I was reading in the news that air pollution is damaging our lungs more than they thought because the safe levels were based on American research that has different amounts of small particles than European traffic makes.
The latest research was telling them that the smaller particles were causing more damage as they go further into the lung and do not show up at the safe levels that we have now. The research done in Holland is what Europe will have to change the safe levels for everyones lungs sake.
I know from my own experience city traffic makes me fell awful and now I have begun to understand why with air pollution the elephant in the room damaging more lungs without a public outcry.
Ali
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I certainly think air pollution has a greater impact on lungs than previously thought. They (and I'm not entirely sure who 'they' are) are saying now that we are experiencing illnesses up to fifteen years earlier than our grandparents and I think with the high incidence of much younger people now getting COPD that it could be quite a reasonable assertion.
That made me thougtful. We live longer than our grandparents did but have to battle with increased pollution from traffic. In my area, the town I live in is called a dust bowl during the harvesting season. I am hoping to move south by the sea. It will be interesting to see if it helps my lungs. Not sure that I am right, but young people start smoking at a younger age. Also chest weaknesses can be in the genes. I found a school report quoting the number of sick absences from school - 30. Unbelievable.
Feel bad air on my chest more in the summer if its hot and no breeze so its lucky that does not happen so often in Yorkshire.
More cars about now than ever there was and most families will have two or more cars if they still have children at home who expect that as soon as they are old enough an old car will theirs. It makes you think what would our grandparents think of the factory chimney smoke changing into car fumes.
Different for all of us i guess King. Having said that, I can hardly walk outside at all at the minute, whereas in the summer Im the fastest pursed-lip breather in town
But if i'd stayed in london I don't know how i'd be now. Im certainly better functioning now than 13 years ago when first diagnosed, even though the condition has of course progressed.
On my last visit to the resp nurse she told me that although COPD has always been blamed on smoking in the main, research is now leading 'them' to believe that genetics play a large part, she also said that children as young as 7yrs are being given the spirometry tests. If this is right then surely pollution must play a large part - people have smoked since Elizabethan times and living/working conditions in general are far better now than they have ever been.
I have just come back from the coast in Wales and I noticed that my breathing got much easier after a few days....shame I got a few infections and ended up in A and E!
I live between the A1 and the M1, and wonder if it is the diesel particulates that get deep into the lungs. When I am on high dose steroids I can smell the traffic fumes easily
Where my doctor's practice is the car park is next to a cabinet maker's where the extractor, extracts fumes from spraying the polish onto furniture!
Travelled into London for a visit to my specialist at the Brompton and the difference in air quality from what I think is normal really hit my breathing hard as if I had been run over by the traffic not only having to breathe the polluted air.
Agree with others it changes with where you go how easy it is breathing with changes in what fresh air is thought as in that area another postcode lottery.
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