Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
10
Air Pollution: Lung Disease
The atmosphere almost looks like an eggshell on an egg, it's so very thin. We
know we don't have much air; we need to protect what we have.
—Eileen Collins, NASA astronaut, on the view of Earth from space
When you can't breathe, nothing else matters.
—American Lung Association
The topic of air pollution cannot be completely separated from that of
climate change. The carbon dioxide and methane gases that we spew
into the air that are thought by most climatologists to be responsible for
most climate change are pollutants, things not naturally in the air in such
concentrations.
However, when air pollution is discussed, the emphasis is not on
changes in global temperature and precipitation but on what is in the
3,400 gallons of air, 7 quarts per minute, that we inhale every day.
The emphasis is on the maintenance of good health, in both humans
and the other animals and plants we share the earth with. The amounts
of carbon dioxide and methane in the air we breathe are not harmful
to our bodies, but other things we have added to the air we inhale
are—such things as soot, ozone, gaseous organic compounds, sulfur
dioxide, lead, asbestos, rubber, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and other
interesting substances (fi gure 10.1).
The amounts of these substances we take in, along with our essential
oxygen gas, have caused great increases in respiratory diseases such as
bacterial infections, bronchitis, allergies, and asthma. They may also be
responsible for many of the lung cancers not attributable to smoking.
Data from Los Angeles indicate that air pollution thickens the wall of a
person's carotid artery, a leading risk factor for heart attacks and strokes.
1
Each year, air pollution claims 70,000 lives in the United States; globally,
an estimated 200,000 to 570,000 people die from it each year. The
