Air Pollution, problem in America

 

Air pollution speeds up bone loss in postmenopausal women, says study

The effects were most evident on the lumbar spine, with nitrous oxides causing twice as damage to the area than seen with normal ageing, the scientists claimed.

The study was done by scientists from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. And the findings have been published in the peer-reviewed journal eClinicalMedicine, part of The Lancet Discovery Science suite of open-access journals.

This conclusion was drawn after researchers examined the bone scan of more than 9,000 women living in four different parts of the US.

Each woman had done a bone scan thrice over a six-year period and then it was compared with the air they breathed. It was found that on average, air pollution accounted for a doubling of the speed of bone loss.

The new research builds on previous work by the same group that looked at hospitalisation for fractures among more than 9 million people in the eastern US.

This time, the team found that particle pollution was directly linked with people being taken to the hospital for fractures.

"Our findings confirm that poor air quality may be a risk factor for bone loss, independent of socioeconomic or demographic factors. For the first time, we have evidence that nitrogen oxides, in particular, are a major contributor to bone damage and that the lumbar spine is one of the most susceptible sites of this damage," said study first author Diddier Prada, MD, PhD, associate research scientist in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, according to ScienceDaily.

"Improvements in air pollution exposure, particularly nitrogen oxides, will reduce bone damage in postmenopausal women, prevent bone fractures, and reduce the health cost burden associated with osteoporosis among postmenopausal women. Further efforts should focus on detecting those at higher risk of air pollution-related bone damage," says lead author Andrea Baccarelli, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.

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