stroke.
Last year, the US Environmental Protection Agency changed the standards of environmental pollution in order to prevent short-term impacts of high levels of pollutants, but the average threshold of these levels has remained unchanged for many decades.
The latest study, published in the journal Stroke, is one of the largest and most fully illuminating link between the chronic effects of daily levels of contaminants and stroke.
Scientists have studied the data of more than 52,000 residents of the two largest cities in Denmark. During the decade, about 2,000 participants, aged 50 to 65 years at the beginning of the study, suffered a stroke, of which 142 died within 30 days.
People exposed to high levels of nitrogen dioxide were 5% more likely to have a stroke and had a 22% greater chance of dying from stroke than those who were breathing clean air, according to scientists from the Danish Cancer Society in Copenhagen.
The study took into account other factors associated with the risk of stroke, for example, the presence of obesity, exercise, smoking.
In addition to the long-term effects of air pollution, stroke in this study was more common in men with obesity and other risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking.